I’m a big fan of using alfalfa pellets in my garden. I soak them in water and dig a few shovel’s into each garden bed in the spring before planting. I also like to lightly top dress with them before a heavy rain once or twice in the summer months. The plants love it!
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Do you use it for fruit trees?
I’ve been using alfafa for my roses for years.
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I top dress my brambles and currants. I haven’t needed to feed my trees yet, they are pretty vigorous without any soil amending.
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Water sprouts are like independent juvenile trees and grow more vigorously with ample N, which can keep sun from the mature wood capable of producing fruit.
Early, quick release N tends to favor serving the spur leaves which are the first to grow in apple trees, but for all tree fruit, early N helps produce larger and higher quality fruit- vegetative growth created by later N creates excessive shade for leaves serving fruit. It may also lead to larger cells in the fruit, both of which makes fruit more watery.
Early in fruit development, size is increased by more rapid cell division which doesn’t reduce its sugar. Later fruit size increase comes from the expansion of the existing cells, and too much of a good thing leads to bland fruit.
Too much organic matter in the soil may increase the release of organic N when it favors vegetative growth because its release increases as the soil warms if it is moist. This is a problem in the humid regions that usually get ample rain throughout the growing season. However, it’s difficult to know whether it is increased availability of water or available N that reduces the quality of the fruit, it may be both.
If you can control the amount of water you can overcome the liability of excessively rich soil. In the northeast, the highest quality fruit tends to be produced in light soil without too much OM. It’s difficult to stop the water that comes from the sky, but lighter soils store less of it. .
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The more water the more nitrogen gets in to the plant, so I think both.
When I’ve looked for research on the subject I have found at least one study that indicated higher N fertilization didn’t contribute to lower brix in apples. Unfortunately, I don’t think the study discussed irrigation. I haven’t gone searching for info on this subject for a few years.
Not that one, or even several studies are necessarily definitive in horticulture anyway.
One study in this realm that is extremely interesting is that after a short period of time, shaded leaves permanently lose their ability to photosynthesize.
Apparently there is a short window to the benefit of summer pruning- in fact, by summer it may be too late to benefit fruit or annual production. I now wipe off unwanted growth while thinning fruit in May.
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That is very good to know, I recall reading that pruning a pear tree, when it starts to leaf out is a way to guarantee cropping, at a younger age, when the tree prefers growing vegetation. We have a grafted pear tree entering it’s fifth season in ground. It has not produced any pears successfully yet. Just two aborted pears it’s second year in ground, nothing since then. Around Mid April, when the leaves come out, I am pruning it.
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