 Hey everyone I'm Rob Greenfield. Hey I'm Eric Joseph Lewis from Plant Path Nursery. And today we are going to teach you how to plant a community fruit or nut tree. And what I want to say first and foremost is don't be intimidated. Planting trees can sound like this big thing but it's actually really simple and we're going to show you how simple it is today. But also we're going to share some tips that are you know a little bit more of that mid-level or advanced as well to really try to have your trees be as successful as possible. But bottom line planting community fruit and nut trees is easy and we're going to show you how to do that today. So the first step to planting these Beirut trees is to dig your hole. I really love digging forks because they help us to create the hole without creating any soil compaction. If you only have a shovel definitely definitely use a shovel and that's one of those examples of like a little bit of a pro tip that'll help things just do a little bit better. And if you don't have a digging fork I highly recommend looking around your local thrift store or yard sale. I find these things for five bucks all the time. He's got the solutions. The solutions are always there with this. Very simple. Okay all right so as you can see we're not digging a massive hole. We got a little tree here. Pretty simple. Yeah eight to 12 inches is about all it takes with most Beirut trees. So we're going about a foot down and then how about width? How far are we going here? About 12 inches across so about 12 inches deep and 12 inches wide. And one thing about planting community fruit trees is wherever you are you'll be working with whatever soil there is there. So you know here in Asheville, North Carolina we're working in this spot with some clay but also some sandy soil and one of the keys to success is making sure to adapt to your environment and and working with the soils that you have. So the next tip is when you're putting your tree into the hole you want to make sure that the roots don't hook upwards because this upward pointing root is more prone to rot and disease and those diseases can then find their way through the entire tree. So make sure that all your roots are pointing down. You'll see our trees here are soaking in a half filled five gallon bucket of water and why do we want to have the the trees soaking and how long do we soak them for? You never want to soak your trees for more than six to eight hours so that's really just to super hydrate the roots prior to going into their holes and ideally you'll be planting on a rainy overcast day like today shortly after a rain or just before a rain. But if you're in an area without rain you've got to plant without rain simple as that. And the next step so now I've got the roots all carefully positioned and they're all pointing downwards and now we're just breaking up the native soil and putting it right back into the hole that it came from making sure to keep the collar of the tree just at the level of the ground. And what you'll notice here Eric said native soil. What native soil means is whatever the soil is here. So we're filling this hole back in with just the soil that we dug up. We're not adding anything to this hole except the tree and the native soil right from where we dug it out. One little tip is when you're digging your holes don't spread your soil all over because then you won't be able to get it back. You'll see Eric made this neat little you know pile right next to the to the hole so that way you can easily move the soil back into the hole. Another note is you'll see like with this clay that we're breaking it up into small pieces. We want to do that so that you know you're not having these big air gaps or anything like that in there. And as we go we're gently kind of tamping the soil down so that those air pockets that Rob just mentioned are going to get pressed out and settled in. You'll also notice that we're leaving a little bit of space here near the top because our next step is going to be weed suppression. The tree is now planted and it was very simple but I just want to reshare a couple of points. First we only filled the hole in with the native soil so we didn't add anything to the hole. As we were doing that you know here in clay soil we broke that up and then we only buried the tree up to the collar. You don't want to bury the tree deeper that can ultimately result in your trees dying and that's one of the most common mistakes I would say new tree planters make right. Yeah absolutely agree. So making sure that you're planting the tree at the native soil level at the tree collar. And then one last little tip what we did is we pulled the grass back around the tree some just to prevent this grass from being able to overtake the tree so that'll help you with reducing your weeding later on. And now the next step is what's above the native soil and so what's next? Next is the same reason that we pulled the grass away. We want to suppress weeds and prevent other things from growing immediately around this chestnut because they will compete for both water and nutrients and that can lead to your tree drying out and prolonged droughts. Now my favorite material to use for weed suppression is definitely scrap boards from lumber mills but you can also get burlap sacks from local coffee roasters or the most common resource for most folks is going to be cardboard. And so we'll just put this cardboard down so that it's right up to the edge of the tree and make sure that it's as tight as possible to the tree. And then next we want to give our tree a little bit of fertility just to give it that boost and that extra head start as it's establishing. There you see that's about two gallons of good nice rich compost and this is an excellent kind of soil. And the reason that we put this on top rather than mixing it into the whole is because we want these nutrients to percolate in slowly and we want the roots to be fully accustomed to the native soils because the soil is only going to get worse the further down this tree goes. More compaction, more clay and so we want to keep all the nutrients on top. For more long-term weed suppression I like to plant in support species and one of my favorite plants to help support establishing trees is comfries and phytomaficinale. So we'll just take a few of these roots and we'll tuck them right into this compost around the top and this way instead of having weeds that compete for nutrients we'll have comfrey pulling up the nutrients and then we can come back and chop off those leaves and use them for further weed suppression. And one thing to keep in mind is you don't need comfrey but it's really nice to have so if you can get your hands on some comfrey you can get it really inexpensively and it's it's really going to help with the success of the trees if you can do it. Absolutely and other great support species include stinging nettle, yarrow, and anything that establishes a dense ground cover underneath the base of your tree. So next up we're going to go with mulch after the compost is mulch and there's a lot of free ways to get mulch one of the easiest is leaves these are just leaves that we raked up today and then another