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my first foray; is this mulch ok?

 
Posts: 31
Location: Orange County, CA
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So this weekend I finally had some time to get my hands dirty in my new yard. The yard currently has eight fruit trees, planted and maintained by the previous owner. Most of them are irrigated by drip line and are growing out of bare soil.

Here's a picture of the two cherimoya trees. I mulched around one of them with whatever I could find in the vicinity, mostly leaves, twigs, and dried carrot wood seed pods (without the seeds).

Any advice? Is the mulch I used OK? How do you care for established trees when moving into a new area?

 
pollinator
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I'm envious that you have cherimoyas.

Mulching is about the best thing you can do for established trees. Try and mulch them all the way out to the drip line (except citrus, you want to mulch them real light, and nothing close to the trunk where it might give rot a foothold). Oak leaves make excellent mulch, because oaks are mycorrhizal and any leaf litter you rake up from under an oak tree will have lots of good spores.
 
pollinator
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I would leave an inch or two around the tree trunk clear of any mulch.
Mulch all the way out to the drip line.
Then start burying green leafy vegetable under the mulch.
And if you have alot of food waste stream add a few red wriggler and see if they survive the heat under the mulch
And yeah I too have zone 10 envy but not water envy.
 
steward
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Think donut.
Mulch placed against the trunk promotes fungal infection.
Nothing wrong with the material selection.
 
Ronnie Yu
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Location: Orange County, CA
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Great, thanks for the advice! Sorry for the late reply; I don't have an internet connection at my new place yet.

Took me a while to figure out that the use of "drip line" in your responses was different from my use of the same phrase in my original post
 
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