Our bare-root trees arrived while we were driving home from Georgia. As you know, I have been in Georgia caring for our youngest child since January 9th, when they were hit by a pickup truck while crossing the street at college. Rin is doing really well, and we are very glad to be continuing the recuperation here at home. I had to take a leave of absence from work, so now that I’m back, I have only two jobs until June: One, take care of Rin, and two, take care of the garden. I’m going to enjoy both of these things!
Tom flew to Georgia to do the drive home with us, so the wonderful friend caring for our house and animals had to deal with the trees when they arrived. She opened the box and put the trees into buckets of water, and they spent two days soaking in the garage. We arrived home Friday night, and it’s taken us some time to get adjusted to being back, but this morning I knew I had to get the trees in before the next cold snap.
The beautiful thing about planting these trees into the old raised beds is that the soil has been amended a million times and it’s lovely. Digging holes for the trees was easy and fun. I added some low-nutrient organic fertilizer to each hole, tamped the trees in well, and watered thoroughly.
Next, we need some mulch. I just put in a request for free wood chips from Traverso Tree Service, my favored company. Hopefully those will come soon and I can get this whole area covered. Ideally Tom will finish up the new chicken fence and gate before then. He spent some time getting another post in this morning; digging in the places that haven’t been amended is a true hardship with our heavy clay. Since we’ve had so much rain and cold weather this winter (and considering the accident and my absence), we’ve not been on top of this as we would have liked. It feels good to be back working in the yard.
None of these trees will bear much for the first few years, but it will be fun to see how they grow. The company already ‘topped’ them, so I’ll leave them to do their thing this first year, and possibly do some light pruning next year.