May
2009
Our first real fruit trees
May 6th, 2009 at 08:02 pm by Shari Thomas in Around the FarmWell, Bev couldn’t stand it any longer… She bought two semi-dwarf Granny Smith Apple trees.
We spent the better part of 30 minutes deciding where to place these trees. Of course, Mom was helping, too. “Let’s plant them right.” As if none of us had ever planted trees.
After looking at them near the front of the yard (on the driveway side), then in the middle, evenly spaced on either side of the bird house, and finally closer to the house, that is where we settled.
Next task, remove the sod. We had to actually stop and sharpen our flat blade spade and dirt spade to break through the sod. Good thing Cindy can do the “two-footed jump” on the spade trick.
Bev and Cindy dug one hole three feet deep, and three feet in diameter, back-filling it with four buckets of compost, some of the dirt, and one tree. Once we all agreed the tree was as straight as it was going to be, we watered it in, put a bag of cedar chips on top for mulch and set about making wind splints.
That was pretty much my job. We had an old eight-foot piece of hose. I cut 12 inches pieces, and threaded baling twine through each piece. We then tied them to rebar stakes at 90 degree angles.
Yep, we got one tree planted. The other will get done either tomorrow or Friday.
Our neighbor is going to saddle up his horse. Cindy will saddle up Neche. And between them, they’re going to drive the cow to the bull. This should be fun.
Buy me a beer and I'll write more posts more often.
