Mr. Rawles,
I very much enjoyed the recent article on orchards. Fruit and nut bearing trees are definitely low maintenance. I am now benefiting from my forebearers’ efforts to establish fruit and nut bearing trees and bushes. One thing that they always did if they could: They would always plant a few trees every year. It’s a habit. It doesn’t cost a lot at a time to plant one or two trees a year, and it’s a lot less work to maintain. If one dies, at whatever growing stage, you replant it. It’s always good to have a great variety of fruit and nut trees. We have lots of varieties of pecan trees, and a couple of walnut trees. Several varieties of peach trees, early, mid-season and late. Several kinds of pear and apple trees as well. And a few other kinds of fruit, both wild and cultivated. There is very seldom a perfect year, when all of them product a bumper crop, but which one produces changes from year to year. We always have fruit, but not always the same kind. Some years, there’s lot of blackberries but no dew berries. Some years, we have both, but no apples, some years, no pecans. Some years, the garden doesn’t do well, but the trees do.
There are apple, pear, and pecan trees on this place that are at least 50 years old. Several of the pecan trees would only grow when there was 13-13-13 buried underneath. I learned an easier way to make them productive: Create a compost bin around them and fill it with leaves, grass, etc. Manure is also useful, but be careful to let it cool down before you add it to the compost bin, as it will kill the tree otherwise. This is called a slow compost. You don’t have to turn it, though if you have chickens, they will turn it for you. Once you get the compost bin built, the only maintenance is to rake the grass or leaves and add them to the compost bin. I have compost bins made of roofing tin, old fencing, stacked up rocks, bricks, etc. I have gotten several pecan trees to produce this way, with no other fertilizer. The compost bin also keeps trees alive and producing in times of drought, such as this year. I don’t know anything about compost bins around a tree with a fan root, such as an oak. I haven’t tried it, but I am told that it will kill it, because it can’t breathe. I recommend it only for trees with tap roots that go straight down. All fruit and nut trees have a tap root, as do pine trees.
It’s fun to play around with different configurations of how to make mulch and compost work for you. I have what I call a peach bed, out in front of the house along the driveway. I have room for 4 peach trees in it. The last one will hopefully go in the ground this next year. Since it’s visible, I used decorative rocks stacked up to create a shallow compost bin. I keep it mulched with leaves, grass, manure and the top layer in pine straw, since it looks the best. In this peach bed, I keep multiplying onions and garlic growing year round. The onions seems to be especially useful to the peach tree since their growing season (here in the south) coincides very closely with the peach tree’s wintering growing season which is when it is especially vulnerable to the pests.
Onions, garlic, leeks, and chives are all very useful in companion planting with most plants. Similar summer growing companion planting helps are horseradish, hot peppers and various herbs. People say that it is impossible to do organic gardening here in the South with all the bugs and weeds we have down. It IS possible, I just want to set the record straight; it is difficult, but possible. 90% of the bugs in existence are beneficial bugs that help to control the bad bugs and promote plant growth. You just have to think of them as your friends and learn how to help them and welcome them, so they will help you.
One of the most beneficial insects to fruit growers is the honey bee. You can’t have productive fruit trees, brambles and bushes without honey bees. And speaking of liquid gold to barter, I know of no product even in times of plenty in higher demand than honey; I can’t imagine what the demand will be in times of want.
Because of my food allergies, I am unable to eat any store-bought pectin, so I take the green apples and cook them down, including peels and seeds but minus the blossom end. I take the green apple sauce (AKA pectin) when it comes through the sauce maker, and make my jelly. I’ve made hot jalepeno jelly, apple jelly, and strawberry jelly in this way. Awesome! – Miss Lou
Letter Re: Land of Plenty–Establishing or Reclaiming an Orchard
