HOw To FRUIT TREES PLANTED IN RAISED BED ORCHARD

Saturday my only goal was to get the fruit trees in their raised beds...

...but as you can see, I was fighting against the elements.  This was the sky when I first got there.  A race against time, ha.  

The first thing I noticed, and should have remembered would happen, was that the soil I put in over the last few weekends had settled.  But no problem, I had a plan.  I started by turning the soil and digging a bit of a hole.

Then I pulled each tree out of the plastic container it had been in and fluffed up the roots.  I set the root ball down into the hole.  This is where I had to improvise a plan.  Because of the settling of the soil, I did not plant the trees all the way down to the ground level underneath the raised bed because it would put the graft line of the tree below the current soil line and the sides of the bed.  So I had to kneel down and look to see that the graft would be as close as possible to above the eventual soil level.

Then I mounded up the soil around it, pulling soil from the sides of the bed.  It's hard to tell in this photo but the soil mound in the middle is as high as the sides...now I'll just have to add soil around each tree, level it off and the bed will be full again, giving the roots as much room as possible to "do their thing".

Raised bed with fruit tree

I got them all planted in between light rain showers. Lastly, I put some screws on each side to be able to temporarily tie them off so they don't blow over in any storms this week when the soil is not as full as it should be.  I need to find a more permanent way to do this that is safer for the tree

(don't want the twine to dig into the bark).  

Any suggestions?

Raised beds with fruit trees

This was the best picture I could get of them before the rain hit, not to mention, an overcast day never lets you take the best pictures.

We now have eight fruit trees:

Two Apple - Dorsett Golden and Ein Shemer

Two Peach - Florida King and Rio Grande 

Two Plum - Bruce and Methley

Two Pear - Kieffer and Orient

It was raining pretty steadily and I had to get to the car to get the camera and other items put up so they wouldn't get wet.  Then I packed up and left for the day.  I wanted to do some other things in the garden as well, but really my only goal was the orchard.  

It's funny, we feel weird calling it an "orchard", but we figure that's the best way to refer to it when identifying something by location on the property.  

Now we wait...