Helen's Garden Renovation Project

We had a dry day today, and I spent over three hours in the garden. I first wanted to collect some photographic evidence of my plants’ willingness to forgive me for digging them up and moving them.

This is what my Discovery apple tree is doing at the moment:

It won’t be long before this apple is ripe. Charles Ross is also producing fruit:

And my hibiscus, which I grew from seed, is just starting to flower.

And how upset was the buddleia about being dug up not just once, but twice, because I put it in the wrong place at first? Not very, I would say.

So that just shows it is possible to transplant trees and shrubs in the winter and have them flower and fruit next spring, as long as you make sure you do it when there will be record rainfall in the spring and summer of the following year. And, actually, I think the plants all look better than they did before I moved them. Possibly this is partly because of all the rain we’ve had, but I think it’s also because they are now in a much more open, sunnier position than they were, and are feeling all the better for it.

I was thinking about getting started with laying some foundation for the stepping stones behind the apple trees, but the wisteria had gone wisterical and I had to break up the long-standing feud between it and the burglar alarm box and the drainpipe. And the jasmine was getting too jazzy, so I had to trim that, and also next door’s monster golden conifer, and my monster Pelts Blue conifer too, so that the euonymus next to it has a sporting chance. And then there were all the weeds in the drive, and I had to carry on scrubbing the paving slabs to prevent them getting dangerously slippery with green slime. And the Upright Milfoil is distributing loose stems across the pond, obviously as an attempt at domination, so I planted some of them in the basket that used to belong to the Hottonia Palustris before it got eaten. And somehow all the morning went and it was too hot by then to do anything strenuous. This is why I never get any development work done in the summer.

Today was a mild day with no rain forecast and I decided that now was the perfect opportunity to move the apple trees, even though they have not lost quite all their leaves. I moved Discovery first because it was nearer the destination holes than Charles Ross. First I dug a trench all round the tree.

Then I started shoving my spade under the root ball until the tree could be gently pushed over. I thought it would be heavy to lift, but it was very light. I tried to take as much earth with the roots as I could, but much of it fell off when I picked the tree up and carried it to the hole.

You can see that the root ball is quite small. I hammered a stake in at about 45 degrees like the books say you should, and tipped in two bags of organic compost as well as some soil, stamped it down and tied the tree to the stake with half a pair of old tights. The books say you should use rubber ties, but I should think tights would be just as good, and cheaper. The books also say that you should have the stake facing the prevailing wind, but I have no idea where the prevailing wind is. In my garden, things fall over in all directions. Neither do I know what they mean by positioning the stake into the prevailing wind. Do they mean that if the wind is coming from the north, the end of the stake that isn’t buried in the ground should be north of the end that is buried in the ground? Or the other way around? They don’t explain. So I decided to put the stake in at a direction that I thought would be aesthetically pleasing. One thing I am absolutely sure about, though, is that a stake is necessary. Compared with the Leylandii roots, the apple tree roots were pretty feeble.

Then I dug up Charles Ross and moved him too.

I ended up positioning both trees slightly to the right of where I had originally planned to put them. Charles Ross was a bit too close to the hedge. I also pruned them both a bit, but not very much. I am very pleased with how the trees look. My garden is beginning at last to look like a garden again.

But the side fence now looks very exposed.

Moving the apple trees was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I thought the roots would be harder to cut through and that I would have difficulty lifting the trees and carrying them to their destination. What was quite difficult was the planting. It is quite hard to hold an apple tree upright while shovelling soil into its hole. It is also difficult if you want to see what the apple tree looks like from the patio before you commit to planting it that way round. The easiest way to deal with the soil is to heap it up all around the hole, and then scrape it into the hole with the side of your foot, while holding the tree up. When enough soil is in there to keep the tree vertical, you can then nip off and take a look from a distance.

