gum trees v's fruit trees?

[TheCrone]

Asking for someone else,

How far away from a large gum tree should fruit trees be planted?

Thanks!

[Michaelangelica]

The roots of the gum will usually (depending on the gum, some have roots that go straight down usually to the hight of the tree!.) extend to the drip line of its leaves.
You don't want your fruit tree trying to compete with those, now or in the future.

[paradisi]

oputside the drip zone will be fine

[TheCrone]

Thank you for that

[bazman]

I have a lemon tree 4m from a 20m high gum, Tree fruits lemons like a trooper, I grow clumping citronella grasses at the base of the gum with no problems at all. My big sheeoak is another matter, nothing grows well within 5-8m of the trees dripline. It's on my list of things to do.

[Warm Earth]

Our place has a lot of large eucalypts on it and I'm too much of a softie to have them felled. We had a lot of trouble with gum tree roots invading the vegie beds when we first moved here. The feeder roots seem to sniff out the rich soil and moisture from a distance and make a beeline for it. We cut a narrow trench (about 8cm) around the vegie patch to a depth of 60 cm, then put second hand fibro sheeting into the trench and back-filled. Have had no trouble since. If you’re on sandy soil you might have to go down to 1 metre depth. A beneficial side effect of this is that we use a lot less water on the vegies. The sheeting on the side and the hard clay subsoil underneath has made them into wicker beds. Another technique we use for growing things like pumpkin, zucchini, squash and cucumbers close up to gum trees is to dig out a hole about 1 metre in diameter, line it with weedmat and fill with rich organic soil and compost. This does the plant for its growing season and keeps the tree roots out. The holes are there permanently and we replace the soil and the weedmat if it's damaged every year.

[barely run]

Hi Warwick.....I have long banks of leaf litter.......because of our cooler climate and the banks are just deciduous leaves they don't break down very much. Thought I might plant some pumpkins etc into them and see how they went.........should I include the weed mat? or just a hole in the leaf with soil /what do you (or anyone else) think???
Cathy

[Luisa]

Warwick,
are you talking about raised beds or just beds on the ground?
We are in Rockhampton and our veggie compound is surrounded on 2 sides by gum trees.
We are aiming for raised beds so hope not to have too many troubles with water uptake by gums.

[Warm Earth]

Cathy, You could try it without weedmat and see what happens. I guess it would depend how close the deciduous tree are and how invasive their root systems are.

Luisa, All our vegie beds are raised about 30-45 cm above ground level because of our clay subsoil and poor drainage. The gum tree roots grew up into this and the beds were matted with thick feeder roots in no time. I had 5 cubic metres of volcanic soil delivered three months ago and feeder roots from a nearby gum tree have already grown 60 cm up into the pile, so even well elevated beds might not give protection. Try it and see. If roots should become a problem you can put in a root barrier afterwards without disturbing the beds.

[Ichsani]

Hi Cathy,

With the big piles of deciduous leaves and the cold climate - adding a source of *simple* sugar and water will kick start a faster process of transformation, helping the decomposition and humus formation along.

The simple sugars are just that - sugar (white, castor, raw, brown) or sugar from a more complex source like Blackstrap molasses, which is sugar plus small amounts of various minerals (Ca, Mg, Mn, K, Se, Cu, Fe, P) etc can be used.

There's not much in the way of mineral in Blackstrap compared to the 'salts' type fertilisers - but when you're working with microbes a little goes a long way as the minerals are cycled many many times - they're efficient little bastards as I'm sure you know :tongue8: :lol:

Whatever the sugar source, it will up the bacteria populations in the leaf piles - providing a cheap energy source to build the 'food' for the next round. When the 'easy sugar' microbes start to die down (cause they've hit "peak easy sugar") other more cunning types that can get food from hard to get sources like leaves start to dominate and breakdown the leaves.

Which will hopefully mean bigger pumpkins?

As to how much sugar, I'd say a handful to a bucket of water would be a good place to start.... What do you think?

cheers
Ichsani