This is what I wish someone had told me : either start over with better soil or don’t expect it to be easy. drainage here is the game changer- so you amend what you have and hope thats enough in the coming years or do raised planters like another forum member is doing with avocado/personally I’d say start from scratch ..sand, lava rock, decomp granite are all fine and remove as much clay as you can and maybe do berms with it to keep the better quality stuff from getting blown away. As others have suggested cover crops can be good. Seedlings are faster growing and tend to do better with the shorter time that we have for vegetative growth. I’d suggest just using Simon’s posts as a guide and take about 2-4months off your growing season. If you’re trying to graft or get through the winter/spring without cold/wind damage use a temporary greenhouse otherwise it will be very difficult to get conditions to where the tree is actually going to push decent growth in our long wet winters &unpredictable springtime weather. Like others have mentioned in various comments.. it’s possible to fruit but you need lots of good years without dieback to achieve the desired size of trees capable of holding any kind of fruit so controlling your soil type is the place to start..don’t worry about ph or fertilizer at this point just get decent drainage and I wouldn’t expect anything smaller in diameter than a cigar or sharpie to make it through a winter unprotected ..Good luck
