I traveled to Grandview Orchard on Friday to pick up our order of fruit trees, raspberries, and honeyberries. The last thing I did Friday night was to put the 15 bareroot trees into a tub of water overnight to prepare them for planting.
I began Saturday morning by hooking up the trailer to the lawn tractor and loading the supplies needed for planting our trees. I had started out with shorts, but switched to pants as it was a bit cool. This would eventually prove to be a big mistake. I grabbed a few trees from their tub of water and headed to the field.
We have been planning our small orchard since the fall. We laid out tree locations with stakes, and picked up several loads of wood chips from the town mulching station to stage by the compost bins. We placed our nursery order in January, as soon as orders started to be taken, to reduce the chances of not finding the fruit trees we wanted. The trees were now here. All we had to do was dig 15 holes.
Slowly but surely the trees went in. I removed grass with a mattock, dug a hole, mixed some peat moss with the soil, alternated placing soil and water into the hole, and tamped everything down. I hauled the bushel bucket of grass to the compost pile, filled the bushel bucket with wood chips, and mulched the tree in. Rinse and repeat.
The clouds that had greeted me in the early morning drifted away, leaving the sun to beat down. Fortunately it was windy, but even with the wind, it seemed like it was getting oddly warm. I took a break around 11AM, walked up to the house, and glanced at the thermometer as I was about to open the door. I came to an abrupt stop as I realized the temperature was 85F, in the shade - way above normal for the first day of May. For the past 2 weeks it struggled to break 45 degrees.
I shook my head, grabbed some water, and headed back to the trees. By 2PM they were all in. Maggie worked her way around with a hose to provide some additional water. It eventually climbed to 90 degrees. I suppose the one good thing about nearly 3 weeks without rain was that it was a dry heat, as there was little humidity.
As we move into May we start a frantic 2 week period of getting all of our plants into the ground. In addition to the raspberries and honeyberries, we have 40 asparagus crowns to plant. And seeds to sow. And seedlings to plant. I just hope the temperature drops, and we get a little rain.
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