early spring. I water 3 times a week
plus give extra water during extreme heat.
It doesn’t seem to be growing at all.
In the spring there were some flowers.
I put fertilizer and composted new dirt.
Any thoughts. Your help is
appreciated.
A. I looked at your pictures and I think I get it. You
have a bubbler, probably 1 gallon per minute. So you flood the area where the lemon
tree is. I could not figure out what mulch is on the soil surface. It looks
like colorized wood chips. It was hard to tell the condition of your soil. It
certainly is not performing very well. So here goes.
From the sound of it, it sounds like you’re giving
it plenty of water. When you have bubblers it’s best to construct the basin
around the tree. Those types of bubblers release water so fast it can go
everywhere and not penetrate the soil very well.
Secondly, from the look of other plants in the
picture I don’t think the organic matter content of the soil is high enough. So
this is what I would do. I would buy some decent compost and start adding it to
these areas. I do some consulting for Viragrow in North Las Vegas. They have
the best compost in Las Vegas in my opinion. I would buy four or five bags of
their compost. They are one cubic foot bag’s and they will cost you about $2.50
a bag. I would apply the compost to the soil around fruit trees and gently
start mixing it into the soil surface. Then construct some basins around the
trees to collect the water from the bubblers.
 |
| Put compost around the tree but not touching the trunk |
with 3 to 4 inches of wood chips. You can get the wood chips free from the
University Orchard in North Las Vegas. It is located 100 yards east of the
intersection of North Decatur and Horse Drive. You can get it any Tuesday,
Thursday or Saturday morning for free. The compost should improve the soil if
you lightly scratch it into the soil surface. If this were the winter time you
could scratch it in deeper but during this heat I would be a bit careful.
 |
| Wood chip mulch at the base of fruit trees |
I think the problem is a lack of soil aeration
because the organic matter content is too low. You will add organic matter to
the soil by incorporating compost and covering the soil with organic wood
mulch. You will not see an improvement over night. But you should see a flush
of new growth after you do all of this in two or three weeks. Let me know how
it goes.