Episode 7: Seed Starting, Feeding Fruit Trees & Choosing an Apple Tree

With warmer temps comes time to start thinking seriously about gardening! This week, Mark talks about what seeds you can start now, the best way to feed your fruit trees, and how to choose between our Standard and Deluxe apple trees. Don’t forget to send in your own gardening questions for a chance to be featured in a future episode!

More of a reader? See the questions and answers below.

Mentioned In This Video

Vegetable Seeds

Seed Starting Supplies

Reachables® Dwarf Fruit Trees

Foods & Fertilizers

Questions & Answers In This Video

Margie in Zone 7

A: Large, warm-season crops like peppers, tomatoes and eggplants can be started now, and it's important to have a warm growing environment to do so. To achieve that, our Seed Starting Kit—along with a Seedling Heat Mat underneath—helps ensure you get very warm soil temperatures. Quicker-maturing cabbages, broccolis and cauliflowers can also be started now, along with kale, chard, kohlrabi, onions, leeks and perennial herbs,.

Many perennial flowers can be started now: Hollyhocks, echinacea, rudbeckia, snapdragons and digitalis.

>> For more complete information on seed starting, check out our Complete Guide to Seed Starting Indoors.

Terry in Zone 5

A: Regardless of the option, you'll receive a 2-4 ft. apple tree on a dwarfing rootstock. The rootstock brings the size down so that all the picking, pruning and spraying can be accomplished standing on the ground, and the tree will produce the same full-size delicious fruit as a standard size tree.

The deluxe package has pelletized calcium for enhancing fruit quality. It also has a bag of starter fertilizer and gentle tree ties to tie the tree to a stake, along with a tree guard that you wrap around the trunk to keep animals from chewing on the bark.

>> Shop Sweet Sixteen Apple Trees

Carol in Zone 8

A: I like a balanced, mild and slow-release fertilizer, preferably made from natural inputs.

Conventional is fine too, but go easy on conventional fertilizers. Natural fertilizers boost the microbial community in the soil, so you feed the soil that in turn feeds the plant. Our Fruit Trees Alive! is a great example of this: It has all your major and minor nutrients, plus molasses and humates to help stimulate microbial activity. You can also top-dress with compost and/or woodchips—that will help the process as well.

>> Shop All-Natural Fertilizers

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Episode 7: Seed Starting, Feeding Fruit Trees & Choosing an Apple Tree

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Featured Exclusives

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Gurney's® Ruby Monster Hybrid Tomato

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Episode 7: Seed Starting, Feeding Fruit Trees & Choosing an Apple Tree

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