Trostrie Garden – Planting Fruit Trees

Friends

Those of you who know me will have seen that I like lawns with straight lines, not quite bowling greens but getting on that way, so it is quite a challenge to let an area of grass go wild – hopefully into a wildflower lawn (but that is for the future).

Plan of fruit trees

In part of this wild area we have decided to plant a small number of fruit trees. 13 so I think it counts as a small orchard. It will be a mixture of pears, apples, plums and damsons.

The layout can be seen from the very rough plan.

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Marking out - with peg and string

Marking out - with peg and string

Firstly we had to mark out where the trees would go

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Digging the hole for the roots

Then dig the holes

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Four holes dug - nine to go!

The 8 trees we planted this time came from Walcot Organic Nursery www.walcotnursery.co.uk, as bare root trees. They were very efficient, phoning us up to arange delivery, and the trees arrived when they said they would. All the trees were in good condition, except for one which had had it's very top broken off, presumably in transport, but that was no real problem. (They were certainly in much better condition than ones we ordered from another so called famous nursery, that arrived seriously damaged, so much so that it had to be replaced) Anyway we are not talking about them.

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Putting in the stake

Though it did say in the instructions that staking was not necessary, we thought we would stake these, and not the remaining 5 just to compare as it is quite a windy spot.

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Adding the mycorrhizal fungi

We added mycorrhizal fungi to the hole before planting the tree. Finally adding a rabbit guard around the base of the tree to help protect it.

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Ahh - Cuppa Green Tea

Finally getting a well earned cuppa.


This is my ad hoc update and diary describing how I am developing our garden at Trostrie Cottage in Galloway. You can see the garden for yourself if you book a self catering dog friendly holiday @The Shieling which is attached to Trostrie Cottage.

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