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Originally Posted by JuneBug747  A friend of mine was telling me about a landscaper she hired that offered deep tree root fertlizing. They use a machine that pushes air into the ground and then pushes organic fertlizer into the ground. Just wondering what the "experts" thought? |
This is based on a machine developed in Germany, I do believe. I have watched one of these machines in operation. It is a self contained machine that has an air compressor and dry fertilizer/vermiculite injection chamber. They push a hollow needle down into the soil and first inject high pressure air followed with the dry ingredient. The air fractures the soil structure, sometimes as far as 10'(3m) from the injection site, and the dry ingredients hold the fractures open, allowing water and air to penetrate the ground.
Where compacted soil is an issue this can be a great machine. Research done in the 1960s in the USA for a product called the SubJet showed that this sort of sub-soil injection was very effective. In one study that I saw it compared the injection of air, water, and liquid fertilizer on test trees.
Comparing the control trees, where nothing was done, to those injected showed the largest change came between doing nothing and the injection of air. The injection of water or liquid fertilizer showed incremental improvement, but nothing compared to just fracturing the soil with air.
I am not sure if the Subjet research is available online due to the date, but I have seen the hard copy of this report and will personally vouch for it.
Over the past 27 years I have either performed this type of operation myself or supervised it hundreds of times. It really works.