I am making a 20’x25’ nursery bed with a deer fence for the trees I am grafting, and I’ll probably use extra space for vegetables and such. I have sandy clay soil that is low in organic matter (and just had grass removed), and I am going to till in some compost to get things started. I don’t want to leave the soil bare, but I was wondering what a good cover would be to keep out weeds an promote soil health. I would probably tend towards mulch, but if I’m going to plant saplings with ~1’ spacing, then there would be nowhere to put the mulch if I’m trying to keep it far enough from the trunks to avoid rot. Is this valid thinking? I also don’t want any plant that is tall or competitive or anything that needs to be mowed. Would white clover work well for a situation like this? Any other suggestions?
I use (chopped up with the mower) leaves. I’ll collect a bunch ever year for this purpose. I’d bet you neighbors are collecting, packing, and putting their leaves on the curb around this time of year.
Chose rootstocks for sandy clay soil.
@poncirusguy I’ll mostly be putting M7 apple, callery pear, and seedling persimmon rootstocks in this bed this season. Could you elaborate on your statement? I.e. are you saying the soil is particularly difficult or something?
I have very heavy clay so I have to be careful of rootstock choice. I think you will be fine with your choices as listed. My favorite rootstocks are Ccallery pear, M111, Read haven seedlings
Depends on how long you are leaving the trees in the nursery bed.
My nursery bed is planted in 1’ rows with 8-12" between tree spacing. I put down compost on top of the planted soil then a layer of cardboard or brown construction paper (used for protecting flooring when painting or moving) and on top of that I do mulch (cedar as it is cheap and available). I have had best success transplanting at 1 year as at 2 years with that spacing the roots intergrow a lot though I am transplanting into heavy clay so no issues of water retention. If transplanting to sandy soil I would probably do 2 years to give more roots to survive the dryer spells.
I started by putting landscape fabric under the mulch but it is a pain to deal with when digging out the trees and I want to reduce my plastic waste.
I use rough sawdust from bandsaw mills. We have a lot of Amish sawmills around here, so we use the sawdust as ground cover and mulch around trees, shrubs, veggies and flowers. It’s mostly hemlock or mixed hardwoods like ash and maple.
Its sawdust, but being it’s from band mills, its more like tiny chunks of wood
Callery is a care free pear rootstock overall. The trees will get fairly large. White Dutch clover is a good choice yes but it’s very thick. Apples are going to work you pretty hard typically. If I might make a suggestion in a 20’ x25" you might be getting a little tight in there. Let’s say you plant pears 7 feet apart when they are grown you won’t barely have a spot to pick them. That’s a callery pear rootstock in this photo. It’s about 14’ x10’ x 30’ and that’s because I don’t let it get to 20’ around. It produces over 100 pounds of canning pears. That’s a 10 year old tree. I like the idea of using woodchips @disc4tw brought up the best around fruit trees. Callery rootstock don’t care what your soil is like they are aggressive wild pears genetically able to adapt quickly. See that picking pole leaning on that tree is 2 of the 7 feet sections =14 feet tall. The fruit basket is 20.6 x 10.6 x 13.9 inches https://www.amazon.com/POOLWHALE-Liter-Collapsible-Storage-Container/dp/B075M3NF52/ref=asc_df_B075M3NF52/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309811990469&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17173274026605185523&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9015457&hvtargid=pla-568579132973&psc=1
They are not the best fruit basket by the way. They are collapsible so very easy to store but the problem is they are collapsible so the pears can push out if you do more than just use them to pick and load theminthe truck. They are not intended for carrying they willstart splitting apart since they just snap together.
@clarkinks Thanks for the info. This is going to be a nursery bed, so I am not planning to grow anything longer than a year or two in this bed. For my trees I’m growing to keep, I’m probably going to surround them with hardware cloth rather than putting them in a fence-surrounded bed. So that gets to my question to @disc4tw and @AndySmith as well: Do you just don’t think I have to worry about crown rot if I use wood chips all the way up to the trees? If they’re at 1’ spacing, and you need to leave 6" around each tree without woodchips, then there’s no way to put them anywhere, but is this advice that only applies to mature trees?
I have sawdust up to the rootstocks and don’t have crown rot issues. Mine are all Geneva series, not sure that makes a difference to your situation or not. I run mulch right up to the trees in the orchard as well with out issue, and those are a mix of Bud9, m26, and Geneva series rootstock on apple, and unknown on the pears peaches and persimmons.
I’m growing on a very sandy Adirondack soil and have no issues with crown rot. As the trees get larger too much mulch around the tree can stimulate rooting and I’ll control that by pulling the woodchips back. I originally did trees 1’ apart and rows 1’ apart. That proved to be too tight and made weeding, pruning and spraying difficult. When I expanded the nursery bed I kept the trees 1’ apart in the rows but every other row I spaced them apart 2’ which gives me room for maintenance work. I planted out 262 trees this spring and each tree is now mulched with woodchips. I’ll maintain these once or twice a year by pulling back woodchips that work their way down and around the trunk. (see the trees with mulch in the background)
