david fischer

No to tires.

Inefficient

First rule/law is conservation of energy.

Tires are toxic. Keep toxic things far away from shelter.

Dig up all foliage around the tree out to the drip line. Roll out blank newspaper from the end rolls you got from your local newspaper company, water down, spread composted soil over the top of wet newspaper and let the worms and bacteria do the work for you.

Before pruning, ask yourself, do you want the tree to be a tree or a fruit factory? One is a balanced living being, the other is a junkie, gobbling up all the food in the soil because it's freaking out about survival....how many apples do you need?

A tree knows what to do better than we do.

Fix the soil first, prune out deadwood and tidy up broken or diseased limbs first. Step back and look. There will be branches and suckers that will be shiny for removal. In pruning a tree, less is always best.

Your Apple trees have been addicted to spray for years so like a junkie the return to normal is going to be ugly.

Tear out all foliage out to the drip line. Poke 3' deep holes into the soil with a 1/2" landscape water jet, add soil conditioner, add Azomite, get end rolls from your local newspaper and roll out blank newspaper, cover with more soil and let the worms and bacteria fix your soil.

Planting alfalfa will support your fruit trees. The roots go deep and bring up trace minerals. Is also a nitrogen fixer. Alfalfa can be mowed like grass and thrown into your compost pile. Alfalfa gets your compost pile cooking. It will also attract deer and elk for another meat source.

If you create a favorable environment, bacteria will be supportive. If you create an unfavorable environment, bacteria do weird things.

Nick, I hope all of this helps. It pretty much comes down to a crap shoot. Some trees will be fine with soil compaction, others are sensitive. Unless you can afford a helicopter...

Portable saw mills are handy too.

From an arborist


Compacting the soil within 20' of any tree with that much weight will kill that half of the tree, with the other half hanging on for another 2-3 years if you're lucky.

Think of how the tree grew up with perfect soil, now compact the soil into concrete density, roots will die faster than can be grown = dying trees.