Interesting idea. So it was a one time thing or do you keep the hole open to keep throwing the scraps in it?

trees are very adept at finding sources of food ...

they will come to it .... sooner or later...

ken

Seems to me that it would be better for the entire root zone (and the rest of your yard) if you built a composter and spread the compost out over the entire rootzone and in other locations where it might be useful.

I'm with brandon on this one. Sure some roots will go there, but the greater benefit is the whole root zone at the surface. 2 ft may or may not be too deep. Can't hurt.

Dan

Thanks for the responses.

Regular composting is too much work for me, gave it up a long time ago. Throwing scraps in a hole is easy enough though.

If interested, the following discusses the food digester.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg0119033116401.html?13

If you say so, but I don't understand why throwing stuff in a compost tumbler would be any harder than throwing it in a hole. Beside, you have to dig the hole!

In general feeder roots concentrate near the surface, where the air is. Significant deep rooting tends to be a feature primarily of coarse or dry deep soils such as in semiarid areas, where finding water is most important. Desert trees may produce enormous, very deeply penetrating root networks.

In moist climates even tap-rooted trees don't have that much going on away from the pancake of roots in the uppermost soil. Blown down specimens often show the anchorage or tap roots to be partially necrotic in appearance, like bracken rootstocks may look.

My most recent experience with this concept (yes, I did it too) is that I let kitchen scraps compost over the winter in a planting hole and poured bottles of human urine on it on occassion to keep the vermin away as well as sprinkling a little ENVIR CE, a non-toxic and non-hazardous, natural compost conditioner and enhancer every few inches.

In January I put a Bing or Rainier (the weather faded the variety off the label) in this compost hole. They are the only trees I have planted that have Not shown any temptation to bud. They both looked as thought they would be ok, then we got another major freeze and snow and I was not smart enough to cover them.

I did clips some branch tips to make sure they were alive this past weekend, and they were green.

So I assume (and hope) that it is just the strange winter/spring we have had that is causing these two tree's (composted and not composted) to continue to 'sleep'.

I am most curious about how your results end up emgardener.

big deck,

I'll try to post a follow up in a couple months.

So far, just a few days, I've been surprised the racoons haven't found it. Just have a plywood over the bucket without a latch or weight on it. Previously racoons would dig up scraps I buried. Just to be sure though I'm going to glue/strap a brick to the cover for weight.

And I'm probably to add a few more digesters one each, next to my favorite 5 fruit trees.