Doleva worker trimming tree

Deep root fertilization

Why is fertilization important?

'My trees are just fine and I have never fertilized'. That may be so, but your soil may be running out of nutrients. Around your house, this could take a year or it could take 20 years, but there is no way of knowing without testing because a tree may be stressed and not look it.

A tree stressed from lack of nutrients is far more susceptible to diseases like hypoxylyn (a fungal canker that is killing trees all over central Texas) as well as insects, parasites and drought. A healthy tree with proper nutrients will be for less likely to suffer from these harmful problems.

What is deep root fertilization?

Deep root fertilization is injecting nutrients into the ground approximately 8" below surface in four different directions at 225 PSI. This process is continued over and over in a three foot grid patter (like a checkerboard pattern) under the canopy of the tree to either the existing drip-line or the projected drip line if the tree canopy was sloped or affected in any other way as to make the canopy not uniform. This totally saturates the whole root zone with available nutrients.

Why is Deep Root Fertilization better than other types of fertilization?

There are three other types of fertilization that are used. Here is why DRF is far superior.
The first two are a topical and fertilizer stakes. Many of the nutrients that trees rely on are not very mobile. After reading the Deep Root Fertilization section above, and knowing how the ground gets saturated with available nutrients, it becomes clear that the immobile nutrients that the trees require will be most readily available through DRF as they are right there for the feeder roots.
The third type of fertilizer would be a cambium injection. Although the results will be much more immediate and your tree will look healthier, there is still one main problem. The ground still lacks the nutrients and once the initial boost has wore off, the core problem still exists, there is still no nutrients in the ground for the feeder root system.

deep root fertilization

Savannah Doleva, deep root fertilization manager