The International Society of Arborist ANSI standards has greatly reduced the traditional thinking on nitrogen due to the fact we do not want trees to grow fast, but strong.
An organic balance will be the elements that help the tree sustain itself which is found in correctly created "Organic Tea" type products which encourage the Mycorrhiza to work in a symbiotic relationship with the plant.
The real problem I see during the summer is lawn care companies filling up the tree well with broadcast fertilizer. You can easily see the pellets and they are usually set for 3 pounds of nitrogen per thousand square feet five times a year. This is way too much for the tree and creates lots of long term problems.
The answer I have had to use is either to ask the lawn care company to blow the pellets out of the tree well or in extreme cases where I can see the tree is way over fertilized, we have the home owner throw tarps or sheets down around the tree drip line. After the application the pellets are gathered into in the tarps and recycled back to the hopper.
If you have a lawn care company, stress to them you do not want them to fertilize under the trees more than once a year in the second application.
The other problem lawn care companies create is they over apply a selective herbicide such as 2.4-d around the root base of the tree. These are systemic herbicides that can sicken or even kill the tree. Again, ask the lawn care company to only spot spray with the minimal amount of herbicide possible around the tree's drip line.
These are the health tree tips that make my customer trees so healthy and strong versus the neighbor who really doesn't care.
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