The Bakeri Blue Spruce that I planted in the spring of 2003 showed phenomenol new growth for the first 4 years with the new sprouts at least 15 cm (6 inches) in length and the top leader growing to about 45 cm (18 inches) in its second year that was its best year.....However, this year of 2007 something is obviously wrong. The new growth as at today's date of July 10 has barely started with the buds only about one or two centimetres long and the new needles barely if at all beginning to fan out from the bud....The tree is not in a ditch and is far from the road and uphill from it, so its not a salt problem from the winter road salting....I've lept the soil moist but not water logged....And, in the beginning of this month I fertilized it from a watering can with a solution meant for evergreens in amounts according to the instructions.....The only theories that I can come up with is that, a) Maybe the fact that its was about 80 per cent burried in 6 or 7 feet of snow in the winter might have been a problem (snow blown onto it from the snow blower but clean snow from the upper driveway far away from the road with no salt in it), or b) Maybe the roots this year reached some poor quality soil deeper down and/or further out from the tree because when I first planted it, I dug a massive hole and put about a half pick-up truck load of quality soil with a bit of manure in it. The construction of the subdivisioin left (under the topsoil) an inconsistent combination of sand in some areas and clay in other areas and the roots may have reached either sand or clay or a bit of both and might have become shocked or confused after having been familiar in its first 4 years with the rich soil that I babied it with....I was wondering if I should be using fertilizer sticks I've heard about but haven't yet because I've already used the liquid solution and fear damaging the tree by over-fertilizing if that's possible.....Please advise me...I love this tree.
Apparently something happened, maybe the weather. Wouldn't expect snow to be it. Don't think other points you mentioned likely to pertain either, wouldn't do any additional fertilizing - and if a soil test indicates a need for fertilizing in future do it in fall instead of spring.
Thank you very much for the advice Ron....I think I'll find someone to test the soil and maybe use the fertilizer sticks in the fall....Maybe some expert out there might shed some further light on this.
OK thanks Ron for that info about the inefficiency of the sticks. But, does the granular type put the fertilizer deep enough? I thought granular fetilizer was only for grass. I'm concerned about the nutritional quality of the soil deep down. I think the soil at the top is already good. The grass around the tree and nearby small shrubs are doing great. Also, the evergreen trees around the neighborhood are doing well. They don't have my problem.
Dissolves and soaks in. Spikes are same thing compressed into a spike. Roots are spread out in a mat, concentrating fertilizer into spikes not good match with root distribution.
That's a good point Ron.....Does that mean that there are not also very deep roots though?....How deep do spruce tree roots go anyway, relative to the height of a tree?....Is there not also a main central tap root that grows straight down and deep?.....Or, do the roots rather tend to seek higher ground and get their stability from spreading out over a large area?......Also, with respect to knowing how far out from the trunk to fertilize: Do the roots extend to a maximum radius from the trunck that is equal to the farthest out branches as is the case with some deciduous trees, re the "drip line" I hear about?......Or, do spruce tree roots grow out father than the branches?.....If they do grow out farther than the branches, then I need to fertilize right now further out......The fertilizing I have done was based on my assumption that the furthest out tips of the roots would be at about the same radius as the tips of the farthest out branches......So, I so far have only poured the liquid fertilizer solution only within the confines of that radius. Maybe my assumption was incorrect.
Root action mostly just below surface. This is true generally. Roots grow in air between soil particles, deep penetration of large portion of roots rare except in desert areas where soil has air deep down (and trees would not last if most roots near surface, where they would be killed by periodic severe drought). Here where heavy soils are common, due to glaciation very tall trees often reveal consistently very shallow roots after toppling in storms. Exploded appearance typical, like that of bullet shot into impenetrable surface, due to roots hitting airless subsoil and going sideways.
Much further. There's a very rough rule-of-thumb that the roots extend at least as far as, or further than, the tree is tall. So for a 10m tall spruce, expect the roots to spread out in a fan shape for something like 10-15m out from the trunk, in all directions that they can. The "drip line" doesn't have any relationship to the roots at all. Note, this applies to all trees, broadleaves as well as conifers. On the fertiliser question - in the wild, spruces are adapted to growing on very low fertility soils. In the vast majority of cases, they don't need any additional fertiliser at all. In Britain (may not apply in your area) in the cases where any nutrient is limiting, it is most often phosphorus that is needed. A soil test will determine whether anything is needed or not.
It is not unusual for a Bakeri to grow well for the first 5-7 years in the ground and then go into a slow down stage whereby new growth seems to take forever to push out. Is usually more frequently seen in trees that came to us as balled and burlap plants. Another thing to consider is that we had a large Japanese Maple come in from an Oregon source in which the clay the tree was grown in was so dense that no roots have been able to penetrate the sides of where the clay is in three years. I just lifted the tree out of the container and took a look and all of the roots are either on top of the compressed clay ball or underneath it with no roots growing to sides which gives the impression that the hardened clay has become inpenetrable for the roots to grow through. This is a death sentence to most Conifers. If we look at container plants and wonder why we lost that special plant from Oregon that came to us as a B&B plant all we have to look at is the roots in most cases to see where they did not grow. Any application of Nitrogen to a plant that has restricted lateral root growth will kill off portions of the root system that is already in peril. Use a bloom fertilizer instead for the first five years in the ground if we want to fertilize these B&B trees after we have planted them in the ground. We can have the same situation with trees grown in the ground that you may not be getting lateral root growth and if this is the case then your tree has hit a funk, whereby until the roots can grow outwards then the tree will not show a lot of new growth. Bakeri in the ground is not a plant it and forget about it tree even when grown in the Pacific Northwest. We have to allow time to monitor it in the ground for the first 5-10 years and later perhaps make some adjustments in our culture to enable the plant to better adapt to our location. I know of two trees in particular in a landscape here that grew well enough for a slow growing Spruce and then went relatively stagnant for a few years and then when their adaptation period was over with went to normal growth for that tree since. Here we may want to infrequent deep water these trees when we want to provide additional moisture but one thing we do not do here is ensure Bakeri are continually moist in the root zone. Bakeri is known to balk being in wet or saturated soils and almost requires some dry time to be "happy" when grown here. A photo of the entire tree and a close up of the needles may give others a better idea as to what may be troubling your tree. If you are concerned about nutrients then a soil and nutrient test would be prudent to do but in an area with multiple soil types you may get different read outs as to what is there in the soils. Clay has the ability to hold, retain and release nutrients better than sand can as an example, so your report can be true for one soil and not be true for the other unless you test known and different soils separately. Jim
