As I mentioned in my last post I was anxious to get the grafts up to the farm and get them in the ground. But before I could do that – I had to build a nursery to put them in so roaming deer and rabbits wouldnt just eat them down to the ground. To do this I picked a spot up on the hill near Laura’s garden and tilled the ground up to get rid of all of the grass and weeds.
I didn’t measure the space – but I believe it was about 30 x 15 feet. Much more than I needed for the less than 40 trees I had grafted but since Im going to be fencing this in I figured I might as well make it larger so that the next set of grafts have a space to go too.
The tilling went fairly well but was a lot of work as the ground was pretty wet from all the rain we’ve had this spring. I tilled the ground once and let it dry for a week and the following weekend I tilled through it again and it worked a lot better once things had dried up a bit. I found deer fencing at Menards that was 7 feet tall and came in 100 foot rolls. I scavenged some long 4×4 posts (they were about 10 feet long) from the wood pile at the farm and used those for the corner posts.
To put in the posts I used the power auger we had bought for tree/vine planting and sunk each post into the ground until there were 7 feet remaining above ground. Then I just wrapped the fence around the posts using a 1×2 on each post to hold the fencing in place. I ended up putting in a 5th post to make a sort of entry/door way to get in and out. In the end it looked like this…
You can see the current run of grafts only took up about 4 feet at the end so I should have plenty of room next year for more grafts to fill the nursery up.
Each of the trees was put in with a 7 foot training pole which serves two purposes. First – it keeps birds from landing on the small fragile trees and breaking them. Second it allows me to train the trees vertically. For now – Im using these small metal clips to attach the smaller trees to the posts…
Its hard to tell – but the clip fits around the pole and leaves a small pocket for the tree to grow inside of. Not perfect as Im worried that its not enough room for the tree to really take off so for now Im checking them regularly to make sure the clip isnt preventing any growth.
For now – most of the trees that I thought would make it seem to be doing well after transplanting. Im anxious to see how they do once things get hot out though!
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