maricybele's Blog

Today I planted my orchard! I am so happy. Photos to follow. My lawn guy planted it, I just followed around with some newspaper and  mulch. In the ground are 2 gauvas, 3 in one plum, 3 in one cherry, 3 in one pear, I already have a 3 in one apple, a gravenstien, apricot and fantasia nectarine.  My clay soil is so thick, it ate 14 bags of compost/ top soil and about 8 bags of  used coffee grounds, 5 bags of live (worms included) worm castings, 1 bag bag of peat moss, some glacial rock and green sand. I covered most of them with newspaper some used coffee grounds, cheap mulch and topped it with cocoa shells and twiced crushed filbert shells for keeping out the cats and hopefully the sqirrels. I planted it in the middle yard in curve with a future a path in the middle following the curve of the grape support fencing.

I have been reading about grafting and since the trees are young and I have limited space I would like to graft on more of my favorite types of apples, netarines, and apricots to the trees. I am still reading up on it and watching utube videos.

This weekend I planted radish and lettuce that came up from winter sewing on Christmas Eve. I am starting to prepare my new beds and I need to get some more beds. Trying to be creative on how to fill these new raised beds, I am a regular at Starbucks gleaning there coffee grounds for the public and their freshly used grounds( they just give me the plastic bags) I have some compost resting, that I will put in the beds also.

I might have to get into pottery with all the clay on my property.  I have the clay in the compost corner to be worked in with compost at some time.Happy gardening!