fruit trees in the ground

After weeks of front yard digging, tree removal, Japanese maple relocation, leveling, backfilling, and rock hauling I finally reached the point where I could plant the fruit trees that had been heeled in for three weeks.

Looking out from the front porch they are, left to right, a 4x1 apple (Queen Cox, Belmac, Rubinette, Pristine), a 4x1 Asian pear (Shinseiki, Yinashi, Hamese, Mishirasu), a 4x1 European pear (Orcas, Rescue, Highland, Harrow Delight), and a self-fertile Mount Royal plum. They went in on about the 7th of March.

I got them all as bare root trees from Raintree on a visit to the nursery. They look pretty good but could use some pruning to clean out some inward growth and to get some of the grafts in better balance. Unfortunately they are already budding so I may need to wait for the new growth to reach a few inches. I don't know very much about pruning yet.

I have pulled so many rocks out of the ground while digging holes in Seattle that I could personally reconstruct a glacier's ass. It looks like the Japanese maple is going to survive, at least.