Forest to Farm, and Permaculture: What's Happening in the Orchard?

Our orchard is only a handful of trees, one of many ways that it is different from larger commercial ones. We are homesteaders, not farmers, and our goals are less about production than simply being able to grow some healthy trees that will eventually bear fruit. Since we are operating on a very small scale, we have the freedom to experiment with some permaculture ideas. Click here for an earlier post on this. 

A fruit tree and companion plants

A swale is one of many ideas of permaculture, and last year I dug one, click here for the post. The fill has settled in; branches, rotting logs, leaves, and raked-up forest litter, and the swale now serves as a pathway. Beneath the surface, decaying organic matter absorbs water from heavy rains and winter snowfall. The moisture then leaches gradually into the soil to benefit the fruit trees.

Last year I planted some aromatics and bee-attracting plants; lemon balm, lemon catnip, feverfew, anise hyssop, bee balm, and some comfrey and daffodils. In the berm (raised edge) of the swale I planted yarrow.

This year, I’ve added two shrubs; a highbush cranberry, and a red twig dogwood. These, along with the aromatics are intended to encourage birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects. Biodiversity is a concept of permaculture that is largely unknown in commercial orchards.

A new Red Twig Dogwood shrub

The shrubs create a new canopy layer. Canopy layers are a permaculture idea about mimicking the different heights of plants in the forest. The flowers, the shrubs, and the fruit trees create three distinct layers of vegetation due to the differing heights of the plants. The sixty foot tall oak tree in the center of the orchard is a fourth canopy layer.

The orchard was fitted into an area in the woods, and there are signs that the soil is trying to revert back to forest. Ferns are doing their best to take over, and much of the ground is becoming unworkable after all of my hard work with a grub hoe. It’s a struggle to get the forest to back off. The forest and cultivation appear to be two wildly different habitats.

The comfrey is flowering

To help condition the soil I tossed out sorghum and Canadian field pea seeds, which I had done last year also. This year I also seeded some Dutch white clover, and some going-to-seed dandelions. And planted some clumps of day lilies. I added a few food plants: chives, perennial onions, some asparagus, and some turnip seeds. Which of these will thrive is a guess.

Lime is essential for converting the acidic forest floor into an environment that is sweeter and more friendly to cultivated plants, and has been liberally applied, as well as wheel barrow loads of organic cow manure.

There’s lots going on there. Who would have thought that forest to farm is such a tough proposition? More on this as things progress... -jmm

One with the Land

Autumn Cabbage

Having spent most of my life nomadically moving from place to place, I'm beginning to feel one with the land. I grew up in Southern California, observing acre after acre of field and forest and farm and orchard being converted into tracts of little pink houses. I was not, nor could not be connected to the earth in that scenario. I was drawn to places like Big Sur, Joshua Tree and farm communities like Gilroy, California, the garlic capital of the world. But I was there as a voyeur, a visitor. I was looking for connection but I was just passing through. Later I lived in Washington D.C. and spent weekends canoeing up the Potomac. Living even later near Boston I hiked with my dog in Thoreau's stomping ground. Though these places were inspirational and even therapeutic, I was still passing through.

Winter Forest

American Indians felt a mystical oneness with the land. Who they were was intertwined with the land they inhabited. They were not separate from the earth, but spiritually connected to the land, the flora and fauna. There was no differentiation between the people and the land. The land was the people and the people were the land.

While I have not reached the level of the early Americans and their mystical connection to the earth, I have touched their spirit. Our twelve acres are becoming part of me and myself a part of the trees, the stream, the chipmunks and even the swamp. My hands have been in the dirt in which we plant the squash and the lettuce. When I'm away I think about our twelve acres, I talk about our cabbage and our garlic and our peppers. I no longer think about "getting away", but of getting back to the land I am attached to. While I don't know the technical names of all the plants and trees around me, I do know many by acquaintance. The big oak tree that marks the path toward the stream is the "Three Sisters" because the trunk branches off into three directions. I recognize this majestic tree and pay my regards whenever I pass by. There are unique outcroppings of ledge that have their own personalities. I talk to the frogs in the stream in the summer. I know where the garden snakes hang out. The land is not only familiar but is becoming a part of my consciousness. 

Where once my inspiration was with Jack Kerouac's "On The Road", now it's Scott and Helen Nearing's "The Good Life". Instead of hitchhiking to the Grand Canyon, I'm thinking of what can grow in our garden to end up on our dinner table. I take hikes in our woods with the dog. These twelve acres are becoming a part of me and I a part of them. I'm becoming connected. I am the land and the land is me. -G.H.

Forest

...The Forest is Not a Garden

In two previous posts I talked about some differences that I've observed between two types of garden- a perennial flower garden, and the mostly-annual vegetable garden. One type of garden is food for the soul, and the other provides actual food. 

Another place where plants grow is the forest. The forest seems to be nature's idea of a garden. It is an entire ecosystem consisting of trees of varying heights, shrubbery, bramble, ferns, fungi, etc, all supporting a whole gamut of wildlife. It is a complex and intricate place.

I found in the book, Gaia's Garden, (by the way this book is stuffed with you-gotta-read-it info, and I'll blog about it another time), the author talks about "features of natural landscapes" , meaning forests, as having "deep soil that is rich in nutrients and organic matter."  But this is not the case in our forest here. 

"Deep rich soil" does not exist in these woods. The "topsoil" is not soil at all, but is instead a blackened layer about an inch or two thick topped with fallen leaves, and intermixed with rotting logs in places. This layer lies atop sand and rocks. The trees seem to be rooted into veins of sand that keep underground rocks from bumping into each other. In some places, ledge forces roots to run along the surface of the rock making a tree liable to fall over in a strong wind. 

The forest thrives regardless of what it is rooted into. Its mostly perennial plants are uniquely suited to the climate. It is persistent- forest will eventually take over a neglected yard or field. 

The forest is more like the perennial flower garden than the mostly-annual vegetable one as described in my two earlier posts. But there are still major differences. The flower garden does not have the continuous forest floor- if you dig out a plant you are not struggling with a mat of intermingling roots. Compost can be made in the flower garden. In the forest compost takes on the texture of dry airy fluff, and myriads of tiny roots begin to pin it down and then it becomes indistinguishable from forest floor. I know this from having tried it.

The forest bears no resemblance to the mostly-annual veggie garden. And planting veggie seeds in the woods, I can tell you for a fact does not work. There's no mixing of the two types of "garden". Even fruit trees do not thrive in forest areas without completely hacking up the ground, adjusting ph, and adding soil amendments. This I can tell you for a fact also.  

The forest has continuity, and the annual veggie garden does not. The individual rows of vegetables do not appear to mesh- one row is isolated from another, and many plants are not hardy enough to continue from one year to the next. We do not till, but many gardeners do, completely disrupting the soil life, further shaking things up from one year to the next.

So, why this comparison between our perennial flower garden, the mostly-annual veggie garden, and the forest? The answer is simple. It's about observation. It's about what can be learned by slowing down just a bit to think about those things we might notice in our own spaces, if we do in fact slow down and take note. And then we may come to notice how one area of a yard may be different from another. 

Observation is a first step in adopting and using the principles of permaculture. And permaculture is all about creating a healthy, sustainable, food-providing environment.

It is interesting to think about how different types of gardens are distinct from one another, how they function differently, and how the forest does not resemble a garden. Have you thought about how "gardening" may be functionally different from one area to another in your own yard? 

The keyhole garden we started last fall is one of our forays into experimenting with permaculture. Next I'll fill you in on what is happening with that. -jmm