fruit trees are go!

Big day in the yard Sunday (July 11) as the long-awaited fruit trees were picked up from Katie of Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens at Wesley Hill Market on Saturday morning, and all planted out on Sunday. Only 13 trees, but that was tricky enough, especially doing them alone!

Following Katie's advice, dipped the roots into water that had a few handfuls of gum-tree leaf mould swished into it, the better to inoculate the roots with fungal activity. Lets hope it helps! As ever, our soil - heavy, non-draining clay, with negligable top soil - remains the most intractable problem. Plants all went into built-up mounds, but they all look a lot lower with a tree planted into them and the whole thing firmed down and watered. It was sobering to re-use a few of the thick (2x2) stakes from elsewhere in the garden and find the ends of several of them reduced to a damp mesh of decomposed wood.
The more resilient trees - being a mulberry, a pomegranate and three almonds - are planted down in the grove below the house, interplanted with the existing olives, and hopefully not too closely spaced. If the only negative is smaller or less productive trees, I won't be too worried!
The less resilient trees - apples, pears and plums - are planted near the house and in the irrigated orchard. Again, they seem awfully closely spaced now they're in the ground (it didn't look crowded on paper!) but hopefully they won't get too large too soon. The irrigation hoses aren't really functional yet, but shouldn't be a major issue until it starts heating up later in spring.
There's still some pressing work to do: finish staking to protect from wind damage; attach some guards round the stakes (perhaps hessian?) to protect from wind and from marauding animals; and mulch - not so much to slow evaporation, given the season, but to help hold soil on raised planting mounds.
And at leisure, more exploration of specific needs of these varieties (okay, kind of putting the cart before the horse, but have to start somewhere!), and sorting out irrigation for when it heats up.
Will be an exciting but frustrating wait for those first signs of life in a month or two.