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Post by MikeH on May 21, 2013 4:00:46 GMT -5
When we heard Michael Phillips talk about his holistic orchard approach, we had one of those moments where you smack yourself in the middle of the forehead and wonder how you could miss the obvious. We'd been uncomfortable with the monoculture nature of our orchard for a couple of years and had tried a permaculture guild approach which turned out to be a huge losing sturggle against weeds and twitch grass. This makes so much sense. You are creating an environment to bring in beneficial insects and improve the soil on an ongoing basis.  So we've begun, with the help of a fantastic wwoofer, to convert the orchard. He's cleared all of the weeds and grass around the trees to a two foot radius and laid down cardboard in a 5-6 foot radius. The inner two feet is pea gravel and outer carboarded area is covered first with grass clippings, semi-composted material from our compost pile, straw bale flakes or finished compost and then covered with a wood chip mulch. The recent ice storm has left a bounty of wood chips in the municipal work yards that they are happy to be rid of.      We'll pull back the wood chip mulch to see pockets of Dutch clover and plant Bocking 14 comfrey. We won't do too much Dutch clover until we see how it behaves. Our herb garden needs a haircut so it'll be a source of plant divisions - lovage, sorel, French tarragon, oregano and transplants - lemon balm, hyssop. And we have achillea and meadow sage growing wild which we'll transplant in as well as lance-leaved coreopsis, orange butterfly weed, blue flax, echinacea, heliopsis. Other than 5 yards of finished compost, the dollar costs have been zero. The labour cost though has been large. We owe a lot to Charles the Woofer. |
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 21, 2013 4:10:03 GMT -5
If you don't plant it, something dreadful will grow instead... Something I just realized this year.
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Post by MikeH on May 21, 2013 4:37:13 GMT -5
Dreadful depends on whether you want it or not. We'll encourage dandelions, horsetail, and other dreadfuls because we want their ability to mine minerals deep in the soil beyond the reach of the tree feeder roots.
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Post by bunkie on May 21, 2013 8:20:50 GMT -5
Mike, great pics and good work! We're doing similar here. Just acquired a copy of 'The Holistic Orchard'. Our one big problem is the gophers.
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Post by synergy on May 21, 2013 17:07:19 GMT -5
Yes I planted something like Mike H has and further put 4 pallets around each tree to guard against grazing beasties in our pasture . It provided the ideal living conditions for voles under the mulching that now are killing the trees I worked so hard to set in place . It was suggested to me to wrap the tree trunks and I am thinking of trying vet wrap which sticks to itself but will stretch a few years and easy to take off . In our local I will no long mulch in the orchard because it makes vole habitats .
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Post by raymondo on May 22, 2013 3:14:45 GMT -5
Great to see. I am keen to do similar but was a little dismayed at Michael Phillips' insistence that the woody mulch had to be ramial woodchip. I simply don't have access to any. I do have plenty of other woodchip so I've decided to push ahead with it anyway. I figure a diversity of mulches should work.
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Post by khoomeizhi on May 22, 2013 4:28:27 GMT -5
re: vole protection, i'm part of a group that does public plantings, and we usually try to have at least a 5-gal bucket’s worth of sharp gravel around the tree (inside the mulch), and in the hole as planting is happening. seems to deter them pretty well.
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Post by oxbowfarm on May 22, 2013 5:25:00 GMT -5
Mike, can I suggest adding Golden Marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria) to your beneficial plantings? It's perennial and scores very high as a beneficial insect attractor. I've got a ton of it naturalized here, I can send you seed later in the summer.
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Post by raymondo on May 22, 2013 6:42:53 GMT -5
Are you aiming for diverse meadow-like growth between trees?
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Post by davida on May 22, 2013 8:11:00 GMT -5
Great to see. I am keen to do similar but was a little dismayed at Michael Phillips' insistence that the woody mulch had to be ramial woodchip. I simply don't have access to any. I do have plenty of other woodchip so I've decided to push ahead with it anyway. I figure a diversity of mulches should work. Thanks to MikeH's recommendation, I also purchased "The Holistic Orchard". I am just starting the book and finding it very helpful. Like Ray, the ramial woodchip was a concern. For the group, a ramial woodchip is made from the tops of deciduous trees and woody shrubs less than 7cm in diameter or not more than 2 1/2 inches around at the large end. Basically, the ends of the trees and shrubs contain the "new life" of the tree and contains many more nutrients and soluble lignins. Like you, I have old woodchips and plan to use them but will add as much new growth, as possible. The new growth does not have to be chipped in a chipper. You can simply cut the new growth in sections with hand shears. The goal as stated in the first of the book is to obtain "white rot" rather than "brown rot" and to get the fungal presence ten time higher than that of bacteria in the orchard soil. Hopefully Ray, we can both obtain the "fungal duff" beneath our fruit trees and berry bushes. |
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Post by davida on May 22, 2013 8:17:02 GMT -5
re: vole protection, i'm part of a group that does public plantings, and we usually try to have at least a 5-gal bucket’s worth of sharp gravel around the tree (inside the mulch), and in the hole as planting is happening. seems to deter them pretty well. Thank you for sharing and this would help drainage. I will add gravel within a week to the new trees. And thank you, MikeH for starting this discussion and for the pictures. |
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Post by bunkie on May 22, 2013 9:16:55 GMT -5
re: vole protection, i'm part of a group that does public plantings, and we usually try to have at least a 5-gal bucket’s worth of sharp gravel around the tree (inside the mulch), and in the hole as planting is happening. seems to deter them pretty well. Yes! Thanks for the info! |
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Post by MikeH on May 22, 2013 9:17:29 GMT -5
re: vole protection, i'm part of a group that does public plantings, and we usually try to have at least a 5-gal bucket’s worth of sharp gravel around the tree (inside the mulch), and in the hole as planting is happening. seems to deter them pretty well. We'll be adding a 2 foot radius of pea gravel to keep nesting areas away from the trunks and planting daffodils in a 1 foot ring around the trunks. Apparently they also defer mice and voles. I know that squirrels won't touch them. Maybe mice and voles won't either. We won't take a chance though and will continue to use mice guards each winter until the trees are large enough. |
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Post by MikeH on May 22, 2013 9:41:59 GMT -5
Mike, can I suggest adding Golden Marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria) to your beneficial plantings? It's perennial and scores very high as a beneficial insect attractor. I've got a ton of it naturalized here, I can send you seed later in the summer. Thanks, Tim. That would be great. I'll send you a reminder in July. There's a whole list of plants in this extract from Phillips' book - docs.google.com/file/d/0B4z8GE1bbsDjVEVRQnNRaVlKRDg/edit. He divides beneficial plants into insect allies and plant allies. |
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Post by MikeH on May 22, 2013 9:52:43 GMT -5
Are you aiming for diverse meadow-like growth between trees? Yes although initially we're focusing on the 5-6 foot radius around each tree. Basically, it'll look like Richard's orchard - alanbishop.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=orchard&thread=5678&page=2#87137 with as much wild diversity as we can add in. We figure the wilder the better. It's probably a good thing we don't have any "neat" neighbours or, at least, none that are close by. |
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