I got a question on our facebook page from John about planting fruit trees in the Anoka Sand Plain.  My answer got too long so I am putting it here:

John I can tell you what I have done and plan to do.  take it with a grain of salt because we just moved here and just planted fruit trees this year…

compost:  i priced out compost from plaisted and the price was quite a bit higher than the municipal place in coon rapids. that might change if you were ordering larger quantities than i did.  if you go with them i’d ask plaisted if they have tested their compost and can send you the report. i also bought some greensand for micronutrients and water retention and rock phosphate for phosphorus.  I’m pretty sure fruit trees in the rose family like their phosphorus.

fruit trees:  from what i’ve read its not a good idea to get dwarfs in the cold windy sandy area we live in.  we ordered semi-dwarfs.  i had trouble finding the varieties i wanted locally, but getting them from a good local nursery would be ideal (if they have some brand name tag on them i assume they were brought in by the nursery and in that case I’d ask them where they were grown).  make sure to get disease resistant varieties.  our crabapple trees had some nasty apple scab this year.  i got one late ripening keeper and one early variety.

i wanted to get rid of the grass around our fruit trees.  it competes with their roots.   after mowing low around the area for a couple weeks i sheet mulched with compost, leaves, wood chips and cardboard this fall, but ideally this would be done along with planting.  i made sure not to mulch too high trees don’t like that, but keep in mind if sheet mulching it should shrink quite a bit over time.

this year we will plant nutrient accumulators, nitrogen fixing cover crops and beneficial insect attracting herbs and flowers under the fruit trees.  i will not be spraying our trees except for a an oily solution early in the spring (i found the recipe in The New Self-Sufficient Gardener).  the plants in the understory of the trees will be the pest management.  not sure if you have heard of this before it is based on the idea of apple tree guilds.

hope that helps – thanks!

When I look out my office window, the first thing I see is a 2′ mound of snow, sparking from the fresh flakes that fell yesterday. But the seed catalogs have been coming in (we left for a week over the holidays, and came home to at least 10 new garden catalogs!), so we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about this year’s garden plans.

One of the things I love to do every winter is draw out my garden. You can click here to view the full sheet as a PDF, with some of the varieties I’m thinking about.

I want to expand my perennial herb beds, stretching them across two rows on either side of the arbor. I have catnip, sage, thyme, and chives in them right now. I also planted a lot of daisies in the beds last year, which I am planning to transplant this spring to the ends of each of the rows.

My aunt gave me a butterfly house for Christmas this year, so I am thinking of adding some butterfly-attracting perennials to the center of my garden, on either side of the main path. Or, I may put the house out by the fruit trees, since Chris has plans for adding some native plants to the “apple guild”.