I turned a vacant lot I own into the start of what will one day be an apple orchard during 2023/2024. I read up and attempted some permaculture techniques in the design (done, as Barb said above, during winter when snow covered everything). It’s all worked to some degree, but I ended up with many adaptations. We’ll see what it looks like when the apple trees are really producing in 5-15 years.
Basic concepts were:
2023:
Apple trees… mostly on A.313, B.118, and P.18 as, with our weather, we really need standard trees… but with an extra layer over dwarf trees so I might see some apples in this decade. 2023 was incredibly rainy and my soil is thin and on top of ledge (rock) so everything became incredibly soggy as there’s no way for water to drain as some of the rock underneath basically form pools with soil on top. I lost about a third of the trees I planted.
I planted goumis around the edges of the apple tree rows to provide some nitrogen fixing and fruit. A bunch of these arrived in January (thanks Ison’s for timing that so well sarcasm) and my ground was frozen until April, so those sticks that were stuck in the fridge for four months didn’t have a great success rate. But the other ones and the ones that survived are absolutely thriving and loving it. I’ve planted some more (it’s always difficult to find goumis in quantity, especially anything other than Sweet Scarlet, so it’s taken years to source).
I planed honeyberries in between the apple trees in rows as they can handle the shade (and will benefit from shade in the height of summer, in fact) when the trees get bigger. They’re generally doing OK, but not great.
I put down a layer of wildflower seeds – some nitrogen fixers in there – around everything… keeping the flower heights low enough that they won’t cause problems for the trees or shrubs. Nearly none of them came up, though, as, after cutting down the old native trees to create the orchard, grass ended up springing up everywhere and crowding everything out. Such is life.
I put up deer fencing to protect everything, but I’d eventually like to make it a vegetative barrier rather than ugly plastic fencing. I planted a bunch of white Nanking cherries in a closely spaced row on one side of the orchard; a bunch of elderberries in a closely-spaced row on the other side; a bunch of cinderblock planters (cheapest material I could find) for raspberries/blackberries on one side of the orchard; and a row of closely-spaced blueberries in the final side of the orchard. All are doing OK. The cherries are surviving, but growing slowly; the elderberries are all living with some really thriving, but it’s early days; I haven’t had time to transplant the raspberries/blackberries from grow bags into the new planters yet; and the blueberries are doing OK. Definitely a work in progress.
2024:
I replaced all of the apple trees that died in the wet 2023 with replacement trees. This time, I took a few measures to prevent them from rotting in the wet conditions. First, we put down a ton of wood mulch to soak up some of the moisture. I then put down cardboard (no end of cardboard packing materials in my household!). I then built up mounds with new quality soil on top with about 24" of soil above the base elevation (now compacted down to about 18"). And I planted the apple trees in that. I figure they’ll get established in the dryer soil and, by the time they find their way down, hopefully they’ll be able to cope with water that can be relatively high when it gets wet. 2024 was a fairly dry year, so I don’t really know how they did.
I also surrounded the apple ‘mounds’ as we’ve called them with a combination of aronias (spaced in a circle a few feet out from the mound) and cranberries (spaced in between). Both are perfectly happy with wet soil conditions and they effectively soak up the moisture to make the boggy parts of the orchard less boggy. Those plants seemed to thrive last year, but it’s hard to tell for sure.
I also looked at my lovely perfect soil apple mounds and thought, before the weeds started to take hold, I should plant something there. I bought up a bunch of strawberries and planted them in the mounds. Most of them really took off and, even though they were planted in May/June, we were still getting a banner harvest off the everbearing strawberries in October. As expected, they sent out runners so parts of the mounds are now completely filled with strawberry plants helping to prevent the weeds from spreading.
I also put metal trellis gates around the edge of the orchard to allow access through the eventual (hopefully) vegetative barrier for humans and not deer. I planted grapes to grow up the trellises. They did OK last year, but, from what I’ve seen elsewhere in my yard, it really takes until the second and third year for them to take off. I also planted peas around the grapes as I wanted to eat some peas and figured having nitrogen fixers there would help the grapes. The peas grew quickly and worked perfectly… until our local groundhog figured out where they were.
Finally, after testing soil in mid-2023, after I’d done most of my planting, I discovered that my native soil was around 5.5 pH. It seems like the apples, goumis, honeyberries, elderberries, cherries, etc. will all grow in that pH even though they’d like it higher, but I did add a bit of lime to raise pH around the non-mound apple trees. But, with that pH, I can also grow blueberries natively without soil amendment, so I added a ton of additional blueberry bushes to a steep slope above the orchard that’s all sand. So far, so good.
I have a few other tricks, but that’s more than enough writing (and reading) for now. It’s been an adventure and I’m sure it’ll continue to be an adventure.
Many thanks to Hartmann’s, too, as it’s really easy to buy a ton of X from them when I’m trying to build vegetative barriers or to fill in soggy portions of my orchard. It’s not hard to meet the wholesale minimums that way and prices are incredibly low compared to retail nurseries (5x to 20x higher prices). But that only works if you’re filling in a large area and it’s a product they sell (i.e., not goumis!).
Final note: I’ve tried growing serviceberries (or juneberries as we try to call them – less morbid that way) and they just hate us. I read somewhere that there isn’t a disease or pest that doesn’t love juneberries and that’s been my experience. I don’t know what it is, but everything seems to attack them around our area. I’ve had great success with aronias, elderberries, strawberries (of course), but I’ve basically given up on juneberries at this stage. The only threat I’ve found for elderberries is the aformentioned groundhog who loves to eat them to the ground… fortunately for me (and him), they like being pruned down to the ground, so they continue to grow back nicely every year.
But my conclusion is elderberries and goumis love my environment.
Apologies for the long, long post.
