Fertilizing Our Columnar Hornbeam Trees

Adding this to the [garden diary] here on the blog to remind myself (mostly) that I put down 15 fertilizer tree spikes near our Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam Trees that we put in last year.    I put two on each tree but the most Western one that got just one.  (7 trees x 2 spikes) + (1 tree x 1 spike) = Feed trees for the spring.  I am going to supplement the last tree (and maybe a few others?) with a direct application of Milorganite (or the generic that Menards claims to be selling soon).

What made me decide to go with these Jobes Fertilizer Spikes again is that the tree leaf that is featured on the packaging appears to be a Hornbeam leaf (or something like it...) so the product seems fit for purpose, right?

I last showed the view from our screened porch BEFORE the Hornbeams went in here, but to mark the fertilizer application, I took a similar photo and am sharing it here below.  The angle is different, but I wanted to show the leafy-ness of these trees prior to the application.  I know that they'll thicken up just fine as the leaves bud out, but hoping the feeding helps these trees along on their journey.

For record keeping purposes, this post is dated May 20th, but I put the fertilizer spikes in on May 1st, 2019.