I really did not know how many holes I dug, and trees I had planted this year. I just knew I was tired.
A lot of them were smaller, being planting out of grafting work I had done over the winter.
Things like the Manchurian Apricots required no more than three cuts with a spade to make the hole. It was much the same for the Antonovka apple tree seedlings.
But it was not until today that I took the time to go through my journal where I had mapped everything out, to come out with actual counts of things.
31 holes for large trees, dug by hand, minimum 30 inches deep and 30 inches wide, 204 smaller holes, 20 inches by 20 inches.
235 trees. Hauled 10 gallons of water, per tree for the large trees, 5 gallons at a time. Smaller trees got 2.5 gallons each. I used 5 gallon carboys.
126 chip bud grafts done on root stock in the ground in the last month.
23 varieties of apples planted,
3 varieties of cherries (Sweet Cherry Pie, Mesabi & Nanking)
4 varieties of plums (Compass, Mt. Royal, Sapatka)
3 varieties of pears (Ure, Early Gold, Parker)
and 2 varieties of apricots (Pioneer & Manchurian)
I have made 28 grafts of Kleffman apples, 18 Karmijn de Sonneville, 14 Cortland, 14 Crabby Crisp, 9 Haralson, 8 Haragold, 8 Homestead Blush,9 Liberty, 11 Honeycrisp.
1-5 of the following:
PF-51, Autumn Blush, Quinta, Keepsake, Red Prairie Spy, Honey Gold, Chestnut Crab, Gravenstein, Macintosh, Wealthy, La Crescent
I bought a Snowsweet and a Zestar. The Zestar died.
Oh, I forgot the 70 rhubarb crowns, the 100+ grape vines I started, and the hops.
We were lucky, in that the summer brought enough rain that for what we planted, we only had to water each tree up north the first two weeks. There was not a week without rain up there after that. At the farm in Buffalo where I have another 95 trees, only once did I have to make a special trip just to water each of those trees, and they have hoses that get close to where the trees are.
I still have to wrap trunks and whip all the weeds down before winter so that I do not have mice girdling any of them. That is about it. Not that it is a small job, but having only that left to do, after starting back in March, means I am going on 7 months without a real break in activity. At least this part will be done, soon, for now. Harvesting gardens here, deer hunting, meat processing, all still to come, but really, only 3 months to go before I have a couple of months to relax and plan activities for next year. More than 2/3 of the way there.
I feel like I need a month of sleep.
