The Guild Secret Behind a Cold-Climate Orchard That Actually Thrives Part 1
Watching their fruit trees die in your backyard is what most people experience.
However, it is what to expect, because people follow mainstream advice that produces normal and expected results. That being said, fruit trees are actually hardy trees which can stay healthy, produce lots of fruits, and beautify your garden, if they are cared for correctly. The shift doesn't ask for more work, but a new way of doing things (which are actually sustainable practices), which can be difficult to wrap your head around, since they are unusual for someone who got their wisdom (inadvertently) from the instructions on the back of an NPK package.
What follows is how the practice to tend an orchard in a cold climate with sustainable permaculture practices, carefully compiled, works, so that you can enjoy your fruit trees and their fruits.
In this edition, in 6 minutes or less:
#1 How to create your orchard from the very beginning
How to create your orchard from the very beginning
The main idea in permaculture is to avoid planting the fruit trees alone in the middle of the grass. The fruit tree benefits from an assemblage of other trees and plants around it that build a core space of fertility and a favorable microclimate, which is visited by pollinators, pest predators, and other useful species.
So, the principle is to enhance the flowering component of the orchard interplant (the support leguminous tree species that are planted between the desired fruit trees), to reduce or eliminate grasses, to attract pollinators and predatory insects, to attract insectivorous birds, to provide ground cover for frogs and insectivorous lizards, to prevent soil drying, and to protect the orchard from wind.
The first important step:
Select fruit tree varieties for your location. Pay attention to:
- Adaptation to the region
- Resistance to disease
Some examples are:
- Pome fruits: apple, pear, quince, medlar
- Stone fruits: cherry, peach, plum, apricot
- Nuts: filbert, walnut, chestnut, hickory
- Hardy evergreen: olive, loquat, pineapple guava (Feijoa)
- Fruits for milder areas: mulberry, fig
That step asks for some field research. Visit local nurseries, your local authority, which holds the records about geography and hardy zones, local producers, local hobby gardeners, and local people.
Beware, though, of the advice from experts who do things according to commercial standards (you can spot them by their use of fertilizers and pesticides, and by growing domesticated varieties of trees), since their advice won’t work in settings other than the ones prescribed by their institution. Their experience is limited to lab varieties and artificially created situations.
Search, then, for advice from people who work with heirloom varieties, who observe trees that were neglected but still thrive, and who know the history of the wild tree you’re interested in.
You may encounter some difficulties finding this information and it may not be 100% correct when you begin your orchard, because the information about trees that thrived locally may be scarce. Look at it like an exploration, which it is.
You will be rebuilding the local wisdom if that is the case.
The second important step
Select an appropriate site for the orchard. It should be:
- Well-draining
- Sun-facing slope in cool areas or
- Shaded slopes in places where late frosts are expected
The third important step
Select an useful assemblage of plants and trees to create guilds to compose an orchard.
-
Plant non-grass crop bellow tree canopies in deciduous orchard
- Spring bulbs, like narcissus, hyacinth, Allium triquetrum, iris, and tuberous-rooted flowers. They create a grass-free area, a crop of bulbs, and flowers for pollinators
- Insectary plants, like Umbelliferae (like dill), fennel, catnip, Compositae (like daisy), Phyla nodosa, Queen Anne’s lace, tansy, carrot, parsnip, sage, and marigold (also deter nematodes). All of them bring predatory and pollinator insects into the orchard, like wasps, robber flies, ladybirds, jewel beetles, and bees.
- Nitrogen crop, like clover, and Crotalaria (the species crotalaria retusa is toxic)
-
Interplants of nitrogen-fixing trees
-
Hedge of trees for windbreak, pest predator and pollinator habitat
- Some insectary trees and small trees are Quillaja, Photinia, Tamarix, and Acacia. Just like the insectary plants described previously, they bring the same predatory and pollinator insects into the orchard.
- The nitrogen-fixing trees can also compose the windbreak hedge
-
Place small ponds or troughs for insect-predator frogs and lizards
- their habitat is the ground cover plants
Until now, we talked about how fruit trees should be planted together with an assemblage of useful species, which protects the fruit tree from overexposure to the environment, and helps it grow by fertilizing the soil, creating a microclimate, and inviting beneficial insects and other animals.
We call it a guild. However, before that, the fruit tree stock should be carefully selected as well as the site where it will be planted.
In the next letter, we will talk about the fourth important step, which breaks any pest cycle that tries to establish in your orchard, and then talk about one real commercial success example, which uses the same design.
These principles apply both to large orchards and to backyard ones starting from one tree!
