The Start of a New Orchard

My wife and I have always loved the thought of having our own orchard. So much that instead of spending money on trinkets to give guests who attended our wedding, we planted an orchard on the farm in their honor. That orchard has grown and is now largely gone save for three fruit trees well past their prime. 

We started to create a new orchard on the farm where we could fence it in to protect from predators and pests better. It is only at six and a half trees strong right that moment having lost several trees over the last few years to inclimate weather. But as we have gotten older and our needs have changed, we have come to realize that for us to enjoy an orchard or a garden, it really would be nice if they were much closer.

Our property is divided roughly in half by a deep ditch seen in the background of the photo above. The greenhouse I build can be barely seen through the leaves of the trees. In the foreground of this photo and behind me for a ways, is an open clearing that was bulldozed free of trees maybe 20 years ago before we owned this property. Soon after we moved in, I planted a bunch of native trees in the poor soil and though they still live, they have not grown much at all. But I wasn't much of a stickler for proper tree planting rules back then and literally just dug a hole big enough to accept the small pot I had grown them in and called it good.

So we have been eying clearing just a couple hundred feet for our house as perhaps a place where we could restart our orchard for the third time. I will probably have to move the handful of trees I planted there nearly a decade ago, probably down into the ditch where I no longer mow and the soil is slightly better. But we hadn't yet pulled the trigger yet on the project.

Perhaps some older readers will remember that my wife lost a close relative of hers to suicide about a little over a year ago. She had always been a smiling barely 20 something young woman with the world as her oyster from our perspective but from hers, had burdens she could no longer bear. It broke our heart to learn of her death after she had just visited up months before and had been so happy picking apples to take home with her from our old wedding orchard tree. So we decided that we would kick off our new orchard by planting a pair of apple trees in her honor. Those are the two trees you see in the picture above with the new mulch and wire protective fence to keep the deer from destroying them. We were only gone to start with one but this particular apple needs another nearby for pollination and so we bought two, the last two in stock for apple trees.

This time, I dug huge holes and heavily amended the soil with black nutrient rich dirt and compost. Hopefully they will be able to grow roots much faster and perhaps do a bit better than the other trees planting in this clearing. Hopefully as more fruit trees go on discount at our local nursery, we will be able to continue adding to this new orchard and someday pick fruits that will remind of us of the person now lost to us.