Just my citrus plants, yet I don’t have enough experience to tell how much it really has helped. I make my own nitrogen free fertilizer. It’s just for the fruit and the roots. Not really for what you are trying to accomplish.
N feeds roots and fruit as well as leaves and wood. Excessive N, especially after spring, is what encourages excessive vegetative vigor. The old gardeners myth that P feeds roots is just that. Early researchers misread results, well watered plants with adequate N grow fewer roots than the same with less N. The roots are seeking N and not water, apparently.
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You know I always switch up what I give, interesting article, Most of which I knew already as this site has drilled it into my head.I didn’t know about temperature considerations that was useful.It tells me if I need to get pH down quickly use Ammonium in the spring. Often the case with my blueberries.As I fight our higher pH soils.
Or urea. Some plant species can absorb it directly but it takes only a few days to become available (turn into ammonium nitrate) to other species.
I am currently adding chicken manure compost (at least 9 months old and from our own chickens) as a mulch around our younger apple trees before buds break. I’m using it as a mulch, instead of working it into the ground, figuring that will cause slow release. I think this fits in with Alan’s advice.
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Over ten years ago I took the Master Gardener courses, run by the Univ of CA, and have followed their advice and it works very well. Fruit trees that are in containers will benefit from fertilizer to some degree, once they start growing (not in a dormant state). Trees in the ground need no fertilizer. For example, I have a Honey Babe Peach, in the ground, that has never been fertilized (tree is about 13 years old). It produces thousands of flowers and hundreds of fruit each year - way more than I could ever use. The same for my other trees. Yes fertilizing feels darn good to the gardener - and perhaps that’s enough of a reason to do it.
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my father only fed his fruit trees for the 1st. 3 yrs then just wood chips to keep the weeds down until they got big enough to shade out the grass. had great crops.
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Commercial growers will use N to feed spur leaves early in the season which increases the ultimate size of fruit by way of cell division and not larger cells (larger cells generally means more watery fruit) and also as insurance that trees quickly achieve an energy surplus from those early leaves and therefore don’t abandon their own fruit for the season, or, just as importantly, the development of flowers for the next.
That said, on free standing trees the need for even early N depends a lot on the soil and what is naturally available. I don’t know the percentage of commercial growers that don’t supply supplementary N to their bearing trees, but I know of one who used to grow fruit commercially near me that said he didn’t need it on his free standing trees once established (M7 and up).
Of course these commercial growers burn out the grass and weeds in the tree rows with herbicide and thereby reduce competition for N.
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