Hello. I planted a nectarine tree last July from a nursery. I estimate it’s 2 years old. It’s a little under 3 feet tall right now. Two flowers bloomed a month ago and then died. I assumed it was because we’ve had weeks alternating temps in the past month. One week warm, the next week freezing etc. I did some research though and found out that the root flare is supposed to be at the top of the soil. The nursery didn’t tell me this. They just told me to have the graft 2-3 inches above ground which I did.
So last week I dug a hole around the tree carefully so that the root flare is right at the top of the soil (I can feel it with my fingers). It’s about 3 inches deep. Is this OK? The tree has been planted for almost a year. Should I try to dig it up and re-plant higher (in the same spot)?
If I leave it, there is the added problem of water pooling in the hole which i noticed after a rain storm. The tree is at the top of an incline so I was going to dig a trough on the side of the hole to allow water to drain (I don’t care if the yard gets dug up). Would this work?
You’re right that the root flare should be at the soil line. However, that’s not the cause of your blooms opening early and dying. That’s pretty common with stone fruits, especially in the Northeast. They have a tendency to bloom very early. It’s especially a problem when we have a warmer than normal winter. Stone fruits are well tuned to climates where there is a very predictable progression from winter to spring, with late cold snaps being uncommon.
It’s also possible that the variety is particularly unsuited for your area (local nurseries can be bad at picking appropriate varieties if they don’t specialize in fruit). Where are you located, and what nectarine variety is it? Some of the more knowledgeable members can provide some feedback on that.
As for the pooling, it’s probably fine. In fact a lot of people intentionally plant like that in dry spots to reduce irrigation needs.
I’m in Cincinnati, OH. I should mention that i got it from an online nursery. It’s a Mericrest nectarine and it’s supposed to be good for our zone. I couldn’t speak for this particular soil though. Our soil is more clay-like than our old place in NJ did so i planted the tree with Cocofiber planting medium.
I’m pleasantly surprised that it bloomed at all as i was only half expecting it ot last through the winter given my lack of expertise and all the unknowns. Still, i’d really like to save it if i can.
I myself would move it to expose root flares try mounding trees in the future. Mound will settle some too. On mounds it’s easy to expose root flares. If you can dig up one side you can force soil underneath and try to move rootball to top without freeing all roots. It may set the tree back. It should have been done while tree is dormant. Leaving it alone may be fine too. The roots will grow up to find the surface. Tree growth may be slowed until roots can find surface.
You are not supposed to amend planting holes with trees. Roots have to get used to local soil. Also when the texture of soil changes water will stop there at the change in texture. Always mix amended soil with local to try to avoid this texture problem. It’s called the bathtub effect. So water will not leave the hole often drowning the roots. If you did this for sure lift tree and put local soil in.
Don’t fertilize for at least a month.
That’s probably the source of your pooling. Especially in clay soils, it’s generally a bad idea to amend the planting hole. In clay soils, you end up with a “bathtub” that never drains. That would be worth replanting for. you want to make sure your tree’s roots are in the native soil. Any amendments like compost, etc, should be spread on top and mixed into maybe the top few inches of soil.
Mericrest should be more or less Okay for your climate.
Flowering isn’t indicative of anything at all about the overall health of the tree other than the tendency of stone fruits to flower too soon as previously stated. I was pretty surprised to see a scion I grafted to rootstock three weeks ago blooming a couple of days ago.
My experience from the school of hard knocks is to resist the temptation to allow a newly planted tree to set fruit until the tree attains reasonable size. It really slows them down, even for a couple of test fruits, or even stunts them out entirely.
I knew it was bad to add fertlilizer and compost but the nursery recommended the fiber stuff so i thought it was OK. live and learn, i guess. i’ll dig carefully around it to see how hard it is to move without damaging it and then try to replace the fiber stuff with natural soil. I wasn’t expecting to get fruit for a couple years anyway.
I wish I could go back in time and replant several trees far higher above grade. As I mulch very deeply annually (at least) the grade has been very hard to keep from burying a few of my citrus and one of my stone fruit trees. I think moving any tree in ground more than one year is ill-advised and likely just something to not do in the future. Of my 70 or so in ground I have 4 kumquats and 1 peach planted too deep, almost everything else is perfect, if they eventually succumb to my novice first year planting that will be a mistake I can learn from. It does not seem to be harming the peach at all, however the kumquats seem stunted from that. The problem is I moved one of the kumquats and didn’t plant it well above grade in the move. I moved 4 feijoas and it really stunted them, all of them are still really small with this year being the first year they look like they will burst with growth. My mom planted one feijoa at the same time I initially planted mine and hers is 4x the size of mine that were moved. I bought all 5 at the same time and all the same size. My point being you will lose a couple years of growth from a move. I’d say just keep mulch and soil off the trunk as best you can.
