Mulching fruit trees           I have a lot of hay that i can use and since the soil here is rather poor i decided to try and heavily mulch my fruit trees with hay. I mulched a mirabelle tree that had been growing poorly with a massive amount of hay last year. I weeded all around the tree, cut off all the dead branches, put down old farm manure, sprinkled ground volcanic rock ash and laid down a heavy hay mulch of 40 cm thickness around the tree. 

Mirabelle tree with heavy hay mulch one year later.

The mirabelle tree putting out large shoots of new growth after having grown poorly for several years.

It has clearly benefited of the weeding, fertilizing and mulching.

 

Queen Victoria plum with lots of hay mulch.

Cox Orange apple weeded and mulched with hay.

Sorbomespilus Dessertnaja weeded and mulched with hay.

Since i had such good results with the mirabelle tree, i tried the same, even just with weeding and hay-mulching, on other trees.

I live in a place where the soil is quite poor, so trees really benefit from being weeded and mulched.