What do you use to feed fruit trees in pots?

Blood Fish and Bone is a good, organic, balanced feed. Amount to give is printed on the box (avail. from pound shops as well as GCs and supermarkets).

Growmore is a synthetic equivalent.

I use blod fish and bone and I also top dress with some new compost

Bit too early to be feeding TBH, wait till they start growing again when the weather warms up.

It depends on what your trees need.

If you want them to continue growing, they need lots of nitrogen (and winter pruning).

If they're mature and fruiting, they need lots of potassium, a balance of micronutrients and not too much nitrogen ('cos nitrogen will make the trees grow).

Every few years they'll need repotting anyway. I prefer a mix of compost and garden soil for repotting; it seems to hold water better, re-hydrates more easily and is heavier in weight - so less likely to blow over in winds.

Personally, I don't grow much in pots because, in summer, it is quite an effort to keep the ideal amount of moisture (not too dry, not too wet) in the soil/compost for the best quality fruits; apples can get bitter pit, pears can rot from the core and plums can split.

However, my favourite for mature trees is a mulch of well-rotted manure; high in many nutrients, good for moisture retention in summer droughts and the rotting process has removed much of the nitrogen.
My favourite for making young trees grow is raw manure - bird poo in particular; it's high in nitrogen and packed with other useful nutrients which simply aren't in the synthetic fertilisers.

If you need a quick growth spurt and don't mind not being organic - some 7:7:7 growmore (usually supplied in a green bucket).
For a more balanced (and more organic) feed which also has many essential micronutrients which won't be in a synthetic fertiliser; fish, blood and bone (usually in a red bucket) - but this is best under a mulch as it tends to go mouldy if it's on the surface of the soil.

Remember, though; don't try to do everything all at once from a fruit tree; a tree should either be growing rapidly or fruiting heavily - but simultaneous rapid growth and fruiting will tend to draw nutrients away from the fruits, resulting in poor fruit quality.

Too heavy fruiting in young - especially dwarf - trees can actually cause shrinkage of root systems and weakening/disease of the tree as the tree cannibalises itself to find nutrients to feed its babies (the pips in the fruits).

Dwarfs all too easily will overcrop and become stunted. They are best when pruned hard (prune new growth by half) in winter in their early years, which encourages vigorous, branched regrowth and this winter pruning also discourages fruiting (allowing all the nutrients to go into the building of a strong, well-shaped and healthy tree).
This hard-pruning treatment gets the tree up to size quickly and, once up to size, it can then be left virtually unpruned (or summer pruned) to turn it into a heavy-cropping fruit machine which puts all its energy into fruit and little into growth.

Yes, that too.

Root growth usually starts a few weeks before the leaves break out; the swelling of the leaf and fruit buds will be an indication that the tree is coming active, although most of it will be "invisible" underground root activity.

I'll probably be mulching/fertilising my trees at the end of this month or early next month, once the weather is milder (we're usually quite mild/sunny here and the light soil warms very quickly in early springtime, so growth starts early).

FB you're a star, thank you so much for all this. Makes sense too. So for those of us with dwarves in pots (sounds odd, you know what I mean) or smaller rootstocks, we shd be encouraging growth AND pruning hard in the first years and then giving potassium after that?
so am thinking blood fish and bone and or guinea-pig poo (seriously, they're very, er, productive) +mulch for first couple of years...but how do we know when they ARE up to size?
And, last question...am I right in thinking I shouldn't be pruning my new plum (Cambridge Gage, already quite tall tho spindly in huge pot, St Julien A) in the winter?
whereas I probably SHOULD be pruning my new apple (Orleans Reinette, can't remember rootstock grr)?
forgive very specific questions but FB if you or any other grapes can help I'd be v grateful - thank you.

Chicken poo all round my newly planted fruit trees then. Thanks FB

Dwarf trees will often have only a few branches, without much side branching, unless they are quite hard-pruned (prune new growth back by one-third to one-half when it is dormant). Dormant pruning encourages new, bushy shoot growth and reduces fruit bud formation for a year after the pruning.

If the animal is a vegetarian the poo (and soiled bedding) should be fine. The poo of meat-eating animals can be more problematic. If in doubt with the guinea poo, just use a little to start with and if no adverse effects (off-coloured leaves, shrivelled leaves) then increase the application gradually until you're using as much as you'd like.

They are up to size once they are just how you'd like them in terms of size and branching.
You, as the owner, control the size by root restriction due to pot size, by regulating nitrogen feed, or, if still too much new growth, prune the new growth shoots hard in summer to stop growth and encourage fruit the following year.
Most fruit trees will carry on growing a little in most years and this is desirable to keep some young healthy wood, otherwise the older wood gradually gets damaged, diseased or overcrowded with too many fruit spurs that the tree just can't support.

Yes, plums ideally prefer minimal pruning and ideally that should be done just as the buds start swelling in about March (to invigorate and to grow side branches), or during the summer (to limit size and increase fruitfulness). Plums are best not pruned when fully dormant due to them being prone to diseases entering the wounds during winter.
Apples should be pruned when dormant (usually December-February) if you want to invigorate and create more branching. If necessary, prune the new shoots of apples in July-August to reduce vigour and increase fruiting. Once summer pruning has been carried out on a dwarf, it can be difficult to get it to start growing again, so only use it if it continually grows too much.

