23rd April - Planting our fruit trees

We have been waiting for some time to be able to plant our fruit bushes and trees which we have had in pots waiting for the garden site to be cleared after the demolition of the temporary classrooms.  Today under the supervision of Sarah from the RHS we managed to get our trees into the soil.

Sarah was able to give us lots of advice about choosing the best position for the trees on our site.

The students used garden canes to work out how to space the trees so that they have enough room to grow.

We bought the trees about a year ago and have had them in large plastic pots.  We have been surprised how much they have grown in the past year.

Some of the trees were quite difficult to extract from the pots.  We used some of the soil from the pots to put around the roots and then packed the hole with more soil.

We have made some signs so that we will be able to tell which tree is which.  We have two apple trees, a pear, a plum and a cherry tree.

Two of our students are busy digging a trench to put raspberry canes in - we have had a few raspberry canes growing in containers for a while.  A local allotment association also kindly gave us a few more.

One of our students is giving the new trees a good water.

Moving one of our currant bushes.

Deciding how much space to give the raspberry canes.

Packing the soil around the raspberries.

Our finished raspberry bushes in their new location.

Now for the currant bushes, we had a blackcurrant bush and a redcurrant bush.  Sarah was able to help us split the plants as we had not realised that we had several plants growing in one large pot.  Sarah showed us how to split the plants up and was able to tell us how to space the bushes so that they will have enough room once they are established.

We ordered four wild strawberry plants through the Morrisons 'Let's Grow' Scheme - they arrived a couple of weeks ago.  We planted them out underneath our new trees.  

One more currant bush to divide and plant next week.  We also plan to sow lots of wildflowers around the trees next week - which should encourage bees and insects into our new garden.

                                                       

We recently received our sunflower seeds which we planted today as part of the celebrations of 50 years of the RHS Britain in bloom campaign.  

We have planted the seeds in trays which will go inside our cold frame or greenhouse if there is room.  We will then transplant the seedlings once they have sprouted.  We plan to put them either in pots or in a sunny place along one of our fences.