Thursday, August 4, 2011

Tree planting time

We have G has been out in the orchard working away, weedeating/mowing, and digging lots of holes (with spade and post-hole borer) and then yesterday we planted out several fruit trees (about 20 or so!) to fill out some empty spaces in our orchard. The trees are mainly peaches, nectarines, a couple of apricots, a quince and a mulberry.

They are all locally grown, and mostly local heirloom trees which is really exciting. One in particular, the Pahi River Peach, is a special fruit tree - this is the one that started it all with Kay Baxter and Koanga Gardens in terms of saving the plants that would have otherwise disappeared forever. For more on that read here.
So I was thinking of this as we planted these trees yesterday and am grateful indeed to Kay Baxter, as I'm sure many are.

All the trees will need quite a lot of hard pruning, as will our other established trees as we've been a bit timid with pruning them! I also have to carefully map them out, otherwise we'll be wondering which tree is which when the labels blow off in the wind!

I hope they do well for us in the years to come.

While I don't have a photo of the river peach as we don't already have this variety in our orchard, here is a photo of the absolutely stunning, and truely delicious, 'Blackboy'  peach. Bring on the summer stone fruit!


Anyone else busy planting fruit trees?
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10 comments:

  1. UnknownAugust 4, 2011 at 5:19 PM

    Bet you can't wait to get some fruit from these. You're going to have a nice little orchard Bridget.

    That peach looks nice. Has it been peeled or is the skin that colour?
    Ma.

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  2. Cabbage Tree FarmAugust 4, 2011 at 5:38 PM

    Hi Maa, have added a picture of the unpeeled peach, you can see it is brown and fuzzy, the purple colour is the flesh. And it tastes as good as it looks!

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  3. BLD in MTAugust 5, 2011 at 3:19 AM

    Oh I wish I was out planting fruit trees! How many trees do you have altogether?

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  4. Cabbage Tree FarmAugust 5, 2011 at 11:10 AM

    Hi BLD in MT
    Rather a lot...over 70 in fact..!

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  5. BLD in MTAugust 6, 2011 at 3:28 AM

    Wow! That is quite a good number!

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  6. GollimAugust 8, 2011 at 7:30 PM

    Wow I do not believe how long it has taken me to find the post a comment link. Call me slow. We have around 15 or so fruit trees waiting in the vege garden to be planted also to extend the orchard. Black boy peach also and black Dorris plum along with a nice collection of other stone fruits including an apricot for the north island. Our citrus are still battling on looking a little sad just now with spring upon us I hope they will come away again. We are thinking of planting the new trees in the top paddock.

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  7. Cabbage Tree FarmAugust 10, 2011 at 9:43 AM

    Hi Gollim!!
    Sounds as though your orchard is coming along nicely. Look forward to seeing it soon.

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  8. GollimAugust 17, 2011 at 2:48 PM

    I have to ask how far apart have you spaced your trees ?

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  9. Cabbage Tree FarmAugust 17, 2011 at 8:29 PM

    Hi Gollim
    We planted them at 3mtrs mainly due to space constriction on that one small area and we wanted to fit in as many as possible. Normally would plant at 3.5-4 mtrs or so.

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  10. Killiecrankie FarmAugust 19, 2011 at 7:07 PM

    Bought a Blackboy tree (no label) at a market - now I know what to look forward to -yum !

    Yes - hazelnuts and blueberries at our place - nice small holes ;)

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