permaculture

[lbsaltzman@aol.com]

You said that you are in a mediterranean climate area. What rainfall are you 
experiencing at your place?

Our average rainfall is 18 inches (457?millimeters), but there is a lot of 
variability, and currently California is in a drought pattern.?This year we 
have only had 10 inches (254 millimeters) so far.? 

what spacing have you adopted. Why did you choose just a few trees on 
dwarfing 
rootstock and headed for the semi-dwarfing instead?

We pack the trees in pretty close, and in a few places they almost form hedge 
rows.? In other places they have only a little space from the end of one tree 
to another.? Just enough room to get in and harvest.? The only time we used 
dwarfing stock is when that is all we had room for or when we didn't want to 
block our spectacular mountain and ocean views along one border. The 
disadvantage of dwarfing stock is shallower roots that need more watering. So 
they are also near the house where gray water is more accessible.? Semi-dwarf 
rootstock still allows you to end up with trees that are 2/3 standard size. 
They have decent root systems.? We are finding that we can completely dry 
farm our decidous?semi-dwarf trees in the long dry season. They receive no 
irrigation whatsoever, that was true even a couple of years ago when we got 
about 8 inches (203 millimeters)?of rain.

Interestingly, when people see the property they tend to find it less crowded 
than they imagine it would be.? We are also finding that with our intense 
sun, we get good crops from trees that have somewhat more shade than you 
would expect.? I believe estimates of how much sun fruit trees need are often 
based on the experiences of growers living at higher latitutudes than the sun 
drenched climate we live in

What kind of soil do you have? 

Pottery grade clay soil is what we have.? We are on land that has very deep 
soil, but our land had heavy top soil erosion?due to bad orchard managements 
up through the 1940's, when the orchards were torn out and replaced by homes. 
Our experience is perennials are doing much better in that soil than many 
annual vegetables would do.?We raise our vegetables either in wine barrels or 
select the limited number that self-seed and tolerate heavy clay.? We are 
also?going for as many perennial vegetables as possible.

Did you have to do any soil conditioning before hand? what kind?
We do heavy mulching.? Periodically I nab a load of chips from a local tree 
trimmer who doesn't want to take the mulch to the landfill. I have good 
sources of Horse manure and occassional rabbit manure.? We have also applied 
rock dust and tried gypsum.? We have planted many deep rooted plants 
including carrots and fennel to open up the soil. Basically after 16 years 
the soil, except in a few really bad areas, has improved a lot and we are 
getting good productivity from the land, but it is still heavy clay, and it 
is easier to build up humus on top of the soil than to atttempt to dig it 
in.? Early on I got frustrated and double dug a section and added heavy 
organic amendments. We got great results for one season, but I would have 
been forced to keep double digging that section every year so I abandoned 
that folly.

We have certainly used mycorrhizae and bacterial innoculants to perk up the 
soil.? We pit compost our kitchen waste around the garden and that has made 
the earthworms happy, and in turn they are hard at work turning the soil.

How have you interpersed the N-fixers among the other trees (what pattern 
have 
you used I mean)?

Remember we are only talking about a 1/3 acre site (1336 meters).? I would 
describe the pattern as random. We have nitrogen fixing trees and bushes 
scattered around the property which we can easily prune and scatter anywhere 
we need to for chop and drop mulching. But there is no great design involved 
in where the trees went. We supplement those trees with copious plantings of 
nitrogen fixing annuals, some grown for food and some for green manure.? 
Beans in particularly are one of the few annuals that handle our heavy clay.

What trees are doing best and which not so much?

My wife and I run the Santa Barbara Organic Garden Club and are active in the 
local Permaculture Guild.? In a few weeks we will have a very full list of 
what is grown in our area posted on our website www.sborganicgardenclub.org. 
If you don't want to wait?e-mail me amd?I can send you detailed lists of 
appropriate plants for our area.

The better question for Santa Barbara is what doesn't do well? The majority 
of our trees are low-chill decidious trees.? Pears, apples, quinces do 
extemely well. Stone fruit is also a winner, and?we have peaches, nectarines, 
plums, sweet cherries, apricots,?plumcots, pluots, and apriums.? Figs, 
persimmons, and pomegranates are productive and yield fine crops.? Need I add 
this is great avocado country. There are a variety of nuts that do well here 
including almonds, low-chill walnuts, macadamias, and others.?

Which gets us to semi-tropicals and tropicals.? Citrus does all right, but 
sulks a little in the heavy clay, and because we are coastal some varieties 
don't thrive in our cooler coastal climate.?? Feijoas, or pineapple 
guavas,?do extremely well on our property.? We have a young strawberry guava 
that is settling in and beginning to fruit. We have some young bananas that 
look like they will do just fine.? Other people grow cheramoyas, and 
sapotes?successfully.?People are growing a large variety of?tropical trees 
including papayas, and mangos.? The list is endless. I have two observations 
about tropicals.?First, occassionally we get a cold winter with late night 
freezing and young tropicals can easily die or get set back when that 
happens; mature tropical trees handle those freezes better. Secondly, water 
has to be an issue.? To grow tropicals without rainwater harvesting and gray 
water systems in place is not a good idea as they are major water hogs for 
the most part. 


There is an incredible organization in California called the California Rare 
Fruit Growers (http://www.crfg.org/). They have accumulated an
enormous amount of information about what can be grown in this state, which 
of course includes both southern and northern Mediterranean growing areas. 
I write a column on organic orchard practices for their magazine. Over the 
decades the members of this group has pushed the envelope on what 
can be grown here and they are an invaluable resource for information on 
useful cultivars.  We have members growing cinnamon, allspice, coffee and 
tea, and 
an incredible variety of tropical and temperate zone fruits and nuts. 


We just put in our first tea plant (camellia sinensis).  My wife and I are 
now designing a five acre site with other local permies and hopefully  we 
will all get '
a lot more direct experience with many other varieties of fruit and nut 
trees.