The beginning of our small orchard

I posted yesterday that we bought home the first of our tree babies, so I thought I better continue the story, and let you know what happened next.

We were still on a 'retail high' - you know that buzz you get when you buy something that you think is going to make your life better in some unrealistic, delusional way! So when we started discussing where we would put our new babies and making sure we had space for the mandarin that we will have to pick up later, we noticed that if we did a 'bit more' clearing we could actually get 7 trees in! We are planning to put a tree in the middle of every panel of the fence.

Unpacking our new dwarf babies!

The BIG moment!

Missy Moo doing a spot of rhythmic gymnastics in front of the royal gala (left) and peacharin (right) trees.

Horsing around with the rope from the tree packaging in front of one of the newly cleared sections.

Our Pinkabelle in the newly cleared space.

Perry's gave us an info sheet to help us with the care of our new dwarf babies. I was surprised that we only need to water them in when planting and then not water them until they start getting leaves. We also need to do some copper spray to prevent leaf curl, which we will do at the beginning of August.

We have three spaces for more space for trees, feel free to leave a comment about what you think we should get!

A trip to an orchard

It was another beautiful Adelaide day yesterday, so we made the most of it by driving to the semi-countryside to visit an orchard. We headed to McLaren Flat (near the famous wine region, unfortunately no time for tasting today!) to check out the very popular Perry's Fruit & Nut Nursery. A number of my friends had recommended the trip and we were not disappointed!

The staff there are great. They helped us out with choosing trees that would give us fruit spread out over the year. They also helped us with cross pollinating apples and choosing trees that would suit the size of our garden.

It was so much fun dreaming about what food we could be producing in two years! In the end we chose:
Pinkabelle, which is a dwarf Pink Lady Apple, which has a gorgeous shape.
A dwarf Royal Gala, another popular apple which will grow to about 1.5 metres.
A peacherine (also known everywhere else except South Australia as a yellow flesh nectarine!) which will stand at about 2 metres.

Missy Moo appropriately eating an apple and playing in the orchard.

Perry's made it so easy to transport the trees as they remove the soil and then place them in saw dust  and wrap them together.

We really wanted to get a mandarin tree as well, but unfortunately they didn't have any in stock.... oh well I guess I will have to take another trip down to the lovely orchard and maybe pick up a few extra trees while we are there!

If you had space for an orchard which fruit trees would you choose?

Photography by Missy Moo- shame the model didn't put much effort into her pony tail!