Planting Our First Chateau Garden Trees | French Chateau Garden DIY

This week Ian and I continue cleaning around the Chateau Garden. We visit a local fruit tree specialist to answer some of our questions and we finally plant our first trees in the garden. So we're back in the garden and we have a lot to do this week. Unfortunately we couldn't reserve the mulch today so we decided to put that off till tomorrow and today we're going to try measuring out where the cypress trees are going to be planted because we're also doing that this week. We are going to grab some bamboo sticks and use them as placeholders. We're going to measure them equidistance from the border which we noticed that in the fountain photo from the 1600s it was a round fountain and very square or rectangle quadrants in the garden but they changed that when they turned the fountain into an octagonal shape. So instead of bringing the trees in right at the corners of the garden rectangles we are going to bring them in a little bit so that they can stay symmetrical on all sides. While the sun is still out and Archaea's here we're gonna get going. Perfectly fine. Right. Good girl. So we just placed these bamboo sticks where we want the cypresses to go and we measured a right angle off of each corner about 90 centimeters off and that is a shovel. One of our bamboo sticks was not being cooperative. Yes I think it looks pretty good right? Yeah it looks pretty good. I would still like to see what it looks like from the Shad's shovel view. Okay so we're sticking with 90-90? 90-90. Okay let's go dig some holes. All right. Good girl. I'm not my friends is how it's done. She's doing a good job. She's doing a great job. I don't know what I found. So I was getting bored of digging the last tree hole there and then I found whatever this is. I mean I'm not about to try to dig this whole thing up I'm just curious to see where it goes because it looks like this stops right where that stops. Yeah. So I wonder if on that side. Why did you even think that there was anything there? Because I could see a little bit of this line peeking through right here. Uh-huh. So I followed it and then it stopped so I was like I'm just gonna try digging right here and then I found cobblestone. Okay it's like a half circle. It might be something like that. Coming up to here? I could see maybe just like a yeah like a big arch of cobblestone. I don't know why they would do that. Now we have to wait for the cypresses to Yes. And we have a whole new mission. I'm tired just thinking of it. Anymore digging. I prefer to find other places in the field to have more space for the varieties. And at the same time I would like it to become something that is magical, that we want to walk around in it. Yes, to get to the landscape, to get to see something that is out of this world. And I'm going to try to do something a little more permaculture. No, no, but that's possible. But then you have to change the rifle of the shoulder. You have to start with half a stem. Half a stem, that's it. That's it. French four-square. Exactly, put cypresses that will make the length in the middle. Okay. And then I would like to put a fig tree in the center. Yes, yes. Probably four, so that it is symmetrical. Yes. Especially that the fig tree has the advantage that it does not have any inflorescence. It's very weird. So far, it was the only fig tree that we couldn't graft. Oh yes? It was impossible because the sap is latex. So it's very complicated because it's a hollow wood with latex. So it's not a sap. So it was very complicated. Sure, we would like a good variety. We would like cherries, apples, pears. I haven't seen peaches on your list. Yes, so that's it, I've been doing it since this year. Because this morning we prepared them at home. We do peaches, but we don't do them before. Yes. Or pomegranates, for example. Yes, great. With the leaves. Cherry, cherry. How long does it take to get to that size? There? 20 years. 20 years. In 20 years, it's like that. When it's like that, it's going to produce eight times, ten times more than if you go on something that is danish. OK. In 20 years, per tree, it's 400 kilos of fruit. Yes. On the other hand, what is fair is to take fruits that are not found in the trade. My grandmother, she loves to bake apples. Ah yes, with the red boscopes or with the old gray reines or with the beautiful flowers of Argonne, that's it. Yes. That's the apples. Baking apples is exceptional. Yes. So for her, I would especially like to take a pomegranate like that. In fact, that's the question you have to ask yourself. This is the place we have, what kind of tree we want to make according to them, and then what transformation is envisaged for these fruits. Ah yes, we cut it. Yes, I see that. I see that you are having fun. So these types of trees can produce like 200 kilos of fruit, whereas this one would produce only like 40 kilos of fruit. It would stay smaller and closer to the peak, but it's a much smaller amount, and so it'll be a much smaller tree as well. Do you make tea out of orchids for trees or fruit trees? It's an excellent foliar fertilizer, but it can also be a powerful insecticide for bugs and all that. Yes. The earplugs eat 200 bugs a day. Ah yes? And just to make a little pot with the skin and turn it over. Look how it lives in there. Ah yes. You see? It's a shelter for everyone. These are the old nests of the earplugs. And if it's a shelter there, it doesn't need to find the infractions in the tree, nothing. We can do a lot of things without having to go through chemistry. Yes. It is imperative that the distances are well respected so that we have the perfect quincunx. Yes. You know that the most beautiful fig collection we've ever had was in Versailles under Louis XIV. And so, and when he died, three days later, we burned down this whole collection. That's not true. So why did we burn it? Because they had enough of it in the chestnut bins to get the figs out, get the figs in, get the figs out. They couldn't take it anymore, guys. Because after the bins, you have to pack them. Well yes, that's for sure. The akane, which are Japanese apples, that we eat the first week of July, of September, which are red apples like the manches, shiny like tomatoes. You bite into it. Oh, it's the smell of the apple. It's exceptional. But on September 15, you bite into it and you're going to tell me, but these apples are disgusting. But it's horrible, it's all floury, it doesn't taste good. But no, you had to eat them the week before. Durée de la pomme, trois semaines. D'accord? Arrivez le 15 octobre, vous mangez la pomme, c'est même les piaf ici, les mézanges n'en veulent plus. Et dernière question, on a pas mal de sangliers qui viennent. Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu. Et ben il va falloir prendre des chasseurs alors. Moi ici j'ai pas de chances. C'est vraiment un problème. Ah oui, c'est un problème parce qu'ils vont venir frotter, tout labourer, tout défoncer. C'est vraiment compliqué. Alors, est-ce qu'ils viennent dans ces parcelles-là que vous avez? Du coup, on mettra un grillage électrique. Ah oui, il faut absolument mettre une clôture électrique. Donc, j'ai un gros, gros souci avec les chevreuils, mais j'ai trouvé des huiles essentielles qui me les éloignent parfaitement bien et que ça fonctionne très, très bien. Bon, ben voilà, j'ai trouvé une solution 100% naturelle qui n'esquinne pas mes armes. Mais bon, je pense qu'on a un bon liste de choses à faire. On va savoir ce qu'on va prendre prochainement. On va mesurer. J'attends les mesures et après, je vous dis combien vous avez le droit de cerisier, combien vous avez le droit de... Du reste. Parfait. All right. OK, so we have a wood chipper and today we're going to try to clean up our mess from last week because we have a lot of things that need to be chipped. And with those chippings, we will be creating a mulch that we're going to lay on the garden as a weed suppressor so that it'll be easier to plant in the springtime. And hopefully we'll have enough to do the big squares, but I kind of doubt it. No way, no. Big squares are massive. Just the little racing stripes. At least the racing stripes. All right. Really? OK, so that's... We're doing great. This is going to be a great day. We got like half of one stick. I know our chaos. Yeah, I know. Yeah, you would be a better mulcher. Yes, you would. We're done. Ish. Ish. We have to return the wood chipper now, but we were able to complete most of it and we are thoroughly exhausted. It's been a very long day. A couple of days. Yeah. And we actually have the cypresses, which arrived earlier, and they're waiting to be planted. But we had to make use of the chipper while we had it. So we're going to go plant those before we completely lose the sun and probably take a solid nap after that. Yeah. We dug our holes before the cypresses came and then we realized that they were a little too small. So we needed to dig them a little deeper and a little wider and to make sure that the roots can extend further into the ground. So we're loosening up the soil all around and below. So what's the next step? Do we put the amendments in first? Amendments are nutrients that the roots are going to reach out towards and will help the tree establish itself. So we're going to put a little shovel full of those all around. We don't want it to just go straight down. We want it to really be around the edges. Are you getting all this Artea? Bring it over the hole. Okay. And then I'm just gonna... Perfect. And then let's make sure it's stable because we don't want big air pockets underneath either. What's wrong with that? Big air pockets will allow the soil to fill with water in that area and then the water can become anaerobic. You want to do a little trench so that the water pools in an outer circle and then it goes down in that direction and the roots will push out quicker towards the water and it'll establish the tree faster as well. Okay so each little tree is going to have a little moat. Yeah we're going to do a little moat for each tree. Nice. Carry the heavy bag. Yep it's heavy. It's done. It's almost dark. We actually finished in time. I didn't think we would. We're exhausted. We're so tired right now. I hurt my back, he hurt his knee. Yeah we're gonna just like crawl back to the house. But we did it. We planted all the cypresses and they're really cute and they're gonna be big beautiful trees someday. And unfortunately we completely miscalculated how much mulch we would have but it will serve as a good experiment because we have about a four inch layer of mulch on this left racing stripe. Yeah. And then we had a little bit left over so we started to do the other side but we'll be able to tell this spring what the difference is when we go to plant the flowers. We still have quite a bit to clean off around the wall and those stairs and then there's that whole upper terrace area which I think once we can walk through it a bit more easily we'll show you guys because it's about this high from the garden level and that could be something really beautiful up there. That would make for a nice little canopy bonfire pit area. Yeah. Who knows. Anyways a lot to look forward to and that means it's time to go inside where it's actually warm and get some food. So thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next week. So we were just starting to film at what we thought was the pepinier for the fruit trees and then we called the guy and found out we were at his his home address so we weren't even in the right place. Yeah which is a funny thing in France is that I guess people put their home addresses on business websites. Well either way now we know where he sleeps so he has to sell us trees now.