Note that summer pruning, to de-vigorate and increase fruiting, should not be carried out to extremes because it works on the principle of taking away a lot of ligth-gathering leaves and this literally starves the tree of sugar (plus the loss of all the nutrients taken up by the roots and supplied to produce the leaf). This puts it under considerable stress and it is stress which encourages fruiting.
When someone sees a fruit tree flowering heavily and says "that tree must be happy" nothing would be further from the truth; a truly happy fruit tree is one which grows like mad and doesn't fruit - hence why the tough, vigorous seedling fruit trees can take 10-20 years to fruit and reach a large size before fruiting begins. A fruit tree which flowers unusually heavily could be signalling that it soon expects to die.
Of course, we need to come to a suitable compromise of tree happiness/growth and tree stress/fruitfulness.

Oh no! We've a tiny Gala at school, it's only 3 foot tall and I was THRILLED that it produced 8 largish fruits in its 1st year (with us ~ I think it's 2 or 3 y.o)

I've found a drawback with that ~ loads & loads of chickweed springs up. Either they aren't digesting the seeds, or else the poo is very nutrient rich for chickweed. Either way, I get loads of chickweed flourishing on my compost piles where I've spread them out

Still, it's easy enough to pull out, and it's good tasty food for the pigs (and so the cycle goes on, lol)

If the tree is also growing as well as fruiting, then it's clearly getting enough nutrients and water. However it is quite common for a tree to do well as soon as planted due to all the stored nutrients brought with it from the well-fed nursery. However without replenishment of those nutrients it will stunt itself out in the second season and may become impoverished, with die-back of shoot tips, small/bright-colour fruit and possibly the appearance of cankers.


The commercial boys feed heavily and keep adequate moisture (all supplied via drip irrigation). That way they can have growth and fruit from a dwarf at the same time - but to do so, the tree needs heavy feeding and ideal watering, which most home growers tend to overlook. Like many home-growers; my wife is terrible for under-estimating just how hungry and thirsty plants can be.

It's doomed then FB.

It's in a reclaimed bit of car park, virtually no rainfall, and the local cat poops all over its roots.

I'll do my best by it, but it's doomed I tell ye

I've got a peach in a large pot in the greenhouse. No sign of new buds as yet so i'm just going to sprinkle a half a handful of bonemeal around base. High in phosphates and with a very slow release nitro.
The problem with BFB is that it has a fair quantity of quick release nitro and soft growth is not really what I want at this time of year.

Perhaps the moderate amount of cat poo is adding fertility to the soil. The problem with meat-eating animals' poo is that it's a bit strong - but in small amounts (rather than a mulch!) it is probably a useful fertiliser (health risks aside).

Apologies for reviving this thread, but I've been looking through the vine's archives for tips/experience with the use of synthetic controlled release fertilisers (CRFs) for growing apple/plum trees in pots containing mixtures of peat based compost and JI loam-based compost, such as osmocote. To be honest I couldn't find too much info, hence any comments/suggestions on the following would be useful.

I have a lot of one year grafted apple rootstocks and seedlings going into their second year in 10 litre pots sunk into the ground, and have just applied (top-dressed and mixed into the top 2-3 cm) a 9 month controlled release fertiliser this week, hoping that it will supply all their nutritional needs for the year. I've assumed that the nutrients originally in the compost mix will have been pretty much exhausted over the first year.

I've used a Hortibase-CRF : 16(N)- 8(P2O5)- 12(K2O) + 2MgO + Trace elements, applied at the manufacturer's recommended rate for 'medium vigour crops' of 3g/litre of compost. The 9 months longevity is at a temperature of 21C, with a change of 1C resulting in a 5% alteration in the rate of release (so they say).

For a 10 litre pot this means I'm applying a total of 0.16 x 3 x 10 gN = 4.8gN. This sounds quite reasonable to me. Assuming it is all taken up by the young tree (which it wont be), and an average %N of 2.4% in the tree's tissues on a dry weight basis, 4.8g of N would support/produce 200g of dry weight, or 2000g of fresh weight (assumes fresh weight: dry weight ratio of 10:1). I doubt that the trees will actually increase their fresh weight by anything like 2kg this year, but it probably isn't too excessive an application rate in terms of nitrogen. I'll be pretty upset if I've killed them.

That said, I looked up the latest Defra Fertiliser recommendations for apple trees http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications...ual-110412.pdf
and was surprised to see on page 159 that the rate of 'fertigation' of young apple trees in their first growing year should be 10gN/tree rising to 15-20gN/tree in the second and third years. I guess the 'first' year refers to a maiden. For comparison, the RHS recommended application rate of growmore (7-7-7) to dessert apples grown in bare soil is 100g/m2 (giving 7gN/m2).

I bought a 20 kg sack of this fertiliser directly from the manufacturer (nutrel) and it cost me £72 (including £10 delivery charge). Whilst this is a hell of a lot of money to pay, it will keep me going for several years (provided I keep it dry) and will work out cheaper in the long run than buying several smaller bags. Before buying I scoured the internet for alternatives, but this was the best deal for a 20 kg bag by around £40. The best I could find for 5kg of a similar product ('Yearlong' slow release fertiliser) was £37-70p (inc delivery) from gardendirect, and 1kg of Osmocote for 5-99p.