one is wood chips wood chips and you can find this as a free product as well as well. So either one is good so we've done about a five gallon bucket of leaves and a five gallon bucket of wood chips and there's a couple really important reasons why you want to do this it's weed suppression it is moisture retention to reduce the possibility of these being damaged by drought it's also creating fertility all of this breaks down into fertility building soil. One thing just other thing to mention is that you'll notice that it's almost more about what's above the hole than much below the hole so you can get by with less but doing this is going to really ensure the success of these trees. Yeah so now that we've added all this organic matter and compost and wood chips we've brought the level up well above the collar so we want to be sure to push all of that away to where the collar is not at all getting buried by our by our organic matter and mulching. And a really simple way I like to remember that is doughnut not volcano that's what I learned as a beginner planter so you'll see we've kind of created a doughnut and some people they plant up into a volcano and you don't want to do the volcano you always want to have a doughnut. So yeah now the next step is to make sure that this beautiful baby tree doesn't get munched to death by the deer as soon as it starts putting out leaves in the spring so we're going to need some kind of protection. Deer are the animal that are most likely to eat your plants that you're protecting them against but Eric what what other animals are we protecting against with these protectors? Well there's certainly groundhogs can be formidable foes when the trees are young even up to head high they'll pull down a flexible sapling and eat every leaf off of it there are a number of different rodents that will chew off the bark and suck sap out of the tree until it dies and so that's why I like to rely on hardware cloth rather than chicken wire if I'm going to be making my own tree tubes and because chicken wire the holes are bigger and those rodents can get right in and out it's like an open door for them but this hardware cloth is too small for most any rodent to get through and these are going to be on for about at least two years yeah minimum of two years so they're going to be on there for a while so you got to stake them in Eric's going to show us uh using the hardware cloth first and when he says planter this is actually a specific brand that you can buy and it's one that you recommend yeah it's one that we've been using for a couple years at plant path and it's working out well so far but there's other sources of purchasing these as well absolutely and some of them are just smaller you know so they'll be only two feet tall like this hardware cloth and that's fine because as the tree gets taller you can just put a second layer of hardware cloth on to prevent deer from nibbling your leaves and so we've got the the hardware cloth around and then we would just want to secure this to the to the stake yeah and to do that I typically use some kind of heavy duty twist tie and like you can see this one is pretty thick and double wired but there's also a fencing wire that you can buy very inexpensively simple as that so next up is the tree tube yep and so we just very simply take the twist ties off and we carefully tuck the tree into the tube so now your tree is planted has weed suppression fertility and protection from the animals all that's left to keep in mind is the watering when these trees are bare root and they're just getting established you're going to want to make sure that they get water at least twice a week by planting in the spring or fall time you kind of ensure that the weather is going to take care of most of the watering for you but if you live in a drier climate you're going to want to keep an eye on that and in the middle of long hot summers you want to check on your trees regularly to see if the leaves are starting to wilt or droop at all that generally takes about 10 days at 75 plus degrees and it's always good to go and visit your trees as often as possible because as some of my great gardening friends often say the best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow so spend lots of time with your trees and love I mean that's the same thing it's like being here loving them spending time with them it's the it's the reason we're planting these trees so make sure that you're visiting them ideally you're adding compost and mulch at least once a year yeah yeah at least once a year and you can definitely do it twice a year and weeding to keep this area you know clean so that the trees don't have competition and spending time with them is absolutely key so we're really excited for you to plant your community fruit and nut trees and we are so appreciative for you being a part of this now this covered really what you need to know but we cover everything at community fruit trees dot org and you can also email us for that one-to-one communication and support to have things uh to to ensure the success of your trees so we love you happy growing with your community fruit and nut trees and we want to see your trees as soon as you have planted them so send us little videos send us photos so that we can spread the abundance and spread the love for community fruit and nut trees congratulations to all of you on receiving your community fruit and nut trees this is a very exciting time so much good food to come in your community now if you can't plant your trees right away which probably most of you won't you have to heal them in to store them temporarily so i'm going to show you how to do that it's super simple it's basically just burying them in the soil for the short term until you can plant them so you have your trees here are the bare root trees and a couple of quick important things you want to keep these roots protected that's the purpose and in between taking them out and putting them in the ground you also want to keep them protected avoid exposing them to sunlight as much as possible and then secondly keep them out in the air for as little time as possible from when you're transferring them to when you are healing them in so it's really important to protect the roots roots don't spend time in the sunlight and air they like to be underground so healing them in is really simple and it comes down to just digging a hole or a trench so i'm going to do that so i've dug a hole very simple nothing fancy whatsoever i grabbed my trees and they can stay in their bunch just like this set them in there leaning is totally fine and then just cover them up with that dirt and then simply step on there gently just to kind of make them nice and snug in there just a gentle step not all of your weight and they are now stored that's going to keep them safe until you can go ahead and plant them you could let them sit here for you know days a couple weeks but definitely get them planted as soon as you can to start the community fruit and nut tree journey we're excited to be on this journey with all of you and excited to see these grow these trees growing and producing a bounty of food for your community in the years to come