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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] spindle cut orchards

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  • From: "paul wheaton" <paul@richsoil.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] spindle cut orchards
  • Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 06:53:36 -0700

Rich,

Good info!

At this point there is no need for trellises. The branches on the
trees are pretty short and thick.

I had talked to Tom at Cloud Mountain about clover in the rows for
nitrogen fixing (he used a creeping red fescue that didn't need much
mowing). He'd said that the legumes shed a pulse of nitrogen in fall as
they go dormant, just as he's trying to get his trees to shut down for
the year. If a warm snap hits after the N-pulse, he'd get a push of
growth that will burn back when winter hits for real. He's in a pretty
wild weather area, so I don't know if that holds for all regions.

If there were a dozen different species of legume, including some
perennials, I wonder if that problem would be mitigated.

This is one of those commercial vs homestead scale issues....

I can see that you can get more apples per acre in a monocrop. I can
see the safety of fewer ladders.

With more diversity, but a primary focus on apples, I wonder if you
would have half the apples, but ten times more food?

I also wonder about the flavor/nutrition of the apple grown this way.

And the sustainability.

it seems a
shame to rip out a bunch of mature producing trees just to introduce
some diversity, unless there's a problem, either existing or imminent.

Apparently she had the orchard pruned properly the year before.
$1300. It took three guys all day. Apparently they were very
professional, very fast and brought a lot of fancy equipment.

This is about 75 trees with the fruit of about 7 full size trees.

Like all of these decisions, it depends on the context of the
property...is it a cash crop, or a hobby?

This woman is doing this as a hobby - although if somebody came along
and offered to work it for cash, she would probably be into that.

Are they all just a couple of
varieties, or is there a wide diversity of them?

Dunno.

And how big is the
orchard? And what's nearby?

Open fields of grass.




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