Articles written by Darryl McCullough (unless otherwise noted)

Sunday, August 28, 2016

That Was Real Work

Last week I told about making the last stand with my citrus trees. The grand project started with hand-clearing the grass and weeds out past the canopies. It ended with a modest layer of tree pruner mulch to suppress weeds and slowly enrich the ecology. In between, we added some tasty soil amendments.

Here's the process on one of the small red navel orange trees. First, after clearing.



I'm a great believer in “feed the soil and let it feed the plant,” so we start with a layer of Fertrell organic fertilizer, a few scoops of elemental sulfur, and some crushed crab shell mixed with a bit of Azomite and greensand. Then, a couple of bags of biochar can't hurt.





A thin layer of bagged topsoil will keep the amendments moist and breaking down faster.


Finally, the mulch. Now just add rain.
The big red navel orange, the one that actually produces, was more work since I decided to lay edging around the cleared area. Here's after the amendments were added.

and finally the finished product.











Very pretty, but is it doing any good? We'll look into that next week.

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