Laying the ground work for the orchard

Along with the garden we are planning, we also plan to start a fruit orchard.  Once all is said and done, we plan to have apples, persimmons, raspberries, and blueberries.  There may be more to come.  For now, apples.

Unfortunately, as with most things in our life, there are complications.  Unlike other issues with the house, these aren't water-related.

With the far field, the issue is related to the black walnut trees that are on the woods-line.  I didn't know it until paying one of the area plant nurseries a visit, but, apparently, black walnut is very toxic to a variety of plants.  Its not just the walnuts, it's the leaves and roots too.  According to reading from the nursery (corroborated elsewhere on the internet), the distance of 1.5x the diameter of the tree canopy is considered toxic.  Making matters more difficult is that apples and blueberries are intolerant of black walnuts.  The good news is that plums, cherries, black and purple raspberries, nectarines, peaches are okay.

Today, we bought six apple trees from Behnke Nurseries.  Unlike the other 3 nurseries we visited in the area, they had a number of fruit trees that were also in very good shape.  We purchased two each of three varieties of apples: Enterprise, Jonathan, and Honeycrisp.  We chose the Jonathan because it is sweet/tart, harvested early in the fall (Aug-Sept), and is self-pollinating.  The Honeycrisp and Enterprise are also sweet/tart and pollinate mid-way through the season.

The picture above shows the two black walnut trees in red.  In order to keep the apples away from the walnuts, I laid out the plant locations per consensus as found from resources on the internet.  Thankfully, two of the varieties are semi-dwarf and one is dwarf; due to the smaller size of those two types, they don't take up as much space.

I will be picking up the trees in two batches this week.