a way to build a fence where you can't dig

we'd put off our deer fence for far too long, and neglected the buckwheat in the orchard pretty thoroughly too.  our cover crop became great cover for those four-legged, tick-ridden, bud-munching varmints, and our trees got a little browse.   wake up call to get that fence moving!

an easy snack...yes, there are (tiny) trees there.

our land is pretty uneven and rocky, and because the orchard is small and new the deer pressure is most likely due to proximity.   a couple dozen trees doesn't sound like a destination for a bunch of hungry deer - we just planted stuff in their path.   so we chose to use Tenax (tough plastic mesh fencing) supported by poly line, because it's so much easier to put up over rough terrain.    a charging buck won't bounce off this fence, so here's hoping they stay away.

our orchard is bounded on two sides by old rock walls.   they're most likely from 1800 or so, because they look like sheep fencing (all big stone, no little stuff that piles up around tilled land); and we've heard the walls pre-date the circa 1850 house next door.    200 years later, a lot of the original wall has collapsed and is buried in soil at the wall base - making it impossible to dig postholes.   so i came up with a way to fasten the posts to the rock - and while this approach is probably not unique, i haven't seen anything similar described anywhere.

assuming you've got granite or something similarly hard, you'll need a rotary hammer.   a regular chuck hammer drill won't cut it, it's got to be an SDS or spline-type hammer.   these drills hammer by pneumatics rather than cam action, so there's a lot more force.   i have a Makita HR3000C that i like a lot; it's an SDS Plus setup and for me goes about an inch a minute in granite with a 7/8 bit.   the Hilti you can rent at Home Depot will work fine too.
when you're drilling take care to protect your lungs - i use a fan to blow the dust away and wear a mask as well.   and don't put pressure on the drill, just let the weight do the work.

i use 4x4 pressure treated post, this method could work for round ones too.  for each post, i drill two holes, centered on adjacent post faces.  try to get the holes as plumb as possible, but don't fret, the pipe is easily bent in place.   1/2" galvanized steel pipe fits well in a 7/8" hole.   i drill the holes 10-12" deep, then fit 30" lengths of pipe with a hole drilled near the top and bottom of the exposed part.  

then, bend the pipes till they're plumb:

now put the post in place and line drill pilot holes for lag screws (it's mighty nice to have a helper for this step...holding a soggy wet PT 4x4 in place with your head is, well, dumb.  and i should know...)  i use 5/16 galvanized screws and they seem adequate - just be a little careful when torquing and you won't pop the head off:

and that's it for a line post.   not bombproof, but it's strong enough to hold the fence up.

    

the corners need to be a lot stronger,  i brace them with two 2x4's lagged to the post and pinned to a convenient rock, using 1/2 rebar for the pin.  9/16" hole is just right for rebar...but if you space out and use the 1/2" bit by mistake the pin will still go in with some pounding :^)   

it's easiest when you can place the pin horizontally; i use a slight angle so when the 2x4 is put on the pin it's forced against the stone.   

drill and place the pin in the stone first, drill the pin end of the 2x4 and put it on the pin, plumb the post and clamp the 2x4 to it, drill and lag screw the brace to the post.

in some places it's easier to have the pin along the length of the brace - or it may be your only choice.

  

a corner post pinned to just one big rock

 it's just a bit more finicky to go this route, but again you can bend the pin easily after it's placed.   eyeball the direction of the pin and drill the stone and place the pin, i go for about 6" engagement with the brace.    drill a 1/2" hole in the center of the end of the brace, bend the pin to match the approx brace angle, then place the brace and tweak the alignment to fit.    clamp and lagscrew as above.

and that's about it.

Did I say "total crop failure"?

There's always next year...our lone fruit dropped.

An Apple!

Our Belle de Boskoop on B9 actually set some fruit! (how it got pollinated is somewhat of a mystery.) we snipped all but one fruitlet...so we're just one apple away from complete crop failure :^)

Planted

Everything got moved...that could be moved. Two big spoiler rocks, each sitting directly where a standard should go, forced a change in plan. They're not that big, and a compact backhoe should've been able to move them. If only the machine we rented was actually as-advertised, and not a toy. So the rocks remain, and we had to move stuff around.

A month later and everything appears to have survived. Some of the dwarf trees actually look pretty good.

Still digging...

My little helper supervises transplanting the fillers - trees on mostly B9 rootstock we're setting in between our standards. Already I'm thinking about what a bummer it'll be to cut them...10 years from now.

It's easier to plant it once, when it's small...

Finally, we have all seven standards that were scattered about the yard transplanted to the orchard. All are on Antonovka rootstock. The biggest, a winter fameuse initially set three years ago, was actually relatively easy to relocate because the soil wasn't impervious to a shovel. The only problem was getting the resulting rootball out of the hole and 200 feet to the east...without something hefty to do the job, I made a snap decision to strip away the soil. We'll see how the tree recovers...

I might as well have blasted the remaining six out. They stayed in their temporary spots for two years and made varying degrees of progress in the extremely poor soil. There's so much rock, it's impossible to make any progress with a shovel; you have to pick away. It's essentially gravel with a little clay. Transplanting an intact rootball was practically out of the question, so I chose to bare-root the trees. It took a ton of careful digging in the gravel with bare hands and plenty of water to get them out. Hands were shredded, but much of the root structure was preserved. Again, we'll see how they fare...

Didn't you say we moved all the rocks?

Time to finally set out the orchard! Which should be straightforward ... except in our yard, where rocks grow over the winter. And grow exactly where a tree is supposed to go. After a little time with a shovel and bar, it became apparent that the old-fashioned approach would at least take all day, and maybe fail outright. Heavy equipment will save the day...eventually. So we'll be skipping the two rockupied spots for now. Even where big rocks aren't, plenty of little ones are, and digging is slow. Fortunately, the orchard space has far better "soil" than most of our land...

Time to move those trees, Dad

Almost time to transplant...our full southern exposure has thawed the ground pretty well, might be able to till the winter rye cover in soon.

The layout is coming together, we'll probably go with a hex style, where each row is offset half a pitch from the other. Some clever arrangement is in order to avoid the rocks that were too big for a medium-sized excavator to move.

Eventually we'll pack in a dozen or so standards and half a dozen semi-dwarfs, with a bunch of temporary dwarf fillers inter-planted for the short term.

Here's our current list:

Standards - Black Oxford, Canadian Strawberry, Baldwin, Northern Spy, Roxbury Russet, Starkey, Winter Fameuse

Semi-dwarf: Westfield Seek-No-Further

Dwarf fillers: Belle de Boskoop, Sweet Sixteen, Ashmead's Kernel, Gravenstein, Hubbardston Nonesuch, Spy, Esopus Spitzenburg, Roxbury, Golden Russet

Standards are all on Antonovka, the Westfield is on M7 (not sure that'll be a keeper), the fillers are B9, G16 and a couple G30.

Getting very excited to have everything in the orchard proper instead of scattered about our "yard"...

orchard plus snow, minus trees

looking out the window at the orchard space, with the temporarily planted standards on the right. they've been there for a couple seasons, we hoped to have them moved by now, drat. everything's fenced in to keep out the droves of deer that will arrive soon...