So after crying over eroding soil underneath my landscape fabric, deep gulleys so not just a little soil loss, on my 12% slope orchard I finally had the idea to look up living mulches and clover was my first thought. That’s when I happened upon this book by Helen Atthowe. It is quite extensive and I wish I had a sparks notes version of it, but she has this interesting concept of leaving an unmowed strip in her alleys for beneficials and also has just a complex mowing system in general timing it for the right carbon to nitrogen ratio and mowing and blowing it for fertilizer on her trees. She has grown in California, Oregon and Montana, so not hot and humid Kentucky, so I’m not pretending her methods will allow me no spray peaches or anything, but they could help me fight the good fight. So my question is, is anybody else letting things grow wild in alleys for beneficials and seeing much benefit from it? I’ve searched it that on here and it seems there is some concern about stink bugs and vole habitat. Anybody read her book or finding a favorite living mulch besides clover? I’ll probably be doing at-least a little hay mulch around my trees as well so I don’t have to mow super close. Voles do scare me though so I may pull it back in the winter or something
I live in an entirely different zone, with different challenges and my fruit trees/shrubs aren’t in rows, and are at a home scale of less than 500 plants. This means my goal is not to sell mass amounts of untarnished, marketable fruit that is not native to my area. I just work to co-exist with my environment with a goal of minimal input cost/effort while producing enough for my family & friends.
I grew up on a beef farm that was organic in nature and a lot of that lifestyle and learned approach has been applied to my personal life. This also carries over into the work I do with sustainable agriculture and environmental management.
In regards to my acerage, I practice a no-mow approach. I’ll let most locations run their course until fall, at which time I mow back locations that I have vole concerns. This is in tandem with heavy mulching of slough hay. I mulch in order to prevent the otherwise unchecked grasses/forbs from growing up into my fruiting trees/shrubs.
My goal is to provide as much natural habitat as possible for my local pollinators and beneficial pest-predators.
I’ll have to get a copy of Helen’s book to read, as I do not know her context. A brief search tells me she has a focus on organic, pesticide-free orchard management and one of her management tools is planting specific cover crops and using them as mulch.
My unmowed areas are also a haven for stinkbugs and tarnished plant bugs while orchards I manage on estates with highly managed turf have fewer pest issues than I do. Plant bugs are said to thrive in broad leaf plants, especially clover, and I have noticed a correlation in orchards I manage with a lot of clover, even in frequently mowed turf. This is mostly a problem with peaches.
There is also the issue of increasing humidity with unmowed sod that leaves more dew on the leaves and fruit of trees compared to tightly mowed turf so there is noticeably more fungal pressure.
Sometimes it seems like the economics of organic farming on a small scale revolves more on selling books than food. One thing I don’t see much of in my region is locally produced organic fruit and it just doesn’t seem to be a viable approach here when your intention is to make money by selling fruit. .
At least in the native plant community im in no mow is not well regarded because where I am the seedbank is just all invasives. If you dont mow you get garlic mustard, thistle, creeping charlie, a bunch of junk. But I do think planting natives in this manner could be good. Sowing rows of perennials between trees is i believe what Maine heritage orchard does. Or if you live somewhere where the seedbank isn’t just all invasives its worth a shot.
The start up cost can be rather high though if you need to grow them to plugs then plant them out.
wild onions and chives feed bees and also deter bugs. so does walking onions and garlic. voles dont like them either. chives and walking onions are easy to spread around and feed you. once established are fairly drought tolerant. i just mulch around mine and theyre good.
I am not sure i am reporting good results. But i will report that i have a living ecosystem that is thriving.
The ecology of growing fruit.. minus myself taking a role as predator is a fascinating show to behold… one that only an Entomophile could report as a good result.
Dont like stink bugs? They have predators too. Birds, Bats, Spiders and Assassin Bugs… i have all of those predators here.
VOLES!!! the very word makes me want to curse. We’ve been dealing with them for at least the last three seasons. Our first sign of their presence was watching a Super Sauce Hybrid tomato seedling disappear before my very eyes as it was pulled down into a tunnel (run). So far the voles have taken out 6 blueberries, several tomatoes, and 8 roses. They never take a break and they multiply all the time. The only thing I have found that drives them away (not kill) is the hose end application of castor oil and peppermint Castile soap in and around the garden. That’s a research proven method. The article spoke to the aroma of the two compounds not being a favorite of voles. The peppermint in the Castile soap also wards off deer and rabbits. So I assume it will have a similar effect on voles since they are rodents just the same as rabbits only smaller. I have stopped mulching anything since that just gives voles a place to hide and they go undetected until it’s too late. I even put up a barred owl box in a cedar tree; but, so far I’ve seen no owls, although I know they are in the area. We also have a family of foxes in the woods surrounding our property as well as bobcats and rat snakes. It’s fun to see the foxes in the back yard pouncing on a vole run. They will dig just like a dachshund to get into a vole run.
So if there is anything anyone of you knows about how to get ride of these varmints I would appreciate hearing from you. We also have the usual wildlife like chipmunks, ground hogs, squirrels, and possums and, of course the birds. All of those do eat a portion of our various produce but they don’t actually kill the plants like the voles do. You know I thought the voles would not eat the roots of garlic, onions, or shallots; but I was wrong. They are equal opportunity foragers. Oh, woe is me!!! I feel sorry for anyone who has to deal with those little monsters.
they have been bad here as well. ive had to resort to homemade bait block stations with poison block bait put out just before the 1st. big snow. by spring the bait is gone and so are most of the voles
I feel your pain and equally hate them. I use peppermint oil spray. I think it works to deter the mice and voles, but you have to be constantly doing it and it’s not a guarantee. Maybe my mice and voles just got used it because they would eat things the night after I sprayed them.
Eme, we don’t always have the luxury of spraying at the right times like while it’s raining; but when I spray my mixture of castor oil and peppermint Castile soap I mix the two in a hose end sprayer and dial up the highest amount per gallon and spray heavily around the plantings that I want to protect (which is just about everything in our back yard including the fruit trees). Ideally I am out there as early as possible and it is raining. Or it rains just after I finish; but either way I am out there fairly often spraying just about the entire yard once a week. If I notice any fresh hills out there I will go back out and trace them and spray to head the voles off. Last season we didn’t lose any tomatoes but we did lose two more blueberry bushes; and just this past week I noticed one rose was nearly completely chewed below the soil surface and a few of our shallots that had wintered over were minus their roots. So, as you said, it is a never ending battle; one which I am determined to fight and win.
Thank you for sharing what you do. I did not have castor oil, but I’ll try that this year. I thought I was done with the voles last September and then I’m winter discovered they tore through my perennial garden and ate the roots/disappeared countless plant. It’s a never-ending war, as you say.
