We, more like Ben, mostly planted bare root trees for our backyard orchard. Not only that, he chose mini or dwarf sized, so that we would be able to plant multiple trees in one hole following the Dave Wilson style of backyard orchard cultures. The ones pictured here aren’t even all the trees Ben has planted. This was done back in January (I’m slow in blogging this), some of them even have leaves growing now and are starting to look like more than just sticks in the ground.

Since we didn’t plant the trees in the ground right away, Ben decided to heel-in the trees. This is done to help the trees maintain dormancy for a longer period of time and to protect it from ground frost. We left it like this for several days until he had more time to actually dig the holes for the trees.

It’s pretty crazy how much goes into planning this out. Ben has spent countless hours reading and researching about the best way to do this. We laugh about this, but most things he reads recommend starting small. I don’t think Ben really heeded that advice and it seems his motto is “Go big or go home.” I definitely think having about 30 trees is go big. We’re totally learning every season about how to do something better and what we did wrong. Even with all the research he’s done, there’s always a way to improve. Next post, I will list out everything we’re planting, but since Ben’s the one in the know of all of that, he’ll probably have to write the next post. I’d bug him about it now, but he’s downstairs working on a surprise. I like surprises, so I don’t want to disturb him.

Have any of you heeled-in bare root trees before? This is totally something new to me, so I was totally intrigued when Ben was doing it. Read part 1 of how our backyard orchard culture started.