Thanks for the help all. This is all great advice. beeone, the cutoff drain you refer to is how i found the bedrock! I am still putting this drain in for the heavy rains. I'll state a few things I neglected to post originally. Im just an aspiring home orchardist, so the only beneficiaries of the fruit are my drive for variety, my family, and my daughters school for whatever we do not eat so no pressure for maximum yield. Ok. So heres the plan. Against better advice im still going to keep my 10x15 spacing with agressive summer pruning so I can keep my variety selection as broad as possible. Im goin to go with either M7 or M111 because of the heartyness of the tree and their ability to heal. I guess ill probably mix the two to see which does better. We get lots of wind here as well. So, to assist with the wind issue im goin to plant two windward windbreak hedges. Type unknown at this point. Poplar perhaps? I will not raise the planting area, and will instead take my neighbors free soil to create raised bed planting rows of about 12"hx6'w. I plan on mulching the each rows and will use pea gravel between rows. I will also finish my french drain project to cutoff ground water after heavy rains. Oh, I forgot to mention that I already have irrigation in the area I wish to plant. Im going to steal three zones of my sprinkler system and convert to drip so drought will not be much of an issue. PSHEW! All this for a handfull of trees! LOL. Any comments welcome. Thanks again everyone for your experience! Cheers Sub

Just ready to see this drop down . . .

There is no societal disapproval of being overweight in the urban area where I live, it's the norm. But it is socioeconomically related and the suburban area where I work one day a week does have its share of the thin and youth -obsessed. Being overweight is such the norm that although I lost weight (mostly due to stress related reasons but some dietary changes) and ended up squarely in the middle of my acceptable range, more than one person said I was "so thin" did I have cancer? When I asked people what they thought I "should" weigh...many of them came up with a number that put me (at least by BMI standards) on the high end of overweight toward mildly obese.

no thanks