I have been reading up about planting and initial care of fruit trees. In fact, I got a bit worried—all advice about not adding compost or fertiliser or blood and bone etc—when I did all that in April! Hmmm!
Not to worry, what I did was good because it was so far ahead of the planting, phew! With my lovely clay soil organic matter HAD to be dug in! The compost and sheepshit and blood and bone etc, all incorporated into the soil by now.
I will expand the mounds a bit by digging with the garden fork around where I did earlier this month—want the roots to venture into the soil, not stay where the soil is rich!
Will see when I get there how well the drainage—the deep ripping I had done—works and that will guide how I proceed to plant and stake my trees.
On the matter of drainage: do NOT backfill the hole with your new tree in it with compost! The hole will fill with water in the winter (wet season) then dry out over summer.
Anybody thinking of planting fruit trees this is a fantastic site:
https://www.orangepippintrees.eu/Also at:
https://www.orangepippintrees.com/This:
https://www.orangepippintrees.com/articles will give you advice on a vast range of issues to do with fruit trees. There is a section where you can look up a type and variety of fruit, e.g. cider apple Dabinette and it gives you a heap of info on it: appearance, diseases, what the fruit looks like—size, color, shape, russet etc—and has a pollination checker, check whether two self–sterile trees will have overlapping blossoming times and can pollinate each other, climate zones best suited etc.
If you only have room for two trees it pays to make sure they will both carry fruit!
If you want to grow apples whether eating, cooking or cider apples or a decorative crab apple—they hate having their feet wet. Most fruit trees do but apples are one of the most affected.
Drainage is key!