Here come the trees......here come the trees

Yesterday we started unloading the first of the fruit trees for this year. Peaches, plumcots, nectarines and fruiting mulberries now fill the back area by the rose garden. Over the next couple of weeks we will see the addition of all your other favorites. These trees are actually grown "For Us" by Kitchen’s Gardens. Located on the other side of the hill by Auburn, their growing grounds are very similar to our altitude and climate, well maybe not quite as cold, but the perfect temperature for the trees acclimation to our valley. In the late summer of last year we gave a list to Stacey & Rollen of what trees we would like to see this year. They buy in the bareroot and plant them up for us and water and talk to them until it is time to deliver them over the hill to our nursery. They are planted in peat pots, and if we lived in a wet location you could just plant the whole pot into the ground. Here we have to take the extra step of removing as much of the pot as possible once it gets into the ground. We will go over all of the planting how-to’s when you come in.

The other thing I was really excited to see when he arrived ~~ we had asked them to grow another crop for us. We have not been able to fill the requests the past couple of years for Flowering Almond Shrubs. These beauties, in both pink and white flowers, can fill an area with abundant flowers in early spring. While some growers now consider them "out of style", we still have many people searching for them. They are a perfect plant for our dry alkaline soils similar to a forsythia as far as blooming time and hardiness. They just bloom a whole lot more. Small tiny flowers envelope the entire stem from top to bottom. This picture shows Rollen standing next to the huge specimens that he has planted up for us. I know that at least 4 will be gracing my property this year. I have wanted some for quite awhile myself since admiring them around town in some of the older more established landscapes. They were only able to get their hands on 40 for us, so if you want me to hold one, just give us a call or email us.

The arrival of the fruit trees also signals much ~ much more to come....and today it starts. I am heading down to the nursery in a few to help Marlea with the unloading of the first major truckload of flowering trees that we picked out at the nursery in California last week. More on those and our new "Stonehenge" project later. See you soon, Susan