This past week, we made an enormous push to complete various project is our backyard. We both felt the ever impending fall rains and eventual mud pit on the horizon, and it motivated us to rally and get things done. So last Sunday after our hot air balloon ride, we arrived home and went straight to work!

“The Wedge” as we like to call it is located on the right side of our house and is an area that we weren’t entirely sure what to do with. But after months of conversation, we finally came up with a plan.

And the plan was Espaliers!

We both loved the idea of having fruit trees, but always struggled about where to plant them since we wanted to make sure to maintain our view. After many pondering discussions, my Dad made the recommendation that we look into espaliers. Espaliers are fruit trees that you train to grow into a desirable shape, in our case, they’ll become almost like a vegetative fence along our gravel path.

So while I shoveled and wheeled in bark dust to “the wedge,” The Renaissance Man started digging a hole for our apple tree.

We dug a huge hole because we wanted to make sure we could replace some of the soil surrounding the tree with more nutrient rich soil. We then filled the hole with water and some transplant fertilizer and let it set for a while so the water could soak in.

Doesn’t that yummy soil look good?

We straightened out our apple tree and then filled in the hole.

Three cheers for the soaker hose!

One really neat thing about our espalier is that each branch is a different variety of apple. Our tree has Fuji Apples, Gala Apples, Red Macintosh Apples, Yellow Delicious Apples, Yellow Transparent Apples, and Gravenstein Apples. When we talked with the gardener at Al’s Garden Center, we learned that Yellow Delicious Apples are universal pollinators which is why each type of espalier will always have a Yellow Delicious Apple grafted onto the tree.

And of course, I completed my part of the job by spreading out the rest of the bark dust in “the wedge.”

I think The Renaissance Man and I both felt pretty accomplished by planting our first tree in the yard. We’ll be adding two more espaliers into the wedge space; one more apple tree and a pear tree!

I’m already looking forward to our fruit harvest next summer. If only the last two holes would dig themselves!