How To Plant A Tree

Or rather how not to plant a tree, just dig a hole and toss the tree in cover it up and you have fruit, its not rocket science right? Wrong!!! well kind of. Contrary to what I posted on Facebook we did go Black Friday shopping for fruit trees but I did not beat anyone with a Fig Tree to get the last 50% off peach tree. I reserve that kind of anger for something really important like not being able to find a knit sweater pattern on Ravelry so I can use up yarn I already own, anyway back to the trees. The nursery has a great selection of fruit trees we purchase two apples, one apricot, one nectarine, one peach and an Asian pear. We had plotted out where we were planting the trees the day before we had also hauled loads of mulch for a lovely ring to be placed around each tree for weed suppression and moisture retention. On Friday Mark diligently dug six very large holes as the trees were in 4 gallon containers, I remember asking him if he were digging a new well for water or was he on his way to China he laughed I laughed and he kept digging.

Since we are planting things that will need attention and come back every year I decided to buy a gardening journal to help us keep track of what we planted, where we planted it, when to prune it etc. On Saturday we spread our mulch rings around the base of the trees and came home knowing that Sunday would be a much needed day of rest. I sat down and started to enter the trees in the journal and upon doing some Internet research I stumbled up some planting information. I looked at my tired husband and announced "the trees are too deep and it is going to cause us problems" I researched more articles and Mark watch 7 or 8 YouTube videos and so the truth was finally admitted, all six trees are too deep. So what! whats the worst thing that can happen, well it turns out a bunch of bad things if you actually want the tree to live and produce fruit. First we will have a basic tree lesson. Trees do not like to be deep because they get there water from the surface not from some magical water source ten feet under ground. If you plant them to deep the roots will grow up not down looking for water, so what the roots reach the top and get water whats the big deal. I have one word for you: girdling now for me this word conjures up a garment that my Grandmother use to wear it took a crane and three or four strong guys to help you get into the thing and the purpose was to make you look more svelte.

Comfortable yes?? But I digress, back to trees and tree girdling which makes the tree roots wrap around the tree trunk and strangle the tree finally killing the tree it looks like this. Come to think of it they are not much different

Next is the problem of base support, if the roots cannot spread out to form a large base the tree cannot support its self and falls over. Also when it come to fruit trees there are three varieties, standard, semi-dwarf and dwarf, all this means is how large the tree will be at maturity. We purchased semi-dwarf trees. They get to be semi-dwarfed by grafting a stem to the trunk of a standard size fruit tree if you bury the joint you will change the size of the tree at maturity. I have no burning desire to climb a 30 foot orchard ladder to pick fruit. I am sure that there are other reason not to plant them deep but these two were our main concern. Let me state that our trees were at a minimum 8 inches to deep. What to do, what to do??? We decided to move the six foot diameter mulch rings and dig the trees up and start over, no big deal. Except if you remember in the first photo Mark is in a short sleeved shirt no jacket, that's because it is 60 degrees and we are sweating. Cut to Sunday it it is a balmy 30 degrees with an 8 mile an hour wind yippee. We look a lot like Ralphie's little brother from the movie A Christmas Story. Just in case you don't know what that looks like here you go

We fixed it!! all six trees were dug up and replanted at the proper depth mulch rings reinstalled and no animals were harmed in the process. Now all the trees are watered in and hopefully happily waiting to be pruned in late winter and will bear fruit for years to come. Our lesson learned is to do more research when planting because no one wants to go through this again.