FredL

Lesley, I just looked at my post and realized I said loam (ordinary garden soil) is composed of clay and loam. Well, that's dumb, huh! I meant to say clay and humus, often with silt and sand as well.

For fertilizer, I just use any general purpose granular fertilizer with equal amounts of NPK. I tend to use something more like 7-7-7 than something like 20-20-20 because it seems to me less likely to burn my trees. Probably doesn't matter at all. I think it likely that some of the more expensive fertilizers are actually better because NPK exist in many chemical forms, some more available than others. There are also important micro-nutrients that my Walmart fertilizers probably lack.

In the Fall, I go to a fertilizer with more P, say 10-20-10, because I've read reducing N makes your trees reduce their emphasis on leaves and P benefits the roots, which is as you want at that time of year.

I put about a tablespoon of fertilizer on top of the soil every 3-4 weeks except in the Winter. More for big pots, less for small.

In addition, or instead of, I will add organic materials as I come across them. You will laugh, but I use such things as left over oatmeal (it seemed similar to me to some of the stuff they apparently use in Japan) when the kids don't eat it all at breakfast time. I've also used dry dogfood when it gets spilled or wet. And other things even crazier.

What I'm doing seems to work for me. My trees generally grow like crazy and I don't seem to be losing alot of them due to soil.

The big thing is (impossible to over-emphasize) is your mixture MUST drain well. Just about everything else you do wrong will create symptoms that can be dealt with over time. Water loged soil will kill many trees very quickly.

Best regards, Fred