To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [permaculture] Two schools of permaculture?
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:00:54 +0200
The orchard falls into the broad-scape part of permaculture
design,
Whilst this is often true certain stategies such as Forest gardens and the
coppice orchard could be zoned as 2 or even, as here, 1. Our coppice orchard
trees are summer pruned to hand height and of course when a N/S row is
coppiced it forms a sunny glade.
This brings up the point that today as in years gone by the understory of the
orchard can be utilised in many ways, crops/stock, especially when in the
early years the canopy allows much sunlight. Around here peasant farmers
couldn't afford to plant a field with trees and lose income until fruiting,
the land was almost always used. Of course one has to be careful, sheep for
eg will eat the bark. Phil Corbett suggests with the coppice orchard to
create a grain/veg garden and plant the own root trees into it, succession to
shade tolerants as the canopy closes.