Nothing in your name or member page gives a clue as to your location or climate, so I hesitate to make a comment on planting a fruit tree this time of year. Al

I'm sorry.. I am in Central Kentucky. Is it too late for me to plant these trees? I guess if they die the Meijer one-year guarantee should protect my purchase and replace them next year. I will just need to keep the receipts handy with the guarantee pamphlet.

I'm new to fruit trees myself, but ouch on the hand. Do you have a set of good gloves to use before you dig that last hole? :)

I definitely need to buy a pair of garden gloves.. can probably find some on clearance at one of the major retailers, so I shall see. :)

The hand is healing nicely, but that last tree is begging for me to dig a hole. I notice in my back yard that everything bakes, even moreso since I installed a perimeter fence myself on Labor Day weekend '06. My house is basically in the valley of my hilly street and the back yard acts as a focusing lens.. heats up and dries up faster than the neighbor's back yards. I noticed today that most of the leaves on the unplanted Mcintosh tree have dried, brown tips and the root ball looks like it dries fast in the container it is packed in. I have been watering it everyday and put the tree under my garden arch trellis that is slightly shaded with cucumber vines hoping that the tree can 'stay cool' til I get around to digging the last hole this weekend. Maybe looks are deceiving but the Fuji apple tree that is planted looks much healthier than it did when I first bought it. I hope that the Mcintosh will rejuvenate and look just as good when I get it planted.

Yeah, I lost my Fuji before I got it in the ground, and of course that's my fav apple. How's your cherry doing? Oh, OT,the deer got in my fence and stripped leaves. The trees seem to be coming back OK, but one has a blossom on it! Isn't that weird?

Bencjedi:

I had no idea you could find soil that bad in the state of Kentucky. Sounds like Virginia soil on steroids. You should know that a Montmorency tree, on one of the usual Mazzard or Mahaleb rootstocks, can become over 20 feet tall with an equivalent spread in under 15 years. I had one here that would have been 30 feet tall without annual pruning to keep it down, but the spread was still there. Apple trees on semi-dwarf rootstocks like M-7, which is probably what you have from your local source, can easily go over 15 feet tall, also with an equivalent spread, absent regular pruning. One of the problems with buying locally, especially at close-out sales, is that you usually don't know what rootstock you are buying, and rootstock type is a critical factor to predict the future growth habits of a tree.

So if you are planting these trees at 7-8 feet apart, be prepared for regular, annual pruning, preferably in the summer to reduce vigor. This may limit your total fruit yield, but there will still be plenty of apples and cherries.

If you can get McIntosh to produce healthy fruit in Kentucky, that will be a good trick. I can't grow this variety in Northern Virgina (too far South), but can grow McIntosh crosses, such as Empire, Spartan, and Shamrock. Fuji, which likes a long season and tolerates the heat, does very well here. It's the best tasting fresh eating apple I have, and keeps better than any of the others, although it ripens very, very late.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thanks Don for sharing your insight and experience with me. I am prepared to prune like it is going out of style. My back yard is not very challenging to me right now with not much to do in it vegetatively. Even my garden I expanded this year had been very maintenance-free. I think I only pulled half a dozen weeds out since April. I've worked on creating a compact garden and a berry bed in the inside-side of the fence. My back yard is small and only extends about 24' back from the corner of the house. I fenced most of it in. I left some space on the outside of the east side where these trees are going.

The soil is especially murderous on that side of the yard. I suspect when this house was constructed a little less than 3 years ago that the access road for the neighborhood construction was through that area. I notice contractor people here like to spread heaps of plentiful limestone rocks around construction sites for their machinery/keep mud down. It gets compacted and pressed down with that heavy equipment as houses are built. Then after a house is built it appears topsoil is added on top for sod, but it is never spread evenly. This explains why the west side of the yard is much easier to put shovel in than the east side. All my neighbors complain about their yards being the same way. Here's an example of what happened to all the rocks dug up in my back yard:

{{gwi:123670}}

I dug the final hole for that Mcintosh this evening and the soil was considerably easier to dig in. I had watered the spot where I wanted the tree a couple times this week and notice before doing that.. that the grass was more lush there. I can visually see where I will have a chore digging and where it will be relatively easy with not nearly as much shovel aerobics to pry out boulders and stones 'glued' into the ground.

I hope these trees, as close as they are grow like wildfire because I want more privacy in my little yard. Notice in my picture the houses at the top of the picture... There's always people staring down at my wife and I from those balconies/roadway. We'd much rather they stare at fruit trees. I hope they grow 20' tall. ;)

I will be sure to let you know how my Mcintosh grows (or dies). Last winter it was always colder on that side of the house. The path between the houses adjacent to mine act as a wind shaft to convect cold air along that area. Maybe that will be beneficial to the Mcintosh. Time will tell I guess.

I will plant the Mcintosh probably tomorrow. I want to mix in some of that fertilized tree/shrub mix with our limely clay soil as I had for the two other trees. I could cram one more tree along the fence, but I have a white pine in the inside that should complete the blocked view (someday). I say I don't mind pruning now, but I may be saying different in 3-5 years eh? :)

That's a great picture-looks like you have a little oasis planted in just three year's time. Is the white pine going to block light on your yard one day? Just a thought :)

Thanks! Actually the house was the model home for the builder, so it sat unoccupied for almost a couple years before we moved in. We've only been here just over a year. You can tell I have been busy. Everything you see in the picture was done by my hand in the last year. I had a much smaller garden carved out last summer, but this past spring I added several cubic yards of thoroughbred-based compost from a local bulk materials place. The nutrients in this stuff have made a significant difference in growth habit for everything planted (when compared to last summer). My tomatoes are bushy beyond belief. :)

I think the white pine will be fine in the corner. With the way the sun tracks across the back yard it should only shadow a few things along the fence for a short part of the day. My berry plants along the fence are already challenged because they only receive around 5-6 hours of direct sunlight each day. I don't expect berries for a couple years. Growth should be retarded on that side. As long as the neighbor to the west doesn't go planting trees along the other side of the fence my veggie garden should grow as well as it has this year.

