I’m not sure if this was a good idea or a bad idea but I I did it anyway.
I have a bunch of old fence posts surrounding what I call my “south field”. It is a section of my property 70 feet by 150 feet that was fenced in at one point by the previous owner who had a horse. only the dilapidated posts remain along with some trees that were planted along the fence line.
given the drought we have been having, digging has been quite difficult by hand in my area. I’ve hand dug maybe 25 holes for trees/bushes over the past few years but this past weekend it was near impossible. funny enough, my desired planting locations coincided with the old fence post lines so I thought, what the hell, let me pull these posts and just plant the tree/shrubs in the holes.
2 of the posts I was able to pull after a lot of work with a shovel and plant 2 mulberry trees, a Miss Kim and a Honey Drops.
the other location I wanted was alongside an old gravel driveway, maybe 100 years old or more, so digging those posts out by hand was futile due to the mix of gravel with my dry clay/loam (more clay than loam). I wanted to plant my clove currants there, one that survived a bad location that killed my Missouri giant and black topaz but was too wet and likely gave them all a root fungus. and another I just received by mail. The Crandall was the survivor (although not happy) so I wanted to transplant it there hoping the gravel mix in this area and more sun helps with drainage, and given its resiliency I decided a second Crandall couldn’t hurt. I liked the clove currants so much (beautify fragrant flowers, tasty fruit, showy red fall foliage) I’m really hoping they take at the new location.
To pull the posts alongside the old driveway, I utilized a chain and a hi-lift jack. one post snapped at the base, but I was able to get 2 of them out. I backfilled them with the soil I dug out around the post (to make the hole wider) and backfilled with old mulch on top. I’ll add more mulch in the next week or 3 when the existing mulch settles into the voids left by the post.
Pulling a post. you can see the post I snapped off behind it
Planted Crandall Clove Currant. In the background you can see a line of fence posts on the south field along with some trees in that row (1 sassafras, 1 sweet gum, 1 black walnut, and a bunch of wild black cherry covered in black knot)
Both of the clove currants from afar, surrounded by a ring of fence to keep the deer off them, held up with a t-post. one post remains with my Ws-2000 affixed in that row (next to a metal pipe I’m pretty sure is cemented in) and another post on the far right that will be removed so I can plant my Sweet thing cherry when it comes in this fall. you can see the stump from the broken post at the far left. also an October glory red maple I planted in the spring in the opposite corner of the south field.
