Vacation summary

Yep, I had last week off and spent it up at the farm!  LOL - it was no vacation!

The main reason for taking "vacation" at this time of year was to plant the order of trees and plants that had just arrived for me from the county conservation district group.  The county gets these plants at a discount from local nurseries and then sell them at a discount to people to raise some money for conservationist projects throughout the county.  Anyway, this year I got a "small" order consisting of 6 honeycrisp apple trees, 4 plum trees, 25 elderberry seedlings, 10 blueberry seedlings,  and 12 grape vines.

Blueberries:

I used woodchips to amend the soil and to mulch around the berry plants to keep the weeds down.  I have two of each variety that was available from the county.  To document where I planted each type of blueberry, I took this video:

Elderberries:

Next I planted the elderberries.  I got 25 more this year, more than I really needed to fill the space I have, but they only sell them in packs of 25.   Before I planted the new berry plants I examined last years plants to see if they were alive or dead and needing to be replaced.  While I was checking the plants, I removed the plastic weed protection since it was obvious that the plastic was blocking the berries from spreading.  Elderberries, evidently, send out runners like bamboo and thats how they propagate.  When I was looking under the plastic I noticed many dead branches where the berry plant was unable to get light and died.  So I removed all of the plastic protectors from the old berry plants, noting only one of the old plants showed no sign of life.  I planted most of the new plants near the old plants, filling in where I could.  Then I used wood chips to surround the all of the plants (new and old) to help keep the weeds down (and help me locate them later if the weds grow up too fast for me to keep under control - that happened last year!) .  I had 8 plants left over so I took those and planted them out in the field near a puddly-problem area.  While trying to plant those berry plants, I found out why water puddled there: CLAY!  The puddly area was actually a problem 

because there was only about 2 inches of topsoil on top of almost pure white clay.  I might find a use for that clay later!

Apples & Plums:

Anyway, on to the apples!  I put the honey crisp apples right next to the crabapples that I planted last year. Planting the apples went fairly smoothly.  Just ran the holes with the post-hole-auger on the tractor.  The holes, of course, needed to be widened to accommodate the roots of the trees, but that wasn't too bad.  I dipped the roots in a root-gel mixed with endo/ecto rhizome that I bought just for this purpose.  I highly recommend this for planting new trees and shrubs.  All the trees that I planted last year were dipped in the root gel, and they all survived and flourished.  I plant only bare root transplants, so that gel really helps provide the new trees moisture at a critical time of their development.  I had a couple plum trees that I put in below the peach trees that I planted last year.  I should note that only 2 of the 4 plum trees that I ordered were delivered; the other 2 will be delivered later - or I will get  a refund.   Here are some pics:

Here are the two plum trees.  If the other 2 come in, I will put them to the left of these.

Row of honeycrisp apple trees going down the hill.

View of the apple/pear/peach/plum orchard, as it stands today.

Grape Vines:

The grape vines needed an arbor to support the vines as they mature.  I could have chosen to put the arbors in later, but I wanted to plant the vines in 3 rows of 4, with one row in between the other two rows.  Therefore, putting the arbors in later for that center row would be a problem because digging the post holes with auger would be difficult without risking crushing the grape vine plants.  That would mean  I would have to dig the holes by hand in an area full of mud shale!  Not something I wanted to do.  Therefore, I spent a day and a bit more preparing 5 posts (cutting them to length and stripping the bark off of them), that was a lot of labor!   I also had to re-layout the electric fence around the orchard.  I was able to get a total of 6 of the 15 posts for the arbor up.  At least I got the critical middle row complete, and one more that i needed to hold the solar charger for the fence (its an solar powered electric fence - surprisingly effective!)  Here are some pics:

Here is a video documenting what is planted where (sorry about the sound - it was a breezy day!): 

I took a break of farm planting to head back to the city and plant another raised bed:

Videos describing the raised beds so far: