Planting Fruit Trees

Trees waiting to be planted

Spring is a good time for planting trees. We purchased some fruit trees that overwintered in our greenhouse. When the warm weather rolled around we finally found time to put them in the ground. We used the post hole digger on the tractor in order to dig the holes.

With the post hole digger we made three holes

Digging the holes

Three holes dug

After making the holes we dug out the soil between the holes in order to make one large hole. Planting trees requires a lot of hole digging.

After getting our holes dug we planted the trees! An area surrounding the tree's base is covered with a shallow depth of rock in order to keep voles from harming the roots as well as keeping weeds down.  The fencing around the tree is to protect it from deer or goats who should not be near the trees but we take a better safe than sorry approach around here.

Planted tree

The trees have now bloomed and the peach trees set fruit which we've had to remove so that all the energy this first year can go into the tree.  Removing the fruit this year will allow the tree to have greater vigor and longevity.  It's one of the hard parts of farming, doing the work to prepare the way for long-term health and viability and then waiting for the future crop when we really just want to eat the fruits of our labors!  

A small consolation we've discovered is that the old peach trees that were here when we arrived and which did not bear at all last year are loaded with fruit!  We were going to cut them down as we thought they were past bearing age.  Fortunately, we were too busy to do that.  Although we have done nothing but prune them a little and allow the chickens to pasture in the orchard, the natural process is returning health to the soil so it can nurture the trees.  Maybe we'll have peaches to eat after all.