I hauled home 11 trees, 6 apple, 2 plum, 2 peach, and a pear. Planning to add another pear and 2 cherry next month.

Go stock up !

Home Depot near me didn't have any fruit trees last week
But I'll make another pass just in case

Crap! Just got back from running errands and went to both stores, but did not look. I'll have to check it out tomorrow. Would love to have a cherry tree.

Im going all out planting these, i dig a hole 36" w x 36" deep, ( probable 3x bigger than needed, lol ) i put down 2 feet of rich black manure dirt, then set the tree on top, level with the top and fill around it. i dig up the manure dirt from the cow pasture. I probably use 500lbs of manure dirt for each tree. A full truck bed full only plants 3 trees if that tells you anything. I want them to do well, and grow fast, and that manure dirt is the best potting mix there is. I still need another pear tree, two cherry, and a grape vine, ill pick up this week sometime.

Im going back next month and clearing out whatevers left to plant on my hunting property,

Iv been working on planting fruit trees for over a month now. Recently i started planting them at my hunting location, which admittedly has some shitty assed soil.

Heres what  i have been doing when i plant trees over there.

1. Dig a big assed hole thru rock.
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2. bring in a truck load of really good dirt. a truck load is just enough to plant 2 trees.
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3. put in 2 feet of dirt, water it, drop in tree, and add another foot of dirt, water the mess out of it. put drain tile around the trunk to protect against rabbits, and add 4 t-posts to protect against deer.
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I still have all of these trees to plant because of you...

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i always thought paying for the trees was the biggest hurtle. nope, getting holes dug in my crappy soil is the biggest hurtle. i cant imagine how awesome it would be to just dig a 5 gallon bucket sized hole in 1 minute and drop a tree in like most people get to. id say the trees in my yard took 1 hour per hole to dig, and the hunting location is about 2 hours per hole. ugg.

iv planted 14 in the yard so far, and 3 at the hunting spot. still have 4 left to plant. next year im planning to put around 20 trees in at the hunting location. to make it easier im going to work in holes all this summer, and put good dirt into them... then next year i can plant a tree every 5 minutes in the prepared holes.

although my neighbor asked me if i was interested in selling my hunting spot. i gave him a fair price, and he just might buy it soon. everytime im over there i start talking about adding onto my range and his eye starts twitching.

Would you like to borrow my tractor/backhoe to dig the holes?  Kentucky soil is always full of clay and rocks but it is even worse now with it being so dry.  See my update in my thread in the Homestead forum. I tried planting perennials coming out of a 6" pots and gave up with the shovel so I used the backhoe up.  The reason I haven't planted my trees yet is I need to cut down the existing trees in the locations that I want to put them.  I have some dead trees and some invasive species trees that need to be removed first.  But the trees cost between $5 and $7 due to you posts, thank you for that.

id love too. lol. it would save me a ton of work.

im planning on digging about 40 more holes like the one pictured above later this summer to get them prepped for trees. that way next year when i buy the trees i can have one planted every 5 minutes in pre-prepped holes.  i doubt you want to drag your backhoe 3 hours across kentucky to dig those holes though.