Apple-maintenance day is often my favorite time of the month. And not just because I find beauties like this hidden amid the weeds.

Spending a few hours manipulating and experimenting with perennials is simply rewarding. Here, I'm stooling one of our apple rootstocks in hopes I'll be able to graft onto homegrown roots next spring. (Because I'm in sore need of more apple trees...right?)

Meanwhile, this year's experiment of planting buckwheat within the rows between young apple trees is already deemed a resounding success. As you can see, it looks like I let this row go to weeds. But half an hour spent ripping out buckwheat and stacking the plants at the base of each tree (then replanting the cover crop in the gaps) provided nearly instant mulch. I can feel the soil turning darker nearly before my eyes.

I even had a little time left after taking care of the apples (and trimming the goat hooves) to go check on my willow cuttings. The ones I'd stuck right up close to the trailer and then hidden behind mushroom logs had spotty success, but all of the ones out in the open survived...even though the soil there is terrible and I forgot to keep the weeds at bay. Okay, so Mark did accidentally mow one of the eight plants down since my mulch was pretty much nonexistent, but that doesn't mean we didn't have 100% rooting success first. I applied a quick newspaper kill mulch then snipped off the lower limbs to train each new willow tree to a central leader, preparing for my plan of building with living trees.

And that's the highlights of my fun morning with the trees (and turtles). I can hardly wait until tree day next month! (Yes, you only get one Arbor Day per year, but I treat myself to twelve Tree Days. I'm spoiled that way.)

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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