 It's autumn and it's the time of year we might start thinking about what trees we might be planting this winter and This is one that we planted last year. It's a It's a gauge called old green gauge kind of plum and we put it here There was a bunch of things we thought about when we were thinking about where to put the different fruit trees that we have planted last year and I'd like to just take a couple of minutes to go through those different things So when you're planting trees, you also know what to think about and the first one of course is climate you need to be choosing trees that will grow where you live and In Britain that means things like plums and apples and pears in particular maybe cherries and so on Plums like it a bit drier. We live in Cornwall. It's quite wet So we've decided that plums and gauges need to be in the best Climates to the the sunniest spot So we've chosen this particular one because it's the sunniest micro climate So you're looking at the overall climate, but also the micro climates on your site the next thing we want to be thinking about is space because Fruit trees are often big trees and we put them onto rootstocks to make them smaller so we can fit them into our gardens This is on what's called a semi-dwarfing rootstock and you can see it's already quite big They should grow to about four meters across and three or four meters high And these we've chosen semi-dwarfing rootstocks for all of the fruit trees we planted last year But we need to be thinking when we plant a tree it's going to be small when we plant it But we have to imagine it its full size and make sure that where we plant it will have enough space around it So we planted this so that we will always have room to get around the outside of it We want to be thinking about do we have Desire lines across our site for animals like deer who might come and nibble our trees We also want to be thinking about Plants as well and other trees that might be competing so behind us here. We have a woodland. That's to the north So this tree is in plenty of Suns you can see even now the Sun is Dipping almost below the horizon to the west and we've still got sunshine. It's a sunny spot But there's the potential for competition from these trees and particularly if you've got trees like willow or poplar or ash Which do have a habit of feeding quite close to the surface at some distance from the trees We're less concerned here and the benefits of these trees is that there will be a mycorrhizal fungal relationship between the trees and Those fungi will be coming out some degree into the grassland here So we're hoping to plug this fruit tree into that existing network, which will benefit it Another thing we want to think about is Access so in permaculture we think about zoning, which is how close things are to our main hub of activity which is the home and For us because our site is quite small. That's not really that significant We come up here every day pretty much to see the trees on our way by so but if you've got a larger site You might be thinking about how far away from your Lines of activity your trees might be and bear that in mind the other thing to think about in terms of accessibility of course is slope because a steep slope makes it much more difficult to Get around a tree to manage it to prune it to harvest it and so on and so forth And that takes us on nicely to water as well because when we're establishing trees They're going to need a certain amount of water just in that first year or so And of course some trees will tolerate more moisture than others so pears for instance They're happier with more moisture than perhaps a plum would be But generally accessibility to water so do you have a water supply nearby or tank that you could easily irrigate your trees from We're talking about water. We also need to think about soil and Perhaps for you your soil might be consistent across your site particularly if it's a fairly small site We have two different kinds of soil on our site here curiously even though it's only about half an acre There's a silty loam up here, and then there's clay quite a lot of clay further down you might also be thinking about the depth of your soil and Also when we're thinking about planting we might be considering things like pH as well There's different plants like different degrees of alkalinity and acidity There's a couple more things that we've been thinking about one of them is utilities Which is particularly significant here because this lawn area here has a water pipe running across it And when we identified a place we were going to plant a tree we dug the hole and we Met this concrete thing where the water pipe was so we had to move the tree on that basis so Obviously bear that in mind and also Look above as well because if you've got cables running overhead and you're growing a tree that might get quite big Then in time you might have problems with the tree fouling the cable so The last thing we might want to think about is views For us we love looking at fruit trees anyway But it may be that you say this is a particularly great view and we don't want to put a tree in front of it and Spoil it from that perspective so bear that in mind We planted this tree a year ago, and we've had all that time to Observe it over that time consider. Did we put it in the right place all of these factors that we were considering? we now know perhaps a little bit more about because we've been here for an extra year and We are happy with where our trees are but there's always the opportunity to reconsider a year on and Move a tree because if you planted it one year Then it's not that much bigger the following year and you could move it if you really had to so I hope that's been helpful And if you want to see how we planted tree and why we spend a whole hour doing it Then I've got a separate video on that that you can watch the link is below