Planting trees in Portugal – our step-by-step process

Normally our planting season starts in October after the first rain and it stops half of December because then it's becoming too cold. But these are cuttings from poplars and I already potted them up I think in October, something like that. It has rained a lot the last month, last two months, so I think we can take the risk to put them in. These are smaller ones and these ones I want to stay in the pot till October from this year, so they will stay a little bit longer. We will plant these trees here. These are poplars, they need more water than the normal species and these are old swales already. They are there for I think three years now and they are doing really, really well. So we expect that the soil just below the swale is already with a lot of water, so I think we can take the risk planting these trees over here. But it's a risk, we will see if it will work. We are making a planting hole and it is on this side of the swale because of course you have here a little bit more water than on this side, but we will do both. I think this side will be no problem at all because this is full of water very, very fast with the first training, so it has already a lot of water. And we also will put some a little bit more below that will take the water that comes from underneath because if a swale it gets the water and it infiltrates and you see then after a couple of years the water slowly, slowly goes down and affects the whole area just below the swale. These trees that we planted here a couple of years ago, these are now three years here and we didn't irrigate them the last summer, so we only did this for two years and the last summer they didn't get any extra water and they are really doing well. And this is also how you use a swale, so you catch the water and then it infiltrates and slowly, slowly, slowly the whole hill, this whole valley will be with much more water than it is normally. Ah, a lot of water. Wow, here you can see what is happening. Some organic fertilizer and now we will see if the cutting already has some roots. Yes, yes, you see here. Yeah, then we put some organic material, some milk around the plant because it will not dry out so fast because now it's sunny and if you have a lot of sun it goes very fast with drying out. So you want to protect the earth. Yeah, this is easy ground. Not a lot of rocks. Normally you can also have that it's one big rock. That was a rock. Another one is coming. You don't want to get them out, all of them, Also, how do we get the helling? What you see now is not the normal way how we can make a hole because normally the soil is really hard and now because it's wet, we had a lot of rain, so now this is really easy. Normally it's much, much different. In my mind I always say, come on, you are a really nice spot, start growing. If you feel that you are in the right place, please start growing. Always a little bit of gratitude that we can work with nature and we can do it here in this way. So yes, in my mind I give them my blessings. I'm a little bit crazy.