Hi I am planning on planting some shade/shelter trees in my paddocks come spring. I would like to get them to grow as fast as possible so I am now digging holes 2 metre diameter down to the limestone (soil is sand over limestone) then I will refill with mixture of the soil plus compost add worms and put fresh horse poo on top for our very active dung beetles and leave till spring. Rainfall is 350mm so I will water through summer Any other suggestions to get the best growth I can? I wonder if I should add Epsom salt as soil is low in Mg. If so how much? I could make horse poo liquid fertilizer would this help
How deep is the limestone? When you say sand I assume it drains very freely? You don't want to make 2m diameter swamps! I have a shallow loam over a clay band. If I did as you and didn't go through the clay (to sand underneath) then I would drown my plants. In fact early on I actually did this and killed a few. Instead I now add a lot of organic matter on top around the trees and only back fill with original soil and some gypsum. They are growing quickly, though never quick enough
How deep is the limestone , Have a look at "long stem planting" I have used this process with great results in sandy soil . Short version , plant overgrown tubestock in deep holes leaving only the top couple of leaves exposed , need very little water and grow fast .
There is about 30 cms of good sandy loan (more sand than loam) then 30 cms hard sand then the limestone. It drains very quickly. Water logging will never be a problem. To Terra I have heard about long stem planting. To use this method do you have to have a plant that has a single stem? The sheoaks I have have only got a stem about 2 cms then they branch out into 4 or 5 branches
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I planted mainly overgrown sugar gum tubestock some nearly a metre high , I dug a full depth hole with the posthole digger on my tractor , pruned all the leaves off and dropped them in to the bottom put the soil back in and never watered them , two metres high in 18mths . I doubt multi trunked varieties would respond the same , try a couple prune to one trunk . I would still plant them deep maybe a small scale version of what I did below . Another tip to establish trees in tough conditions is put dead animals ect underneath them . $10 plant in a $100 dollar hole as the saying goes Anything to encourage the roots to grow straight down . Now in the same area that I tried the long stem planting I was setting up a veg corridor post 2005 bushfire (fire had cleaned out the remnant scattered sheoaks) after thought about the longstem planting success I had to come up with a system to plant 4000 mixed tubestock on sandy soil and hopefully avoid summer watering . At the other end of the corridor the year before I planted 500 and watering them was continual . So I ripped on contour graded the soil out of the rip line down slope , ripped again as deep as I could and planted the tube stock as deep as I could I guess the root balls would have been 500mm below the soil surface . The trenches gradually filled a bit but the grasses soon stopped that , as its sandy there was no waterlog issues never watered any of them never saw a dead one . Very proud of the result the whole project is over a kilometre long linking the western boundary through other remnant scrub patches that survived the fire and back up to the northern boundary . Mix of Eucs wattles sheoaks bottlebrush native pine hakeas ect.
around here fall is the best time to plant trees as then they can get established and some roots going before the demand gets tougher on them when the weather gets hot. i won't be moving the apple tree saplings until this fall... having sandy soil over a limestone base i would not want to put the trees down so deeply that they have no soil underneath them. how deep is your sandy soil?
I googled this last time Terra was illustrating his success and just did it again too. I was theorising in my head that trees that didn't put out adventitious roots wouldn't work that well and one of the articles sort of backed that up. That said, here are three good links for long stem planting: https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/grants/Longstemguide.pdf https://www.longstemtubestock.com/longstem-application.html https://www.gardeningwithangus.com....ush-tucker-plants/227-deep-long-stem-planting The PDF has a picture of a tree pulled out of the ground showing the new adventitious roots, and the subsequent growth back down the long hole that they were planted in. While from an arboricultural perspective, I would prefer to see a balance of surface roots and deep roots (a wide root plate gives stability), I assume as the microclimate changes at the surface of the soil (leaf litter, shade) that those roots would start covering the surface as well. Page 14 is the example, ideally those surface roots should run straight out and not turn 90 degrees back down the hole. If planted densely enough, the wind-moderating effects should reduce the chance of topple. The bottom of the page of the second link has a Euc with good lateral root formation at the soil surface. Perhaps, like Terra recounted, that rips or forking the surface and planting deep in those areas would encourage both benefits, deep rooting and survivability and good lateral root growth too.
I've had good results with picking the right species with the right frost tolerance, preparing the ground through forking, planting out 150mm non-rootbound stock and keeping the competing grass reasonably short of clear of the planting hole and maintaining a drink of water at the right time. Most of my Casuarina cunninghamiana are over 3 metres now just over 2 years old. But above only works on the tiny scale, longstem may allow you to cover more ground at less expense and time. And most native nurseries sell long, rootbound stock that seem to lend themselves to the longstem method. I just pulled apart 10 Casuarina glauca tubes into 150mm pots that would have been perfect for longstem had I considered it. I don't have a waterlance though...
I am going to plant some sheoaks but the trees I really want to grow quickly are pepper trees & a quacaranda. I know not politically correct but I happen to think they are beautiful & in my world there is room for beauty. Any hints on growing these two trees?