Deep Enough?

Today was the second phase of tree planting at our community orchard. Yesterday was glorious and the forecast for tomorrow is also very good. Today was predicted to be nice all week until Friday when they predicted a deep depression coming in of the Atlantic and a warm front being sucked in over us from Normandy.

When I woke up and couldn't hear the wind and rain battering on the windows I was greatly relieved. It was raining, but to be honest I'd describe it as heavy drizzle, it wasn't too bad at all.

We set off early and pretty soon the volunteers started to arrive. As it was wet and we were not expecting huge numbers we started them at once on removing grass from around the base of the existing trees and mulching and fertilising them.

As soon as a few more people made it we started to plant the trees and within an hour most of the planting and staking had been done. We then had some hot soup & bread and some very nice white chocolate swiss-rolls slices. Once refuelled we set about distributing the rest of the mulch around the trees to keep the grass at bay.

We were home for 1pm in time to freecycle some stuff away - so not bad going at all. While it never stopped raining at all, the wind never picked up and it wasn't too cold so I think everyone was able to keep warm and cheery by being busy. Planting the trees in the wet is apparently the best way to plant them so that should help us get good healthy trees and plenty of fruit in the future!

This blip is my better half and community orchard master mind, showing a group of diggers how to tell if their hole is deep enough. Basically you stick you tree in the hole and have a look! As you can see her fetching red waterproofs are working well at keeping the water on the outside! You can see that it's wet but it's clear that it's not pouring - we were very lucky, much more rain and we would have had to postpone things.