Soil for potted apple trees

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I bought 25 wild apple trees bareroot trees from st lawrence nurseries. I am potting them and planting them in the fall. I have approximately 2 gallon sized pots.

Some trees will be at my home with heavy clay. The locations are not ready. I need to knock over almost dead apple trees and plant them in their place. Area ia my yard, so Itll be muddy mess with the kubota in there.

The other trees will be about 50 mailes away from the st lawrence nurseries at my camp in the adirondacks. Hardiness zone 3A. Sandy soil, somewhat low in nutrients, plenty of organic material depending if its in a washed out spot or not. Not sure If I can bring some soil back home by time they come in from up there. Maybe putting 5 or 6 up there, so I can amend the spot with a bag or so of soil or mix in some lime.

 

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Forgot to mention I have agriform tablets for the trees too.

 

[Apple Junkie]

I am reluctant to recommend my technique because I have no scientific reason to believe it is the best course of action, but it seems to work for me when planting to pots. I mix 4 shovels of loose sandy loam, one shovel of peat moss, and one shovel of dried composted manure. If I don’t have composted manure available, I use rotted leaf mulch instead, and when I don’t have either, the loam & peat moss mix seems to work fine too. This leads me to believe the exact mix is not as critical as regular watering the first year in a pot, then transplanting to permanent location in the fall. Neither of your sites sound ideal, but at least the soil immediately around your roots will be favorable. After that, I have found apple trees to be pretty adaptive, but not every site is going to work out. Hopefully yours will!

I’ll add this tidbit. I wanted to plant half my trees directly to their permanent locations this year. The ground is still quite wet where I wanted to put them, and the soil does not break apart easily for backfilling. I wanted to assure a nice soil/root contact, so I brought a couple 5-gallon buckets of my “home-made” mix to backfill around these bareroot trees. Planting conditions are not always ideal in early spring, so I am using both strategies this year.

 

[chummer]

I try to always have a couple bags of potting soil on hand to back fill with. Just enough to cover the roots. When potting I use the same, usually miracle grow potting soil.

 

[R.E. Gould]

I have 40 trees (20 on Dolgo, 20 on Antonovka) in the Miracle Gro potting mix. That stuff holds up very well over time. If you are going to be planting them out in 3A though, I'd be wary about them not getting sufficiently hardened off.

As an aside, I've got a place up there and planted NY-35 in 3B on P.18. Grew fantastically over the summer in that lousy acidic soil, but then I saw it has some hardiness issues. I'm anxious to see how it held up over the winter.

 

[yoderjac]

I bought 25 wild apple trees bareroot trees from st lawrence nurseries. I am potting them and planting them in the fall. I have approximately 2 gallon sized pots.

Some trees will be at my home with heavy clay. The locations are not ready. I need to knock over almost dead apple trees and plant them in their place. Area ia my yard, so Itll be muddy mess with the kubota in there.

The other trees will be about 50 mailes away from the st lawrence nurseries at my camp in the adirondacks. Hardiness zone 3A. Sandy soil, somewhat low in nutrients, plenty of organic material depending if its in a washed out spot or not. Not sure If I can bring some soil back home by time they come in from up there. Maybe putting 5 or 6 up there, so I can amend the spot with a bag or so of soil or mix in some lime.

Unless you are using root pruning containers, you biggest issue will be circling and j-hooking roots. Trees don't do well in regular containers. You will need to remove the medium to prune the roots by hand so it will be like planting bare root trees. That makes the specifics of the medium much less important.

I have heavy clay soil and I developed a good technique for planting trees grown in root pruning containers with Promix or similar high infiltration media.

 

[Buckly]

I am reluctant to recommend my technique because I have no scientific reason to believe it is the best course of action, but it seems to work for me when planting to pots. I mix 4 shovels of loose sandy loam, one shovel of peat moss, and one shovel of dried composted manure. If I don’t have composted manure available, I use rotted leaf mulch instead, and when I don’t have either, the loam & peat moss mix seems to work fine too. This leads me to believe the exact mix is not as critical as regular watering the first year in a pot, then transplanting to permanent location in the fall. Neither of your sites sound ideal, but at least the soil immediately around your roots will be favorable. After that, I have found apple trees to be pretty adaptive, but not every site is going to work out. Hopefully yours will!

I’ll add this tidbit. I wanted to plant half my trees directly to their permanent locations this year. The ground is still quite wet where I wanted to put them, and the soil does not break apart easily for backfilling. I wanted to assure a nice soil/root contact, so I brought a couple 5-gallon buckets of my “home-made” mix to backfill around these bareroot trees. Planting conditions are not always ideal in early spring, so I am using both strategies this year.

When direct planting I like to make a slurry with the loam, top soil and peat moss To get no air and a good pack around the roots. Soil then pack, soil then pack then hit it with the water into a slurry then pack and add more soil and water and pack. Lol. You get the idea. Then a little dry peat on the top with a indentation to hold rain water then the fabric.

 

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I may not have to plant most of them in pots. Got to see when St lawrence send me them. Ordered them last week on a whim. If the ground is somewhat firm, I can knock the old trees down with the tractor and put them in.

I have 40 trees (20 on Dolgo, 20 on Antonovka) in the Miracle Gro potting mix. That stuff holds up very well over time. If you are going to be planting them out in 3A though, I'd be wary about them not getting sufficiently hardened off.

As an aside, I've got a place up there and planted NY-35 in 3B on P.18. Grew fantastically over the summer in that lousy acidic soil, but then I saw it has some hardiness issues. I'm anxious to see how it held up over the winter.

I've had good luck with this method. I dig a decent sized hole the fall before I plant. I mix in whatever good stuff I can get up to the site. Used potting soil, manure, I even bring up some clay soil from my house to help absorb fertilizer and keep it there longer. When I do my small site ATV plantings, I use pelletized lime. I save the smallest particles for spreading clover. The bags with monster globs of lime, I save for mixing in spots for trees.

The fall / winter gives it time to settle in / ditch air pockets. I tamp the soil down as I put it back. You can grow lemons in that lemonaide soil up there better that way. With the sandy soil I try to avoid hilling up there, just think that taller bit will be drier in the mid summer.

I have planted next to a existing small shrub or tree, then in august, cut that shrub or tree down. Just giving that new tree some extra shade until it's roots get settled. Although most places I put trees, there's usually some shading already. Not much large open space up there.