Mulch your Fruit Trees Without Covering your Trunk

In several previous articles, we discussed the importance of utilizing mulch around your fruit trees. Mulch can help retain water, provide micro-nutrients, and control competition from weeds under your tree's canopy. Unfortunately, mulch around your trees can also cause irreparable damage or even kill your mature fruit tree if not done correctly. Let me explain.

Like all living organisms, fruit trees have many different types of plant tissue that all have different functions. For example, leaves are responsible for collecting the energy of the sun and converting carbon dioxide and water into sugars. If you bury leaves in the ground they will not receive sun light and air that they need to photosynthesize. These leaves will quickly rot away.

Bark tissue around the trunk of your tree, like the leaves, is made to be above ground. Tree bark is full of lenticels, which allow for the tree to "breath" as it metabolizes some of the sugars that were made in the leaves and transported to the trunk.

If you dig up large roots around your fruit trees, you will see that the bark on the roots is different than the bark around the trunk that is because the bark tissue around the roots is made to be buried.

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When mulch is mounded around the trunk of your tree, the added moisture and nutrients found in the mulch will start to decompose the bark causing it to suffocate and separate from the sap wood. When this occurs it will girdle your tree, which cuts off the important functions that occur between the tree canopy and the roots.

When mulching your fruit trees, make sure that you pull all the organic matter away from the trunk so that your tree's bark tissue can breath and remain dry. I have chickens in my orchard and they love to scratch around my trees looking for bugs under the mulch. They don't care where the mulch ends up because all they want is an easy snack. Sometimes mulch ends up scattered around the trunk

In the fall, when I wrap my fruit tree trunks and make sure each tree has a plastic guard, I make sure that I pull all the mulch away and expose bare dirt a few inches away from the trunk. That way, when the snow falls, each tree will be protected from sun scald, rodents, and a girdled trunk.

Don't let me scare you from mulching your trees. Fruit trees need to be mulched in order to retain moisture, improve nutrients, and keep weeds under control, just don't let the mulch cover your trunk.

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