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180 Days: Day 34: Fruit trees and more!

Happy Monday … I think?!

I actually kept thinking all day that it was Saturday 🤦‍♀️ it is so hard to keep track sometimes! Especially when you’re lacking your “start of the week” routine.

Today was an “all hands on deck” work day here.

There was a few trees that needed to be cut down first thing in the morning.

Then the girls cleaned up the fire wood from those and the brush while I ran some tools I borrowed from my parents, got some soul tests done and picked up some extra help for the day!

When I got back it was time to pull out the fruit trees and some flowering bushes to be planted! Also bags of soil brought over where the trees are going, tools, tags to label the trees until I can get wire cages around them and some larger labeling of some kind.

Now started the complicated part …. because we will be doing “guilds” planting various useful and supporting plants into sort of mini gardens around each tree … they needed specific placing and not just doing rows like most of us are accustomed to seeing. This meant I had to measure out to each location and point specifically where each individual one was to go!

Our soil was lacking nutrients so the soil in each hole had to be amended with a few needing a bit more than others. I’ll give the entire area some fertilizer as well but needed to be sure the trees get a good start 😁

Some of these rocks were so tight packed they took serious thought to find how to get them loose!

There were SO MANY ROCKS!!! They were in the ground like jigsaw puzzles Haha. I’ll definitely need to be coming up with a good use for all those! For now though we used them to make circles around each tree and bush so they don’t accidentally get stepped on until I get wire “cages” around them tomorrow.

WHAT WE PLANTED:

Japanese Heartnut Walnut
Russian Black Mulberry
Red Plum
Pear, I forget the variety 🤪
Lovell Peaches
Rosa Rugosa, these are great for gathering rose hips from which are an incredible source of vitamin C!
Butterfly bush, I got purple and white, neither look too healthy though so we’ll just wait and see on those!
Forsythia, used for many things from jelly to face wash, known for anti inflammatory and anti viral properties, its its currently in use in other countries to aid dealing with Covid-19 😮
Here is part of the start of our fruit tree garden/orchard!

UPDATES:

With warmer temperatures the Las couple nights we have left the grapes, larger Strawberries, peas and trees out in the greenhouse. They all are looking great so I think they liked it! The next couple nights will be cold though so we will either bring them in or run a lamp out there to keep it warmer.

I checked in on the seeds I planted right onto the soil bags on Saturday…. they are already sprouting! Check out the radishes and lettuce!

Radish sprout about to pop out of the bag!
There were at least 30 definitely sprouted in just 2 days!

Aurora and Summer spent most of the day inside away from the evil black flies!

Are you spending this quarantine time to improve things around your home or property? Leave a comment and share what you are doing!