Properly planting a tree is only half the battle. To get a good harvest, you need to carefully look after the garden, especially in the first years of its life: an old tree will rather suffer any adversity than a young one. First of all, care must be taken that the earth around the trees is always friable. In the first year or two, it is enough to loosen pristol circles; A loose earth should be around the tree, about a meter and a half, otherwise it will stop growing. On a loose ground, a tree does not grow by leaps and bounds, but grows by hours, but on a dense, trampled tree, it only grows.
Please note: this article is based on pre-revolutionary councils for farmers. Some data and techniques could become outdated.
Why loosen the earth? Why do you need to loosen the earth? First, so that air can reach the roots. A tree, like man, cannot live without air; air is needed both for the branches and for the leaves; it is also needed for the roots. After all, everyone knows that if you plant potatoes on clay soil, after a rain such a crust will be made on top of the ground that you will not break it right away. Now, if we had left such a field unattended, we would not have driven through a plow, no longer expect harvest: the air will not pass to the roots and the potatoes will remain small.
It is also necessary to loosen the land so that the trees do not have to be poured. We tried to do this: half of the garden was watered three times in the summer, and the other half was left completely without watering, and only loosened several times in the summer. And in the second half of the garden, without watering, the trees grew more fun, and the harvest was better. The garden will not grow only on a strongly sandy land without watering: loosening will not help here. And on clay, clay-black earth in our provinces, gardens can not be watered.
Why the loose earth can do without watering? That is why: spring water goes deep into the ground, and its roots are pulled from there and pulled. If the earth is densely packed, the moisture from below easily rises up and evaporates; loose earth raises less water upwards, which means it evaporates less. So we must try to make the upper layer friable: the water from below will rise to the roots, and as it reaches the loose layer, it will stop.
This is not enough: in arid time, the trees wilt on the dense ground, and stand on the loose fun. This is because on the loose earth and below something moisture comes to them, and even from above every drop of dew is absorbed into the ground. It will rain, with the dense earth almost all the water will roll, and loose all will go to the ground. So, first of all, we will take care that the earth around the trees is loose. When the trees are older, it is necessary to loosen not only pristolovye circles, but solid stripes. It is better to loosen the earth with such oblique stripes: between the trees there are wider free lanes that you can take for the first years with a garden or, even better, berry bushes. It is necessary to loosen two or three times in the summer; if there is no free time, then in the fall, right up to the winter itself, it is imperative to loosen the earth. Then the autumn rains will soak the earth, and the spring water will not run away in vain, and the loose earth will freeze to death less.
