Fertilizing Poinciana tree

jenb

Thanks for the warm welcome to the site - it's certainly very user friendly!
The Tree World site is very informative so I'm hoping to get some information about fertilising my large established poinciana trees, should I or should I not?
Thanks jenb

Eric Frei

One needs to understand what is going on in this whole process for trees, bit different for say veggie patches.

Trees need water, air, nutrients to grow and stay healthy.

Well, that's partly the truth, you see, there's lots of other things going on out there in both the air and soil that interact with the tree.

So the above line is true in a controlled environment like say hydroponics.

But in the real world the tree knows what it needs and tries to take it up when it's required. In man's solve everything manner they found a range of fertilizers with trace elements that covers all bases and whack that on the soil and bingo it dissolves and the tree gets nutrients.

Farmers have known this for hundreds of years and systematically the soils have been depleted, turned acidic and saline because it's a crude way to do the job.

Look at a forest, leaves a farm for dead. Why?

Because it is totally natural and organic with millions of fungi, bacteria and animals (including bugs) interacting.

Here's some pages of my website you can read.

We are all about trees - soil and roots

We are all about trees - fertilizing

A tree knows what it needs, in fact it will change it's exudate's to attract certain fungi and bacteria that can help in the acquisition of exactly what it is after. Recently discovered they also can disperse chemical messages into the atmosphere to other trees. In a recent silly movie called The Happening the vegetation on the planet declared chemical warfare on humans and made them kill themselves.

Anyway, you can pour on a myriad of different fertilizers and satisfy your whims for colour and growth, perhaps at the trees expense though. Or you can take a more holistic approach and start to condition the soil so it becomes like the ancient forests, a living matter, full of beneficial bacteria and fungi.

That means, mulch, Seasol, soil wetting agents, remove competitive grasses, compost etc. Then the tree can run it's own life rather than living on life support in a sterile soil.

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Garry Brockley

Great post Eric im going to use that way of explaining it, its simple and concise.

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jenb

Wow Ekka that was a great reply! You certainly have a wealth of knowledge. I appreciate the information about conditioning the soil rather than fertilising. I use Seasol and huge amounts of mulch in my garden. The poincianas do have grass surrounding them as the garden is rather like a park. I keep the grass away from the base of the tree and use mulch around them - not too close to the trunk. The trees are in good shape but other people have told me to fertilise - I think I will just keep on with the soil conditioning and mulching. I recently bought a soil testing kit and find that most of my soils are acidic so I am adding lime to garden soils and some of the lawn areas.
Thanks again jenb

Eric Frei

It's extremely rare to find soils turning alkaline.

They tend to always turn acidic.

I have found a few isolated incidents of soils turning alkaline.

However the reason was that the garden had a block rendered wall on one side and a large concreted area on the other. Concrete has a lot of lime, feels slimy when wet. Concrete leaches that out over time, the water could only run off onto the garden and build up because of the wall.

The lady had a row of camellia's and they were diseased, yellow and some dying.

She went to Bunnings and came home with a horde of junk. Sprays, fertilizers etc. Nothing happened, they got worse. She then went to a nursery, took leaf samples, came home with chelated iron and the like.

In the end she rang me, and I had a look.

No mulch at all, was one of those bare earth but not a weed in there type of gardens like an old English rose garden. I did the pH test, 8.5 .... not much would live in that as too alkaline. When a plant is outside it's optimum pH range it simply cannot take up much at all, and most the other stuff in the soil is likely dead anyway.

Went to Bunnings to get stuff to correct it. For fun, asked the lady in the garden section what to do (playing dumb is fun for me at times), I told her the soil was alkaline and needed to make it more acidic. She grabbed me a bag of gypsum.

I contested that, so as they do she got on the phone to the "expert". She then confirmed that even the expert said use gypsum. I pointed out to her that written on the bag of gypsum it had "will not alter soil pH" ... she didn't care and walked off.

Anyway, I grabbed a couple kg's of sulphur, diluted that and used a watering can to soak the area, checked pH in a week at varying depths and locations, was now 6

Put down some blood/bone, seasol etc and mulched with coarse tea tree.

Within 1 month the row of camellia's was lush green, flower, absolutely stunning. Pruned out any dead and diseased.

Moral of the story is be careful what fool you listen to, and be wary when they have product to sell.


Read this thread to, there's lots of companies peddling all sorts of cure alls. But always look at the old ancient forests, they do great left alone.

Tree Arbor Green Fertilizer

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TreeSpecialist

Several years ago, I was on a sub committee of ISA to the ANSI Standards Committee as we reviewed the ANSI Fertilization Standards.

When asked what I thought of the standard, I suggested replacing the standard with:

"Do a soil test and replace or amend what is missing."

While several folks agreed, they thought it impractical. It's still the best place to start.

The lack of many of the micro and even some of the macro elements can present the same symptoms above grade. Many soil deficiencies are missed by not doing a soil test.

A private or university lab can give you great information for very little cost.

Or you can do what we do - we do our own soil testing.

By buying single "ingredients" and developing our own fertilization formulas to fit each tree, we get far better and more predictable results.

The most common problem I see is the over use of nitrogen.

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jenb

Thanks Treespecialist - I think I am getting the picture about soil testing.I do have a simple test kit which I bought from the local produce agency and I'm testing the soils at various locations in my garden. This is producing some interesting and varying results! I have yet to tes under the poinciana so will do that before any decision about fertilising.