permaculture

[Ute Bohnsack <sustag@eircom.net>]

mIEKAL aND wrote:

> Jerome:
> 
> Can you tell us what the other 10 species are? Here in WI the siberian pea 
> shrub is really slow going, 5 year old plants are less than 6ft high & just 
> now starting to take off. I can't imagine coppicing them until they attain 
> some kind of precocious vigor. It would also be great to find a few species 
> of forbs to keep in the annual gardens. Ive been using IL bundleflower 
> (desmanthus illinoisensis) & pigeon pea but they take a lot of nursing to 
> keep going in a zone 4 heavy clay loam landscape.
> 
> mIEKAL
> 

Hi there,
interesting topic.
I am in Ireland which is kind of a Zone 8/9 equivalent. I've planted Sea
buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) near my first apples for wind shelter
and fruit and goat fodder (branches/leaves) as much as for NF. They grew
extremely fast for me on a well-drained loamy soil. No luck with
Gleditsia and Caragana (got eaten by slugs, both bark and new leaves),
or Desmanthes (too tender). Planted Eleagnus angustifolium into mixed
hedges which also contain a number of fruit species and hazelnuts. So
far everything is doing fine. As its an 'unstructured experiment without
controls' I can't say whether the trees would have done better or worse
without the NFT but species diversity can't be a bad thing as Jerome's
forest garden aptly demonstrates. In European forestry the NFT alder
(Alnus glutinosa) is an often used nurse species for timber trees. So it
does work. I have also planted comfrey under the apple trees which I cut
for mulch (sort of a potassium pump), again with no apparent
ill-effects. 
As to sam bucus' question (nice name!) about orcharding techniques - the
Swiss Institute for Organic Farming have done interesting research on
organic fruit cultivation, some of which is also available in English on
their website www.fibl.ch . Sam, you might also be interested in Michael
Philipps wonderful book "The Apple Grower" which is worth every penny.

Cheers,
Ute