Starting Our Orchard

It was a beautiful day today!  The high was in the 60's and we got to soak up some sunshine.  My dad was so kind as to offer to get our orchard started.  He came with us to a local plant nursery where we had lunch in the cafe and then picked out our fruit trees.  

This is where Ayden spent most of his time while David and I took turns looking at the trees and talking to the folks on staff.

We ended up with 3 apple trees, 2 peach trees, 2 pear trees and 1 cherry tree, all different varieties.

Fruit trees take a few seasons to get established before they start producing fruit.  We wanted to get them in early so that we'd be getting fruit by the time we are settled in.  This is definitely something else that we need to educate ourselves on. Just like with animals, fruit and nut trees can have disease and pests and such.  We are hoping to keep things as organic as possible so we'll be doing lots of research to set ourselves up for success. I'm pretty sure that our local agricultural extension office has a class on caring for fruit trees and of course we'll read some books and articles.  I'm sure as with anything else though, you don't truly learn until you jump in and give it a try.  I think this season our main focus will be to get soil testing done in the area where we are planting them so that we know what we need to do fertilization wise and then making sure they are adequately watered over the summer.  There will be more to learn down the road as far as thinning the fruit and learning about the signs of disease and such but we have time to learn all of that.  

Things seem to be going so fast yet so slow all at the same time. I just keep picturing our children going out to play and picking their own snack from a tree in their backyard.  Pretty cool stuff.  I hope we can keep them all alive!

Do you have any fruit trees?  Any advice for newbies like us??

Flashback!  Here's what we were up to one year ago today: "An Extra Day"

And two years ago today: "We're In Trouble"

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