How do you fertilize your trees?

[greenfig]

I've read that the trees of 3 years old and above need to be fertilized and the nitrogen is recommended often.
I was at a HD today and noticed that the grass fertilizer is mostly N.
Is it could be used?
I can see that Fert on sale occasionally , sold in big bags.

[pombazaar]

Sadly, my fertilizer regime in the past has been neglectful. Gaia Mania is a liquid fert and produced crazy gains on everything in my collection a few years back. I've used water soluble 20-20-20 ferts too but these are filled with salts and other additives. I have a huge trash can filled with wet leaves that have been cooking since late Fall. My plan this year is to distribute fertilizer tea to all of my larger potted trees using the wick method. Basically you pour the tea in the tray and the soil at the bottom soaks it up to the top. A local friend here does this and has exceptional results.

[greenfig]

Nice! I use fish fertilizer for the pots but for my in ground trees this won’t work, I need something more long term .
I am also trying to avoid salts so an organic solution is definitely to go with but not sure how to include more N there . Urea ?

[alanmercieca]

That makes no sense to me, in countries that pomegranates are traditionally grown, they don't go heavy on the nitrogen, and they get large crops. Even trees in the wild in Malta get decent crops, which means no nutrition added to the soil.

[pombazaar]

I also saw several large fruit producing trees that I know were not fertilized at all, basically witnessing the same thing during my trip to Brazil. Have your trees shown any signs of a nitrogen deficiency in past seasons?

[greenfig]

There are published works and suggested fert schedules:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... it_quality

https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/HS1347

They mention N benefits and hence my original questions

[alanmercieca]

That University of Florida information says right on it, that their fertilizer results are for a soil that has high nutrient depletion, which I could not picture being a problem for your location.

Based upon that information it seems like the following fertilizer would be the best match, yet for April, May, September, and October, apply twice as much fertilizer as for June, July, and August. So what I would do is in April and then again in September I'd apply twice as much fertilizer, as I would in June. https://www.espoma.com/product/rose-tone/#tab2

Although you should not have to apply as much of the Rose-Tone where you live, as they would have to in Florida. I forget which university, yet some university that has a pomegranate collection suggested using a citrus fertilizer, so that is why I started using Holly-tone.

The problem with mixing different fertilizers, it's hard to know how much of one thing vs another, and I have never used lawn fertilizer, for any type of fruiting plant.

The following is a lawn fertilizer with both Nitrogen and Potassium, technically you could buy the Phosphorus separately https://www.espoma.com/product/fall-winterizer/#tab2 , yet how much of each would you use

[alanmercieca]

I am starting to think that the pomegranates that don't need a lot of additional nitrogen are the ones with root stock, or are seedlings, because plants grown from seed have roots that grow much deeper, than a plant created from rooted cuttings.

[greenfig]

Interesting view. My 6 yo Pom trees have roots to under 2 ft deep only and about 4 ft radius.