Hello i am begining to plant fruit trees on a hill in my yard and the soil is very rocky everytime i dig a hole i find small med, and large rocks being dug out. The question i have is if i leave some of the rocks in the hole with the trees that i plant in the hole be ok, and also will citrus, and apple trees grow in this soil? it doesnt appear to drain very well and i have added some soil buster to soften it up but i am not sure this will work. PLEASE anyone offer some ideas for me, i am now very dissapointed that i may not be able to plant my new 15 gallon avocado and tangerine trees.
Hi there Corey, Firstly let me welcome you to GardenStew. Hope you'll enjoy the forums as much as I do. Here are a few web sites that you might find useful. www.backyardgardener.com/tree/ Click on 'How to' in red to the left of the piccie. www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-601.html and www.nrcs.usda.gov/Feature/backyard/TreePtg.html Hope these will help you out a little with your problem.
thanks for your response but i really didnt find anything about rocky soil in those articles, i did however learn some other good stuff. thanks again
Sorry Corey. There wasn't anything on the net about planting trees in rocky soil I'm afraid. This leads me to believe that it's not an ideal tree planting environment. What I would suggest doing is trying to remove the biggest of the rocks and then making each hole a good 1/3 deeper than it actiually requires to be and filling in the extra 1/3 depth with a rich loamy soil. Add some well rotted horse manure (or similar) to this soil and soak well before planting your trees. This should give them a good start to put down new root growth. By the time the roots have 'taken' the smaller rocks shouldn't pose such a big problem and, hopefully, won't hinder their progress.
