The first apple trees

We’ve always planned to have an orchard and this week our first apple trees arrived ready for planting.

They were grown locally by Drumfearn Trees, a croft just a few miles away, so they’re local, acclimatised stock and varieties that are known to grow well here.

This is an exposed, challenging site so we need to grasp every advantage that we can to give them the best chance to grow.

We’ve started with just a dozen trees which Hugh brought back in the car late in the afternoon. We’ve got a couple of each variety, and a mixture of cookers and eaters.

We have Discovery, Hereford Russet, Greensleeves, Saturn, Katy and Bountiful varieties.

We spent the afternoon digging them into the grassy, rush-strewn slope behind the polycrub. The last one was firmed-in with wellies just as the sun set over the hills to the west, and we strolled back to the house with cats in procession happy that we’d made a start at last.

We’ll cut cardboard to place around the base of each tree and pile mulch on top to try and keep the weeds from encroaching whilst they’re establishing themselves.

There are more to come in the spring along with plums, pears and damsons if we can source them. A happy evening with our books was spent last night researching pears, which we’re very hopeful will do well here.

The cats were fascinated by the process, “helping” by sitting in the holes and playing with the plant tags. It was so nice to see them out on the croft playing in the grass, chasing and play-fighting each other at high speed. They’re fast, agile wee things and in the best place.

Backs aching but happy, there’s always an enormous sense of satisfaction planting trees.