It's bare root season

In case you haven't noticed as you were walking around your home improvement store of choice, the bare root trees and roses are in. They don't look like your typical tree or bush so you may walk right past them (I did and I was even looking for them!). Look for a stick coming out of a cylinder shaped plastic bag. They will probabaly be leaning against something since they don't stand on their own very well. Once you find them, let the fun begin.

One of the key benefits of moving to Loomis was having enough space to plant trees. I had done some preliminary planning on the types of trees we wanted to plant. When I finally found the bare root trees, I at least knew the quantities we wanted of each fruit. I dove in and started moving the trees around to reach the ones in the back. I went toward the back because I caught a glimpse of a few of the more desirable varieties that had already been purchased from the front of the pile.

At the end of the day, I had purchased 10 bare root trees. Adding those to the 6 we transplanted when we moved, we have a grand total 16 trees in our fruit orchard. Here is the mix:

Fuji Apple

Granny Smith Apple

Chinese Mormon Apricot

Kadota Fig

Fantasia Nectarine (2)

Juneglo Nectarine
Frost Peach

Indian Free Peach

Giant Babcock Peach

July Elberta Peach
Shinshiki Pear

Fuyu Persimmon

Elephant Heart Plum
Santa Rosa Plum

Wonderful Pomegranate

In addition to the information tag attached to the trunk, Dave Wilson Nursey has a lot of good information about fruit trees and backyard orchards. Digging the holes for the trees was fairly easy and we were please to discover that our soil was quite good. Following the recommended planting method for the trees, we were able to get them planted within a few hours.

I captured our orchard layout in visio so we would know which trees are planted in each location. Other than being fun to look at, this will be a good reference when it comes time to spray for leaf curl and all the trees are bare.