Winston White

I see. Thanks to everyone for your replies! Very insightful!

hans muster wrote:One good practice by some farmers is to plant another genus, like apple after the plums or cherries, in an orchard, to avoid diseases and to use different nutrients.

Unfortunately I can not do that right now, as I want to plant cherry trees, but I will keep this in mind in the future. Thank you!

E Sager wrote:Absolutely go for it. Mother nature does this herself all the time, just look at your nearest forest. I've done this several times with fruit trees, with no issues. I would recommend one or two feet distance and then put down a good thick layer of wood chips. Any nutrient loss from old roots decomposing will be recouped by the new wood chips as they break down. Nutrient loss from decomposition is more of an issue with annuals.

I see, thank you very much! Isn't it better to use some fertiliser or compost instead of wood chips though?

Over the past year I cut down some old trees in my garden who had died due to old age and drought. I am talking about 11 trees, 8 of which were cherry trees, 2 apricot trees and a plum tree. I want to plant new cherry trees this spring in the same spots, but I do not know if it will be good for the young trees to grow next to the old roots. I used a chainsaw to cut the old trees from the ground level, so the stumps and old roots are only 5-10 cm below the ground. Online some people say this will be good for the new tree, because it will use the old root system to grow, but others say the decaying roots will suck up all the nitrogen from the ground. I asked some landscapping companies who do stump grinding and they asked for 70 euros for each stump, so I do not know if this expense is justified.

Some of the old trees were 50-70 years old and had a diameter of 50 cm. The other trees were not older than 30 years, and had a diameter of around 30 cm.

So what should I do? If I can plant the new trees next to the old stumps, what is the minimum distance?