Mother Nature’s Moment, October/November 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

This time of year we often receive calls from individuals requesting to have their trees fertilized. Fertilizing one’s trees seems like such a good thing to do for them, and yet there are so many misconceptions about tree fertilizer that, as arborists, we often are trying to bring clarity to this area of tree care.

The first thing we need to understand about fertilizer, or the first fact, is that it is NOT tree food. Trees make their own food from the energy of the sun!! This is actually science we learned in the second grade but many of us have forgotten it, or at least, have forgotten the ramifications of that fact.