permaculture

["Steven & Margaret Eisenhauer" <eisenhauerdesign@earthlink.net>]

HI,
I have looked at running animals in our apple orchard but have decided
against it.  Trees like the composted manures better than the raw stuff.  It
appears that raw wastes have the biological downside of potentially
spreading microbiology onto fruit and causing the trees to put out a lot of
growth that attracts insect pests.  Also pigs have been used to clear wooded
land so beware of the rooting snout.  Ramial wood chips (chips from hardwood
branches no larger than 2" in diameter) under your trees with comfrey and
other native plants mowed twice in the season, first with a scythe for mulch
in late spring early summer and secondly with a chopper mower in fall for
biological breakdown encourages a fungal soil environment which the trees
prefer versus a bacterial dominated one which our garden/field plants like.
Allowing native plants to self express in row with no mowing until fall will
also create insectaries for the predators of the fruit tree pests and
provide floral resources for native insects/pollinators through out your
growing season.  Michael Phillips has a new book to update his Apple Grower
where he explains this method. 

Cheers

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Leslie Moyer
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 2:31 AM
To: permaculture
Subject: [permaculture] orchard+pigs+chickens

I'm looking for specific information about using pigs and chickens (and/or
ducks, turkeys, guineas, etc.) for orchard floor management (controlling
vegetation under trees) and insect control in an organic orchard.  Does
anyone know of resources or people they could point me toward where I might
learn more about that?  I read of an organic orchard co-op in Wisconsin
where they're doing that and I've found and heard brief mentions here and
there of other instances that are all void of details, but I need some more
specific "how-to" information about replicating it.  I even read about the
U. of MI doing research in this field, but I still can't track down any
details.

Thanks for any leads,

-Leslie / NE Oklahoma


_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subscribe, unsubscribe, change your user configuration or find out more
about this list here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
permaculture forums http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums
List contacts: permacultureforum@gmail.com and paul@richsoil.com