Every Year between mid-November and late December, tree planting is in full swing on our farm.  The late fall months are the best time of the year for successful tree planting and establishment here in North Carolina and we take full advantage of them.



This year, we planted about 80 trees on our farm.  Some of them were fruit trees that we added to our orchard (2 each of cherry, Asian pear and pear) .  Others were trees that we planted to enhance the wildlife habitat value of our land.



 In the middle of two of our fields, we planted  tree "islands" of approximately 30 trees each-- wildlife dislike trees planted in rows--they like dense, wide plantings, so we made blocks of trees rather than straight lines of them.  The trees that we planted in our tree islands were selected for their ability to produce food for wildlife (and humans!) and their wildlife housing value:  green ash, red mulberry, persimmon, chinese chestnut, black walnut and wax myrtle topped our list this year. 



We bought all of these trees from the NC Forest service nurseries and they were delivered directly to our house as bareroot seedlings.  We planted them a put a tree guard around each one to protect it from rodent damage and put bright pink flagging tape on the seedlings in order to make them very visible so that we don't mow them by accident this summer.