Hi, I live south of Houston where we have heavy clay soil and lots of rain . I have almost 2 acres and am planting fruit trees including citrus and low chill hour pear, plum , and peach. I have been using a lot of the raised metal beds and have 2 and 3 foot small round raised beds that are about 12” deep. I was planning to put my trees in these raised beds with good soil to give them a little better drainage as they get established- any reason not to do this?
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i have clay so i plant in mounds. go for it. welcome aboard!
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Welcome and, yes, it is a good solution.
I gave 10 fruit trees in raised beds. A few in galvanized fire rings (30” and 36”), and 6 more in Vego 24"dia x 17” deep raised beds.
You can always water, but you can’t unwater. South Louisiana here, same issues you have.
I make my own soil mix. 50/30/20 of Sta-Green veg and flower soil (or other generic tree/shrub soil), coco coir, and perlite. It will be a nutrient-poor mix, so you’ll need to use slow release or doses of liquid fert as needed, depending on the age of the tree.
Drawback is you will need to water often until the roots get to the bottom of the bed and into native soil.
Raised beds also serve the function of keeping the tree smaller. I am a residential hobby grower who is 62. I don’t need a tree that requires a ladder to maintain and pick from. These are all first year bare roots from this spring, but I’ve had 12 foot trees in them. I took them out because of poor scaffolding (stumped to push out and retrain) or because the fruit wasn’t tasty.
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ive noticed, once you get the trees to grow in clay, they usually grow well. i fertilized for about 3 years then just mulched around them and they have grown well.
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Works well for the first few years but worth thinking about what happens when the roots outgrow the bed. With citrus especially they’ll want to push down into that clay eventually, so the raised bed buys you time but doesn’t replace improving the native soil underneath. I’d punch some holes through the clay at the bottom of each bed so the roots have somewhere to go once they’re established.
i have a 8 yr. old apple on standard rootstock growing in a 2’ x 2’ cedar raised bed and its doing fantastic. the roots just get forced down at 1st then flare out. its never had to be staked either. i have heavy clay with fist sized and bigger rocks for soil. it kills trees planted into a hole that is a challenge to make. ive had to plant on cardboard in mounds and raised beds out of necessity. the mounds eventually go flat as the trees weight forces it down. they also seem to grow faster than stuff like fruit bushes that i grow in ground. maybe its the extra o2 the roots get when in a mound.
Is keeps the root crown well above any saturated soil. The roots eventually penetrate the native soil….water roots. Nutrient roots are shallow, so you are able to control feeding the tree with the bed itself.
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These are completely open bottom beds, so the roots will be able to go down
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My situation is just like Steveb4. Rocks and clay that kill a tree in a year or two. I having been using raised beds for 18 years and it has worked out really well. I have slowly constructed a few long raised beds on the side of a hill, the longest is about 50 feet long. I have made my beds using loose rock, which I have a lot of from the construction of my home. The downslope part of the bed I make about 16” high, but because of the slope, the top part only needs to be only about 6” high. I use a pick ax to poke holes in the ground, as mentioned above, then just set the tree on the native grass, then cover with topsoil that I buy. This works well enough to give about a foot of new growth per year, so usually within 5 years I am getting fruit and am pruning to keep them at 8 feet.
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We got lotsa clay in the Rustbelt. Back when I started, I’d excavate a good size hole then drill holes at the bottom with a 1.5 inch auger down a couple of feet with an auger extension, then fill with better dirt. It looked like a sieve. Don’t know if was needed or did anything. But I was into experimenting a lot back then.
I just plant them now. Everything seems to do OK, clay or not. If you look at the mountains it is all trees. No one does a thing to the soil. If you are worried, try the sieve technique.
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