Alan,
Very good approach and exactly what I want long term. As the leaves fall from my pears the soil is richer and water is retained better. My pear tree roots get deeper every year bringing up more nutrients from deeper in the ground where it’s never been farmed before. In time the approach I’m using will completely correct the deficiencies in my land but it’s unlikely I can do it in my lifetime. In addition I grow mostly full sized pear trees which are not only more deer proof but gain access to more nutrients & water from deeper down than dwarf trees because of longer roots which in turn makes them more drought tolerant and healthier.
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You are transforming your soil with your trees into tree soil, not restoring it to its natural state. Our prairie soils have been a huge asset as the “bread basket of the world” but the relatively extreme weather of the midwest make tilling a soil losing proposition. There was a Kansas man of some fame (Jackson?) who was trying to breed productive perennial wheat, but he never managed to get around the principle that annual plants are so productive of seed because they save nothing for themselves to get through winter. I assume an acre of pear trees produces far few calories through its fruit than an acre of corn.
I admire your idealism- meanwhile I cut down native species to make room for more fruit trees. I have lousy (by commercial production standards) corn soil but its great for trees. I actually use mulch hay a lot as mulch for my nursery trees because it’s lighter than wood chips, so in a way, I’m doing the opposite as you.
At least I’m not building strip malls.
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I thought hay broke down to compost just like wood chips break down to compost, and pretty much everything else organic. So how are you doing something opposite to a person that puts down wood chips?
I’m cutting down big trees is the main thing. The hay contains seeds of meadow plants that establish in the more open space of my nursery. The big trees close off the sky pretty thoroughly and would keep them from establishing well.
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For my own curiosity, I did a quick and dirty calculation. An acre of mature pear trees produces about 11.5 mil. calories (based on 750 bu/ac - i.e. 40 bins/ac). An acre of corn roughly 15 mil calories (based on 170 bu/ac)
The pear estimate is based on full production. Obviously pears take a long time to come into production, so the average yield would be smaller depending on assumptions one used. The other thing is that the 750 bu/ac. may be a little optimistic. I couldn’t find the national average yield/ac for pears, so I just used assumptions of a pear budget for the Hudson valley.
What’s interesting to me is how productive land can be, when it’s farmed. A person on a 2000 calorie a day diet will eat about 750,000 calories/year. That would mean he/she would need about, let’s say, an acre to supply dietary calories (less if it was straight corn). Interesting if you think about it.
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It surprises me that it is even that close, even when assuming equal reliability of pears to corn. Makes me wonder how chestnuts compare to corn- that actually is viable food for meat animals. Trees farming does a much better job of holding soil than annual crops.
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What is the density of pears in that acre? Cost of production is a whole lot cheaper if you are producing those pears for personal consumption vs buying that same quantity.
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Looking forward to growing more in the vastly improved soil this year.
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Every year the trees age and fertlity improves and crop increases. At some point i will hit a maximum production rate. The soil was in such bad shape when i bought it due to years of neglect.
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Think I hit that maximum production on the original orchard discussed here. Once the problems were corrected my biggest problem is growing to much fruit. I need to learn what to do with it all. What a great problem to have!
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Clark-I bet you get a lot of deer visiting.
John S
PDX OR
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Not as many as you would think anymore. The big herds are gone that used to roam my area. There are to many people now for herds of 15+ deer
I lucked out in that I bought the last empty lot (0.6 acres next door) in my subdivision which has (as far as I know) been wooded. At least for 40 years. I am across the street from woods and have not seen deer for 5 years. The lot soil is damp thick clay at 6 inches and maybe a foot in a few locations. After clearing the land (forestry mulcher) and bringing in lots of wood chips, I now have an orchard that is 90% complete.
I have an interesting problem in that when I dig a hole the hole will soon fill with water with what is called capillary action. I dug a hole one cubic meter and yep it filled right up. Had to do a lot of small mounds to compensate.
I expect this land will undergo a transformation like what happened in my back yard after 5 years of wood chipping. The soil went from hard clay, to where I have to be careful to drive my pup tractor over it so it will not get stuck. The yard is slowly turning from weed patches to more beneficial plants.
