A few weeks ago we bought some fruit trees (apple, pear, and peach) and were excited to plant them, but knew we needed to prep the ground first. We have awful clay soil and knew our trees wouldn't do well if we didn't give them better soil... So the trees sat on our patio until this week.
We started by renting a sod cutter, followed by an excavator. Zamzows had suggested digging a foot deep and 12 feet in diameter for each tree. I think we ended up doing about a foot deep and 9 feet in diameter for each tree.
Once the excavation was done, Matt hauled 10,000 pounds of clay dirt to the dump (3 trailer loads). What a trooper. That means he shoveled 20,000 pounds of dirt total (10,000 into the trailer, 10,000 out of the trailer).
Next we bought over 75 cubic feet of new dirt - peat moss and garden mix - to fill the newly dug holes. Just take a look at the difference in the hard clay dirt and the beautiful rich new dirt. I know our trees will be happy!
So after 3 days of work, we finally got the trees planted, the sod re-laid, and the sprinklers turned on. We still need to do a little work (add some Zamzows thrive to the trees to help their growth, cut the sod directly around the trees, etc), but we are so excited to have these trees planted and can't wait to watch them grow (hopefully quickly!). And with any luck, we'll even have a little bit of fruit this year... we can already see several pieces of fruit starting to grow :-)
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