The Great Orchard Fiasco (Or: Why Trees Have Commitment Issues)
There is a distinct medical condition I like to call Catalog Blindness. It hits you in the late winter when you’re staring at gorgeous glossy photos of pristine orchards, and you think, “Yes. I will become a person who harvests organic, sun-warmed cherries and crisp apples in my spare time. It will be so poetic.”
Fast forward to delivery day. Two bare-root trees arrive. If you’ve never seen a bare-root tree, it doesn’t look like life; it looks like a collection of very expensive, aggressive-looking sticks.
We had a plan: an apple tree and a cherry tree, side by side, a beautiful marriage of stone fruit and pome.
Then came the digging.
The Dig
If you want to test the structural integrity of your relationship, your lower back, or your sanity, try digging a hole “twice the width of the root ball” in New England soil. I am convinced our property sits directly on top of an ancient, buried stone fortress. Every thrust of the shovel yielded a metallic CLANG that reverberated straight up my spine.
By hour two, the “poetic orchardist” aesthetic was completely gone. I was covered in mud, arguing with a rock the size of a microwave, and Ralph was at the greenhouse probably sensing the disturbance in the horticultural force.
The Nurturing (The Helicopter Parent Phase)
We finally got them in the ground. The apple tree looked cautiously optimistic. The cherry tree looked like it was actively planning its estate.
Thus began the Helicopter Parent phase of tree ownership.
Fruit trees are dramatic. They are the theater majors of the plant world. If it rains too much, they pout. If it’s too dry, they drop a leaf just to make you feel guilty. I found myself walking out to the yard every morning with my coffee, whispering threats and sweet nothings to a stick.
“Look at your neighbor, the apple tree,” I’d tell the cherry. “She’s pushing buds. What is your plan here?”
Then come the pests. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve engaged in psychological warfare with a Japanese beetle or spent twenty minutes explaining to a local deer that the expensive netting is not a hair accessory, and the tree is not a snack bar.
The Moral of the Story
We are currently in year two. There are no pies yet. There are no bountiful baskets overflowing with fruit like a Dutch Renaissance painting. But the “sticks” have officially decided to live. They have leaves. They are stubborn, we are stubborn, and honestly, that’s half the battle of planting anything.
If you’re thinking about planting a fruit tree, do it! Just buy a really good shovel, prepare to talk to wood, and accept that the trees are in charge now. You’re just the landlord.
There is nothing more rewarding than picking an apple or cherries a tree you grew or cherries