I bought some peat moss and tree/shrub mix today at Lowes. I plan to mix them in with the soil I dug out last night for the Mcintosh tree. I'm giving this tree of the 3 a little extra care as I want to optimize its chances of being successful. I know Mcintosh apples are grown in KY, as there's a local farmer that sells them at the downtown Lexington market each Saturday. It's not impossible, but as Don said.. it may be difficult. I'm game to give it a try.

Bencjedi:

That little white pine may look pretty innocent today, in its early youth, but this species is one of the last I would plant near buildings or anywhere it cannot fall or drop limbs without doing some damage. My next-door neighbor has several dozen of them in rows around his one-acre property, and they are causing no end of problems. If you plan to be out of that house in ten years or less, it will be someone else's problem, but if you see yourself in that house 20 years out you might want to think about replacing that white pine.

White pines have both weak wood and root structures. When it snows, the limbs load up and break, leaving the tree misshapen and a mess on the lawn. The white pines on my neighbor's property (some of them bordering mine), have been in for 25 years and are now over 70 feet tall. Just a month ago, one fell across the fence on the other side, destroying that neighbors new fence. It cost $1,500 to cut up and haul away, not to mention the cost of reconstructing the fence. I managed to convince my neighbor to allow me to take out 7 of the damn things about 8 years ago when they were still only 55 feet tall, by actual measurement. (I figure what I did would have cost at least $5,000 if done by a tree service). I worked for a week on the project, but it was worth it to allow morning sun on my fruit trees and berries. At least there was a safe place for me to drop those seven, but that is not true of those that are left. There are still 5 of them on the property line between our houses, and two of them are leaning toward my house by about 15 degrees, and will have to be removed. Branch growth has been asymmetrical, since they were planted in a double row, and the heavy branches are all on my side. It will be very expensive, since there is nowhere to drop them, and the tree service will have to send a climber up to cut them down, rope them, and lower them in sections. With trees 70 feet tall, that is serious business, and these guys don't work cheap. But I am insisting they go, since a heavy rain with a little wind will be enough to topple these topheavy trees, given their minimal and weak root structures.

White pines are fine as stand-alone trees out in a field, but in a small yard I would plant something like a Japanese maple or an Arborvitae. It is possible that, given the limitations of your soil, your white pine may not grow so fast or achieve the size they have here. But watch out if it starts to grow rapidly.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

You're not the first to warn me about that white pine (unfortunately). I think it is a pretty tree, but I know it will be a menace someday. I watched my father single-handidly cut down one when I was a kid (growing up on Long Island). It was over 25-feet tall. If he can do it by himself (after it grew a decade), then I can too. I did mention to my wife about this tree and considering removing it .. she doesn't want me to remove it. I don't anticipate it will grow vigorously, but it does plant some worry and I can see me taking it down in a decade if it gets too big. I don't suppose there's a way to stunk its growth other than it possibly having difficulty with our hard soil?

Here's what the recently-planted fruit trees look like. We had brief spurts of rain this afternoon (after a month of zero precipitation.. it was very much welcomed)

{{gwi:123671}}

bencjedi:

I don't suppose there is any way you could have planted those trees a little further from the fence. If they grow up normally, they will first be banging up against the fence, then hanging over your neighbor's property, if that's what's on the other side of that fence.

Fruit trees usually want to grow equally on all sides, and that is the ideal shape for them, but I suppose you could continue to prune them to keep them on your side, at least until they grow tall enough for that to become impractical. Right now, those trees have the tall, spindly look of container-grown trees, and in the dormant season you might want to prune back the tops to encourage branching a little lower down.

One other alternative might be to espalier those trees by putting up a couple of strong support wires, then training the branches to them laterally.

I don't think you will have any trouble cutting down the white pine if that day ever comes. I cut down seven 55 footers all by myself, hooking a line up the trees to the back of the pickup to make sure they fell exactly where I wanted them. Then I took a chainsaw, cut off all the branches, and sliced up the trunk. The branches became mulch in the grinder, and the larger slices went to the county recycling center. It took multiple trips, since each tree was a pickup load of about 1,800 pounds. Lots of work, but one little tree would be a pushover, since the wood is soft, and I did them all without having to re-sharpen the chainsaw.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

The trees are as far away from the fence as I could get them and still be on my property (my property being inside that fence and a few feet towards the left (east side) where the trees were planted). I'll try to train them as you suggest. It is amazing what a little rain did for the grass. When I was digging, it was very brown and dry and as you can see now.. well nice and green/recovering. I think the new trees probably loved the rain as well. Hope we get some more.

I think I am done with trees in the yard for awhile. I've run out of places to stick them in the back (without messing up sunlight for my veggie garden) and my wife says "no more" anyhow. I would like a birch on the other side in the front and something tall(conifer) to put behind the other cluster of trees/bushes on that side. Maybe I'll take a pic and can get some suggestions? I want to emphasize the tallness of my house, so not as much vinyl siding is "in view" from the road.