permaculture

[sam bucus <samm_bucus@yahoo.com>]

hello, i have ten acres in northern wisconsin, on the south side of lake superior making it a cold zone 4.  the soil is pH 4-5 and pure sand with an inch or so of topsoil and a lot of iron in it.  the land used to be field for grazing horses i beleive.

 

i have plans to develop it into a permaculture style farm and am looking for help on several issues from the list:

 

my main plan is to cover about half of it alley crop style. in order to make it financially i plan to develop a regular organic perennial flower/herb nursery, annual flower greenhouse and basil, tomato, spinach/malabar spinach greenhouse to provide value added crops in the alleys.  the rows will be fruit tree guilds, mostly apple, pear and plum based. 

 

my question is this:

the companies i plan to buy my trees from recommend standard trees for the cold climate (anatonovka rootstock i beleive).  they recommend a spacing of atleast 35 feet.  but since i will be doing alley cropping there will be atleast 50 feet between the rows of fruit trees.  can i pinch the spacing on the row.  i see pictures of rows and hedges people have planted and fully understand the concept, but i dont see how an apple tree that is recommended to have 35 foot spacing is going to produce remotely well if its spaced ten or fifteen feet with other fruit trees, countless guild trees AND an overstory layer.  recommendations on spacing and expected harvests? 

 

how often do you place the nft's (nitrogen fixing trees) in a fruit orchard?  i was going to try to have one nft working with four fruit trees permanently and have more nft and plants during the establishment time, the first 4 or 5 years or so. 

 

how much do you think the fruit and other trees in the rows will effect the annual crops in the center thru hair roots?

 

any suggestions greatly appreciated

 

samm

 

 

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