I thought you were moving away from callery as a rootstock due to its ability to host fireblight.
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In that situation he will need something that can survive where other fruit trees cannot. Iām using BET for that now but this year, some were hit with fireblight worse than callery. They still work for me but in Louisiana they wonāt work. Iāve not been planting callery for a couple of years because of their tendency to be invasive when not grafted. I might use them responsibly but not everyone would or did. We are running out of rootstock options for pears. There are people who plant callery as an ornamental instead of using them as a rootstock which has caused huge problems. I have a wild callery in my ditch on county property i will need to kill. There are buried cables in that area. Iām not the type to let them flower.
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Considering the look of that āsoilā in the pictures, you are likely going to save yourself a lot of misery if you either import dirt or create it. Berms, either from imported soil or something with a wood center for hugelkultur, or a couple feet of chips left for a few years if you have the time.
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āOutplant the pestsā Amen!
Thatās what I tell my wife every time new trees show up lol Same in the garden.
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Iām also considering planting all my potted trees (200+) in my current garden field which is almost completely overtaken by nutsedge, and relocate the garden to the front here after a few years of building up.
Thinking now I might plant a few trees (like callery grafted pears) on elevated individual mounds around the perimeter. I could stockpile wood chips, bring in chicken/horse/cow manure, rotate cover crops, etc and make a slower more gradual planting over a couple years, gardening along the way as the soil improves.
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@LADPT
Have you measured the elevation drop from the lowest spot in that area to the county ditch?
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This is from where the drive comes off the highway, as seen in the above pic.
You can zoom in and see where water (and debris) flows across the drive in heavy rain. The ditch at the highway is probably 6-12ā higher than this point. The whole yard drains hereās across the drive into the woods.
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Thatās for sure legit concern.
The problem with trying raised plantings with wood chips is that when they rot down, they donāt give you much above grade. Iād estimate when wood chips rot down, they will give single digit percentages in volume from where they started. In other words, if one started with a 4ā mound or terrace with wood chips, or manure, by the time it settled and rotted, youād end up with maybe 6" tall mounds, which isnāt much of a mound.
Iāve built terraces and mounds by hand (a lot of work) by skid steer, and by motor grader. However, I have a friend who built terraces for a commercial peach orchard using a cheap disc plow (you can youtube it to probably get some examples). Likewise I think a person could do a lot to build terraces with a 3 or 4 bottom plow to loosen the soil and a good heavy rear tractor blade to windrow it into a terrace.
As I mentioned, I used a motor grader to move dirt. Mostly because I had a lot of dirt to move, and didnāt have time to move it really slowly.
I built some terraces with a motor grader I bought and then sold, and some many years later with a rented motor grader.
Here are a couple videos I posted a few years ago showing me expanding the orchard area for enough room for about 300 new peach trees.
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I agree with Olpea, wood chips will not provide any elevation once they rot down. For apples, P.18 is another root stock that is noted for being tolerant of wet feet. It was my intention to use it in the wet areas of my orchard. My property is a large bowl with no outlet for water, so I get pooling in the spring with snow melt off. I get enough of an area under water that I havenāt been able to plant P.18 trees in all of that area. Regardless, Iāve had good luck with the trees tolerating it. Should I see issues develop Iāll begin to create mounds to deal with it.
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my front yards like that in May. i have aronia, elder and currants there that are under water for a week or so but grow well anyway.
@AndySmith, have you considered the idea of creating infiltration basins in order to consolidate all of the runoff in locations where it can slowly percolate into the soil, leaving you with additional arable land that isnāt sodden?
Wood chips do provide some build which i know because i use them. A big 8-10 foot tall pile leaves behind one to two feet of build. Let me know if you want to see some photos. In my area they take a long time to break down. The idea is called layering. Build the mounds out of dirt and put the pears on those. Then keep dumping woodchips, dirt, sticks, manure etc. Around the mounds until the entire area is raised. Build a water way for the water to have a place to go. It is not a huge amount of fill but nothing says you cant keep doing it. Sometimes the idea is take whatever organic and use it to build up the low areas.
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how about installing drain tiles in between the rows emptying into the lower areas? or you could build up the high end tapering down to ground level at the lower end, then you could make some mounds that taper down from that? could add some amendments before starting to do this so it gets incorporated well in the process. sorry, just thinking out loud but it could be done with a smaller dozer.
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That area is all planted out, rows go right through it. This water lasted about a week and the trees were fine. Very sandy soil here and it doesnāt hold water long.
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I am impressed with how high you were able to get those piles of wood chips. Did you use a hay elevator or bin piler to achieve that @AndySmith?
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