I also get a lot of natural fungi in the wood chips and I was not careful and ended up with aspergillis of the lung. I now use a mask when moving chips. My retirement plan is to sell some as pick your own and some I will pulp. At least it will get me outside everyday.
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That is gravity flow, not capillary action, I believe, anyway the result of a high water table. Hopefully, the water table will drop once spring comes. I have seen commercial orchard sites that commonly had water sitting on the surface in early spring. Just needs to drain once trees start leafing out, but I can never tell ahead of time. Supposedly if there is rust in the soil that is red-brown the soil drains, black iron ore indicates poor drainage.
I verified this with a soil scientist. It is capillary rise and not surface flow. It only appears on holes that are dense clay and not on ones with loose soil. One uphill from the other may be full of water but the one lower is not. It is random. This is on a slope.
I can see the water starting to rise as soon as I dig the hole with my post hole digger. Solution is to fill the hole with gravel and do a mound on top.
Once the roots expand past the hole it will do fine in the very damp clay. This was previously wooded area with very healthy trees.
Well, that is not something I ever saw in the couple of text books I’ve read about soil science, but I assume the soil scientist knows better than I do. Here is what I found on the subject, but I’m too tired to translate it into practical understanding tonight. Capillary Rise In Soils - Soil Mechanics - Civil Engineering - Elementary Engineering Library
Not that you were asking. You are the one who knows what he’s talking about, but the capillary pull that has always concerned me is when fine soil pulls water away from coarse soil. It is one reason container trees transplanted into real soil dry out so quickly.
Water doesn’t fill a hole dug in the soil via capillary action. Capillary action pulls water into the soil if there is free water nearby. More so in fine soil than in coarse soil. Capillary rise in soil occurs by the same forces that it occurs in something like a towel that wicks up water above a spill.
The water in a hole of any size indicates the level of the water table at that location. Free water in the soil moves into the hole by gravity. Capillary water in the soil won’t move into a hole, only free water will.
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Yeah, I was trying to figure out what DBang’s scientist was telling him just now. I couldn’t find a single reference where capillary rise represented a drainage problem such as is plaguing DBang. Are you saying that DBang either misunderstood what that scientist was saying or that the scientist was wrong? Or something else. Capillary rise is a thing (I hadn’t known about before, at least worded like that) but it is viewed as a positive that allows roots to pull up water. I had always thought of that as capillary pull, so I’m wondering if rise isn’t a new term for it. But most of all, I’m wondering if capillary rise EVER represents a drainage problem where water from it fills recently dug holes- quickly. I just can’t find a reference to that.
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I’m not sure it’s relevant to bring this up but I will. When I built my Ponds sometimes 70 feet or further away water popped up out of the ground up hill or down hill or in a ditch or not in a ditch. It took me awhile to realize the tree roots were behind that water being transported like a straw. Before someone says what a tree can or cannot do think of a tree hundreds of feet tall like redwoods or others height. They transfer water to the top but also throughout their root structure. It was amazing to me in clay soil to see this. Some call that pond seapage but it’s not caused by lose dirt it’s caused by tree roots and downhill or uphill doesn’t matter but downhill is more common. Again just a side note about water transfer underground via vegetative matter from an eye witness. In various areas around here miles away from each other there are woods. I thought I was dealing with springs flowing around creeks in those woods hundreds of feet away where the water table was raised. Trees will transfer water from a shallow water table as well but may die from all that water to.
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Capillary rise in a soil is a plus above a water table. Take the case of pecan on river bottom soils with a water table within the root zone. Roots don’t function well below the water table but can in the moist zone above the water table that stays moist due to capillary rise. But at most it’s only about one foot of soil that will maintain available water above the water table.
Capillary rise is also the principle behind self watering containers. The SIPs as they are sometimes called have a water reservoir in the bottom. And a soil column above that which draws water from the reservoir for use by the plants roots. In those devices all the water used by the plant is supplied by capillary action. That is unless the roots extend right into the free water in the reservoir.
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