Planting

We picked up the trees on April 29th and the last one was planted on May 8th. The first weekend my daughters Lia (12) and Annie (19) started off this planting endeavor by digging holes and planting 11 trees. We used old fencing to create cages for protection from hungry deer. Jon put in stakes and attached the cages to them. Mid week my son Ben (18) and two of his friends, Matt and Jackson dug 60 holes in 3 hours and I planted another 12. The second weekend, I realized that I would need to create a nursery space for the tiny cedar trees in order to get all the “babies” in the ground. I cleaned out debris from the old chicken enclosure and put 23 cedars and 6 white pine in there. Then I set to filling the holes the boys dug with the other trees. I managed to plant 21 more on Saturday before exhaustion decided I was done. Luckily, Sunday was mother’s day so my family was motivated to help me get over the finish line. Jon, Annie, Lia and I finished planting the remaining 67 trees. We watered them at the time of planting but I still needed to mulch and cage the rest.

The following week I started to mulch the trees with leaves raked from our yard. When the leaves ran out, I moved into the barn and loaded old goat bedding (naturally fertilized straw) into the mule and mulched the rest of the trees. It took 3 loads to get the job done. I would rather use forest leaves as mulch but I don’t have easy access. The presence of forest fungi would likely be a tremendous benefit to the health of our trees. It will take a long time to convert this tired field soil into rich forest humus.