The trees in your yard provide flowers and green leaves in spring, shade in summer, and if they’re fruit trees, abundant food throughout the middle of the year. But those flowers, leaves and fruit don’t simply pop up, looking healthy and plump on their own. The care you give your tree plays an essential role in ensuring the tree does well throughout the year. A crucial part of tree care is fertilization, and you may find that you have to apply fertilizer more often than you thought.

Citrus Trees

Citrus trees specifically need four rounds of fertilizer per year. One can be applied between mid-February and March, while the others should be applied in May, July and September. That’s about once every two months or so.

Deciduous Fruit Trees

If you have deciduous fruit trees other than citrus trees, those need two rounds of fertilizer per year. One should be around the end of May and the other in early September. The round in May gives the trees nutrition as they grow and prepare for the summer. The September round is meant to shore up the store of nutrients in the soil as the tree prepares to go dormant later in the year.

No Fertilization After October

Stop giving trees fertilizer after October. It’s better if you can apply all of the final rounds of fertilizer by the end of September simply because the soil is getting colder. While you do want to give them those September doses of fertilizer to help ensure the roots are getting all the nutrients they need, the last thing those fruit trees need is a boost of nutrients that spurs new growth too late in the season.

Many Non-flowering Trees Don’t Need Fertilizer

Fertilizer can help fruit trees by increasing the nutrients available as the trees undergo the flowering and fruiting processes. But what about trees that don’t produce flowers? Ornamental trees often don’t need fertilizer at all. There are a couple of exceptions, of course. One is that some species do require fertilizer, and you’ll have to look at the specific requirements for those species to determine how often to fertilize. The other exception occurs when the trees show signs that they’re unable to draw enough nutrition from the soil.

Wet, Dry, Hot, Cold: When to Fertilize According to the Weather

In addition to fertilizing according to the season and growth cycles of the trees, you need to pay attention to the weather. You don’t want to fertilize trees when it’s very hot out, as this can cause the tree to undergo more stress; you also don’t want to fertilize trees when it’s very cold. In addition, wet weather are bad times to fertilize because the runoff can carry away the fertilizer. In fact, you should wait a day or so after watering to fertilize, rather than just seeing if the soil looks dry.

Contact Maguire Tree Care, Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area for tree diagnosis and fertilization services.