Last weekend we took full advantage of the one day of good weather to plant some fruit trees and bushes in our further attempt to be more self sufficient.
We have long talked about adding fruit trees to the second tier in our backyard and we finally just bit the bullet and did it! We started off with three apple trees; Granny Smith (the only apple Jack will eat and my favorite for baking with), Yellow Delicious (must have for cross pollinating and one of Jason's favorites) and a Winesap (I wanted a Pink Lady but they didn't have any in stock so we thought we'd try this variety).
Hard to see the tree planted due to all the background trees but it's there...
Hard at work!
Second tree in.
After planting the third tree we realized we had room for one or two more, so off we went to the nursery to find more! While we were there we decided that three apple trees should produce more than enough apples so another fruit tree might be better. We thought about pear, peach and plums but peach tree's have so many insect problems that they aren't worth the trouble -- and with having to be careful with the bees, we didn't want something that was going to make us have to continuously spray (big bee NO-NO) -- so peach is out. I liked the Asian pear but it got too big, so I think we decided on plum. But we need two plum trees to cross pollinate (to produce the best and most plums) and with the size they get we need to plant one by the apples and one across from them, so we needed to come home and evaluate just exactly where we wanted to plant them.
The next question was what to plant on the hill behind the trees to keep the dirt from eroding. Juniper was suggested but we both HATE juniper so the next suggestion was to cover the hill with blueberries and/or raspberries. We had tried to plant a blueberry bush a couple years ago but had no luck - only to find out you needed at least three bush to cross pollinate (there's that word again. Who knew?) so we thought we'd try again, this time doing it the right way. So we started with three bushes to get going. Since the boys love blueberries I'm hoping we have a better outcome this time around!!
Here is a view looking from the fence line down toward the fireplace area of the three apple trees.
Way up there in that dark brown area is one of our blueberry bushes. You can see we have A LOT of hillside to cover!! Oh, and the reason you see all the pine trees laying is because Jason knocked them down and wants to let the needles fall off before moving the trunks and burning them in the outdoor fireplace. Since we use pinestraw down here for covering the ground it seems silly to move it and then go buy bales of it to cover the ground!
Here are our other two blueberry bushes.
This is looking at the trees from the fireplace side down toward the fence.
While at the nursery we also picked up some rosemary bushes but I haven't planted them yet. I think I'm going to put them here by the lavender but it's an easy plant so I can do it once the weather is nice again and the boys are outside playing. We should have a couple of nice weather days next week when the boys are out of school for their mid-winter break (or as I refer to it, their waste of an extra week of summer vacation break).
Our next goal is to get the landscaping guys back out here to add two sets of steps up to our row of fruit trees/bushes. One will be on this end next to this little rockery area and the other will be down at the other end, right at the curve in the pathway.
The honeybees are going to LOVE the new additions to the backyard.
Everything we plant in the backyard has to be good for the bees.
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