MAY
14
Natural soil fumigation
Apple trees don’t like to be planted were other apples have previously grown, so the soil needs to be ‘cleaned’ before replanting. Last summer we trialled a non-chemical method of fumigating the soil using mustard and sorghum crops which were ploughed in to build up the soil structure with green manure. It seemed to work. The new apples planted last winter are growing reasonably well despite other setbacks. Here is this year’s mustard crop just starting to establish. We’ll add pictures to this post so that you can see the process as it happens.