Funny enough I don’t subscribe to the usual planting methods. I like to plant deep. I do it on my citrus and am trying it on mangoes. On the citrus it has proved to protect the graft. During weeding I’ve found my citrus do a good job of putting out new roots above the graft. I’m pretty much of the subscription of if it’s possible to root a plant it’ll be fine buried deep so long as you don’t over water.
Here’s an interesting read for you I found recently.
I don’t think there is much concrete research on whether to amend or not, trees use roots for number of purposes including nutrition, once the nutrients are exhausted in the hole they will just grow the roots else where until they hit hardpan like impenetrable soil. However, planting them on mounds is way to go simple because it gives additional volume for roots to fill resulting in healthy tree with larger harvest.
I have experimented with this approach, I had pots with open bottoms on clay soil, the roots left the potting media and grew into the clay soil 3-4" in just one short season. In other case, I planted on a mound made up of potting soil in early summer, these trees too put their roots into the clay and grew fibrous roots in the mound.
I just replanted. I originally planted it 9 months ago (almost to the day) so hopefully it won’t be a problem. I havent’ seen any growth in height since i planted originally so i figured it was worth a shot. I dug around it carefully disturbing as few roots as possible and lifted it then backfilled with nearby soil from the yard. I heard a few small roots break when i lifted it but hopefully not many. There were roots all around still attached and going into the soil when i backfilled. Now the top of the root flare is a tiny bit above ground on a very slight mound.
I hope this works. I’m wondering how much time i delayed the growth from replanting.
I don’t know about any research but I have seen people who posted here lose trees from amending holes. The roots just went around and around and girdled themselves. They didn’t make it.
Now one guy with really bad soil like brick clay. He amended four feet around the tree and that seemed to work. The roots were led far enough out it would take some time to girdle. One guy saved his trees because he had to move them. All the trees girdled but he broke them up and replanted elsewhere. Why one should untangle when up potting. I hate such issues I went to root pouches and that stopped roots from circling. All trees in pots are in fabric for me. It’s been working well.
In the future, if your trees seem happy, I’d lean towards less is more as sometimes when I see folks stressing over stuff like this they end up “killing the plant with kindness”, in a literal sense. Stone fruit are generally a challenging fruit to grow in the northeast as we have more disease challenges than somewhere like California. Good luck with your new tree!
that is interesting, so its like the roots chased the nutrients in the hole and got entangled? or there is more to the story besides I amended the hole and it killed my tree. I’ll try to search the thread.
I personally amend every plant I plant. My soil isn’t sandy, it’s sand; completely devoid of organic matter. One day perhaps everything will die but I can’t imagine roots wouldn’t venture outside of the amended hole. At least not in my case as the soil isn’t compacted. I’m attempting to build soil with “back to Eden” approach, but organic materials just get drank up. I don’t think it’s possible to say any one thing works or doesn’t work universally; however I think it can’t be possible to claim amending a hole is going to hurt a plant long term. The plant (other than bare root trees) comes in a pot of amended soil, so why would making that area marginally larger be any different. If plants routinely died after finding the amendments then most plants would die after the soil they came with was exhausted.
I will continue to amend my planting locations, as I feel it is necessary for me. If I had deep fertile soil I wouldn’t find it to be necessary.
What’s the big deal about transplanting bearing age trees? Sure, it often sets them back for a year, but that seems so much better than setting up a tree for a lifetime struggle for survival.
My business involves moving 2.5" caliber 10’ and taller, well branched trees from my nursery to their permanent sites on a regular basis. Admittedly, my loamy soil is much easier to work in than a heavy clay, but with a sturdy cultivating fork and shovel it’s not a big deal to dig up a single tree bare root while in dormancy- spring or fall. Just retrieve as much root as possible and if you have an excessively heavy soil, bring in a yard or two of decent, lighter top-soil and create a mound to plant it in, if that’s what’s necessary. If you are industrious enough, you can use half of that imported soil to mix with the heavy stuff as the base of your mound. Soil texture needs to run form coarser to finer going down to achieve good drainage.
Peaches and nectarines require good drainage to thrive and if they don’t have that it’s probably best to cut a deep planted down than try to make it productive… if you aren’t willing to transplant it to a different site or onto a mound. .