The aim of these instructions is to make sure you end up with a strong healthy tree that grows a main frame fast and is capable of producing high brix crops for many years.
• Ideally dig a hole 1x1x1m for each tree, that is a 1 cubic meter hole for each tree. If you can’t do that then accept the best you can do, but do your best effort, you will be rewarded! If you are on heavy clay or soil that does not drain, you will have to put drainage out the bottom of your hole, and if you are unable to do that you may have to build your tree space partly up above the existing soil surface.
• As you dig out the soil, separate topsoil from subsoil.
• Mix your top soil 50/50 with good compost or you could use well composted hay or well rotted bark etc.
• If you don’t have high quality aerobic, highly mineralized and biologically active compost, we suggest you add 5kg of EF Soil-Force mixed throughout the topsoil/compost mix, or sprinkled in layers throughout the hole per tree. EF Soil-Force contains Sechura R.P.R. (soft rock phosphate) and provides available Calcium, Phosphorus and trace elements which are composted with Humic Acid, fish protein, 4 different seaweeds, Lucerne Dust, animal manures and a highly paramagnetic Basalt Rock Dust (CGS4400). It is also inoculated with beneficial bacteria and soil fungi (e.g. Azobacter, Trichoderma, Bacillus Subtillus and Bio-Vam Mycorrhizal fungi). Leave this mix for 3 weeks before planting your trees.
• Plant your tree into the hole so that it is sitting in the soil at the same level as it was in the nursery or pot previously, and making sure it is on a small mound, so that as the soil in the hole settles your tree will not be in a hollow!
• Your tree will also grow better and perform better if you plant it so that the strongest roots face into the South. Trees roots will have aligned already in the nursery with the magnetic field of the earth, which means the strongest roots will face south, so if you can also plant it facing this direction, your tree will perform better and be happier! All Koanga fruit trees have a paint dot on the North side of the tree so you can also check how to plant it.
• Make a berm at a radius of 1m around the tree to hold all the nutrients, mulch and moisture inside it. You may have to breach this berm in the winter so that it does not hold water inside and drown the tree! After year 2 it won’t be necessary to maintain the berm.
• Mulch heavily to suppress weeds over the Summer or sprinkle 500g of EF Soil-Force to a radius of 1m all around the tree or inside your berm, and mulch heavily to suppress weeds and help maintain moisture over the Summer.
• Tree roots are like water pumps, one of their jobs is to pump water up into the tree branches, after planting the trees you must prune them back so that the short roots can support the size of the tree, if the tree is not pruned back, the roots could not support long branches and those will die back. Prune the trees so that when they re-grow they develop branches and growth where you want it- thinking of the main frame you want your trees to have years from now.
• Feed your fruit trees each year in January as it is this time of the year that nutrition determines the size and quality and health of next years crop
• Our advice is to plant only as many fruit trees as you can take care of in this way. Your rewards will outweigh the effort required!
• We use Environmental Fertilisers products, however the most important thing is to choose minerally balanced and biologically active products.