However, despite the task being easier than I thought, I am now suffering from an assortment of aches and pains and have taken some ibuprofen. I hope that I will be recovered enough next week to either lay some stepping stones, or plant something else.

The apple trees are close to losing all their leaves.

This means it is time to start the removal process. This means digging the destination holes first, as it is important (1) to find out if the earth contains any just cause or impediment why I should not plant the trees in it and (2) to plant each tree as soon as possible after it has been dug up to minimise the chance of the roots drying out, getting frozen etc. It is very lucky for the Garden Renovation Project that this is such a mild autumn, as it looks as if I will get in at least another month’s digging before there is any chance of the soil freezing hard.

So I dug two holes. I put two sticks in them to simulate apple tree trunks and see how they would look.

I think I may have put the trees too close together. I don’t want to move the leftmost tree any closer to the hedge, so I may move the rightmost hole a little to the right. I will think about this next week.

If you were wondering why I don’t plant the trees in a line parallel to the hedge, it is mainly because there is a soakaway between the rightmost hole and the hedge. Also it will be necessary to get access to the hedge in order to trim it, so I don’t want to plant two trees right next to it. So the apple trees have to go parallel to the lawn edge. I may raise up the earth a little behind the rightmost tree and plant some small winter colour plants like cyclamen or pansies. Next winter. When I’ve finished digging.

The pictures are courtesy of my new Panasonic Lumix FS35. As long as I manage not to drop it in the pond, I expect it to supply many more blog pictures over the life of the project.

And now I am stalking the apple trees, ready to pounce the minute they go to sleep. While I am waiting, this is a good time to take stock of what I have achieved so far.

The hedge at the back is now about two feet taller than the fence at its highest point. I expect it to have grown another two feet by this time next year, and of course it should also thicken out considerably.

Behind the pond are stacked 20 bags of organic compost from The Compost Centre, ready for my autumn/winter planting. If you are wondering why I have put them around the Pieris, it is because the Pieris is a big plant in a lightweight pot, and it keeps getting blown over. The compost should put a stop to that.

The raised pond still contains only a dribble of water. This is because it has hardly rained at all since I painted it. The shallow pond also contains only a dribble of water. This is because I gave it a thorough cleaning after painting the render around the edge, so I could remove all loose bits of mortar and mortar dust. This involved also removing all the water that was in there at the time, in case it had lime in it.

Over to the right hand side of the garden, the lawn looks surprisingly verdant, as if it hopes that I will decide it would be a shame to dig it up and re-seed it. Nice try, lawn.

And the apple trees are still very leafy. My current estimate of digging up time is about a month from now, so 13th November.

Yes, I know, you wait three weeks for a blog post and then two come along at once. But I couldn’t resist this. As I was wandering around my garden after the third coat of pond waterproofing, I noticed that my Discovery apple tree was having another go.

I have been convinced for some time that many of the inhabitants of my garden are deranged, and this is clearly another one. I should not have been worried about my apple trees going biennial; this one wants to go biannual.

But it’s still going to get dug up in November.

My freezer is full of Discovery apples and the raspberries my parents kindly brought when they came to visit last weekend. I looked up on the Internet when the apples on my Charles Ross tree should be ripe, and all sources said September or October. Despite the obvious enormousness* of the apples so far, I had hoped that Charles would be able to hold off until perhaps the first week in September, but no – when I went into the garden this morning I found two of his apples lying on the ground. So I took a large bowl and picked all the others that were easy to twist off.

My point is that if only Charles had had an internet connection, he would have known not to produce any fruit until next week at the earliest, which would have given me a bit longer to eat some of the things in the freezer. But I have enough room to freeze what I have so far, and most of the apples look as if they are in good condition, so should keep for a few weeks while I work my way through all the yummy puddings. I also need it to stop raining for a bit so I can do some digging and create the need for some extra calories.

*Enormousness is the correct word. Not enormity. Although the freezer space is a problem, the tree is a nice tree and has not behaved atrociously.