Planting trees, day 5 2011-04-30

Today was definitely the day. The weather was great: partly sunny, nice breeze, temperature just right. We had plenty of great food for breakfast. Then, everyone was eager to start early, so we had more than half the holes dug by the time we thought we would be getting started. Four more helpers showed up the morning, and Jericho’s parents returned the shredder for us. Then Jericho and I did a demonstration planting. And then everyone was off to plant! It all went very fast. Each tree got some lime, rock phosphate, Azomite, Pro-Gro, compost, and ramial chipped wood (except towards the end we ran out of rock phosphate so a few trees missed out on that). Some got a mycorrhiza inoculant. some got gravel as mulch, some got landscape fabric. After we planted 20 apple trees, 7 plums, 3 cherries, 2 pears, and 2 walnuts, we paused for lunch. Then we dug four post holes (which unfortunately struck… bedrock? 20” down) for an arbor and planted the 4 hardy kiwi next to the posts. The turnout was great (14 diggers +/- 2 small children) so everything went amazingly quickly. The only tasks left for tomorrow are pruning and grafting.