Today I continued an ongoing project. Gretchen has been bringing home big bags of shredded paper from her super secret place of employment (could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you and everyone you might have talked to). We're using it as mulch for the new plants. It seems to be holding on to both water and the ground fairly well. We're going to cover it with real mulch later on, if only because it's not that pretty. And after reading this study about using shredded paper as mulch I'm even more excited. It appears that with commercial apple trees nothing makes them grow better then shredded paper mulch.
You can see in the picture above that it looks silly. I added a bit more paper after this picture was taken, but basically these two plants are ready to get a capper of real mulch and ride out the winter in style.