Day: April 15, 2026

The first batch of fruit trees that I bought turned out to be weedy and of very poor quality. I ended up losing almost all of them – I think I have just one little cherry tree left that is fighting to survive but is still weedy and will probably never do anything worthwhile, at least in my lifetime.

The next batch I ordered were from another supplier in the Landes in south-west France. These were more expensive but were bigger and of much better quality. I was extremely pleased with my purchase, especially with one of the Reine de Reinettes apple trees that was a lovely shape, and despite the shock of being transplanted bore fruit immediately.

Unfortunately, after putting the trees in, the night before I planned to surround them all with protective netting the deer came into my garden and attacked them. The trees that were the worst affected were the two Reine de Reinettes and the one the most seriously damaged was my favourite.

The damage was extreme. In order to obtain the tiny, immature fruit the deer had ripped off one of the tree’s main branches and by so doing had ruined the shape of the tree. Then, to make things worse, the same tree was attacked the next year by aphids and ants and all of its leaves began to shrivel.

I hit it with vast quantities of Neem Oil spray which had the desired effect. Over several weeks it cleared the aphids and ants but the tiny fruit that had started to grow shrivelled and died and at one time I thought that the tree might have died as well. But it hadn’t!

So now we come to this year. I’ve had to remove a couple of small, dead branches but despite the fact that the tree now appears healthy, there’s no possibility that it will ever now be a thing of beauty as it’s completely lop-sided. And to make matters worse, because it was originally so lovely, I’d planted it the closest to the house.

I therefore had to make a decision. The tree couldn’t stay where it was, but it would have been a shame to lose it completely after all it had been through, and me with it. So my idea was that once I had the excavator I’d order a replacement and move it lower down the garden where it could do the best that it could, and if by doing so I lost it, so be it.

And today was the big day. I ordered a replacement Reine de Reinettes apple tree together with a Japanese Flowering Cherry from a supplier in Paris. They will both be arriving tomorrow courtesy of Geodis so I needed to move the existing apple tree today ready for its replacement to go straight in.

The Flowering Cherry will be going in front of the house and as it will be smaller (apparently they grow pretty quickly) I’ll be able to use what I learnt today and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get that one in as well before the end of the afternoon.

With all that decided it was time to prep the excavator. Over the last day or so I’ve gone all over it and greased every grease nipple. I’ve also changed its engine oil for a known good quality diesel brand so this morning I needed to change the bucket config.

Usually the bucket digs backwards towards you, the driver, but I wanted to be able to lift the apple tree out of the ground with its roots in order to drop it into a hole in another part of the garden. For this I decided to see if reversing the bucket would do the trick, as I had to get under the tree from the excavator side.

Then my problems began. To remove the bucket you have to remove two large pins in rotating joints that secure the bucket to the boom. You have to remove the bolts that secure the pins and then bang them out, thus releasing the bucket. One came out as intended but the other didn’t. It was effectively seized in the joint.

The following images show that slowly but surely by using brute force the pin did begin to come out and as it did so it was clear that it had been inserted in the factory with what looks like no lubricant whatsoever. I’d pumped grease in but although it had oozed out of the joint ends it hadn’t penetrated into the centre of the joint at all.

The reason for this appears to be that the joint bush into which the pin was inserted was slightly undersize in manufacture. I’ve told the manufacturer about this but there’s very little that they can now do. I’ve asked for a replacement pin which doesn’t now look very pretty with all the bashing I’ve done on it but that will be purely cosmetic.

If the joint bush is undersize, which I suspect it is, it won’t do much to solve the underlying problem and changing the bucket as well as fitting the post auger will be a constant nightmare in the future. The only effective solution will be to slightly ream out the joint bush but I do not have the facilities to do that.

So how did the tree transplant go? Pretty well actually and although some physical effort was needed to tidy up the holes, it was not excessive. With the bucket reversed, the tree lifted out of the ground very quickly and easily with most of its roots and the hole it came out of, after a bit of tidying, will be fine for when the replacement tree arrives tomorrow.

Digging out the hole in the virgin ground in its new position was actually quite a bit harder and also quite tricky as there’s a learning curve getting to grips with the machine’s controls. If I’m honest I was surprised by the machine’s apparent lack of power digging down into the earth, but to be fair, I was using the bucket the wrong way round and not as it is intended to be used.

Finally, a couple of shots of the transplanted tree in its new position. I’m very happy with the results and there’s no way that I’d have been able to achieve them in the time that it took and with the minimal amount of physical effort that I had to provide.