22 Pro TIPS for YOUR Fruit Trees

fall time perfect time to give you a look at the permaculture Orchard in fall and how this year's been and what the weather's been like and what the crop has been like and some tips for you for your project or your future project or your hoped for project let's get started look at this just as we start look what's here uh check that out that been a nice addition I like Wildlife I really like to have a lot more Wildlife this has been a big plus just in making this year different and it was different here but we had wild turkey here nesting successfully in the permaculture Orchard for the first time that's well to me that's a big deal it's showing that as you can see the orchard has matured it's not what it was gee I was thinking of that when we film the film The permaculture Orchard Beyond Organic and if you've never heard of it or seen it go check it out at the film's website which is permaculture orchard.com it was filmed in 2013 and I was quite amazed I mean the orchard doesn't didn't look like this the size of the trees was not what this is if you see the film or if you have it go take a look I mean look at this look at this tree you know that that's it's grown and if you like Dad jokes we say used to be cute and cuddly and then it grew some deep feather and that's a feather in my cap right [Music] um there it works I hear the irrigation on in here one of the things we've had different this year is we've had Birds again and a lot of birds a lot of different birds we've got some geese we've got some ducks we've got Broiler chickens we've got turkeys actually most of the turkeys are right here and we've got laying hens and they're even some of them are going into roost already that's their laying hand hand that's where they lay the eggs here's where the uh what's left of the birds are right now we have just laying hens and geese we had ducks and broilers and turkeys and pheasant and most of them have migrated to the Arctic as we like to say so I did some chop and drop in here after the after the chickens oh it's disconnected see that that's a that's not what it's supposed to run it's supposed to be connected it's hard to do that and film come back and do that one I remember it so we've had the chickens in here we moved them in here out of here last week so we put them in an area it's pretty big Parcels we get you can hear the geese when they see me they they actually they're they're friendly geese there's different opinions about them I like having geese around that's why we're keeping the geese for the winter uh but it's the job they do I love having I would love to have a lot more birds they take more work and they're uh those of you who have animals you know it's not you know you have them and come back some weeks later no there is there is work and if you really want to take care of them properly there is in regular work let's say you really don't want to leave them for long periods of time uh because that's when things happen so because we had them in here when they left I did a big chop and drop here so we cut down we had lots of sumac in here sumac you know what that is there's some back here so that's where they came from that's all sumac here and uh anyway it's I love the job they do when they're in an area and so when we move them out it's a great chance to uh to to get some of the work done like they really cleared they trampled everything if you see this see how everything is laid down so that's really nice that they they lay the the grass down this was tall in here well here I'll be on my knees this is how tall the grass was in here and so they really lay it down they put it on the ground and it acts as a great great mulch so the birds impact has been really great this year I'll show you some of the other areas where they were earlier good morning guys [Applause] [Music] [Applause] they have to finish their course yes good morning and the hens let's see if I can go through without getting too much of a shock in here you know it's something that can be quite revolting and I don't like getting a charge a charge out of this there if you have Birds these electronets great great tool they make it we haven't lost any birds to predators uh it does a great job great job keeping the birds in keeping the Predators out so they've been they've been in here they've impacted this area quite a bit already but we give them it's a big it's four fences here so it's a big area and so they are they're still working on it they haven't finished so usually about two weeks for such a big piece but now that we got rid well at least the turkeys have migrated to the Arctic so to say and so the turkeys were uh were a big they were a big impact but now the geese are eating the grass they're trampling the grass their hens are are scratching everything up my feather got caught in the wires but this area is some of the weakest soil in on the farm I mean just to give you an idea this is a honey locust planted the same time as all the others this is kind of Ground Zero for weak soil so you see here is another one so that gives you an idea of how big they should be and how big some places they are so having the birds in here having their transfer of fertility let me see can I show I can show you so letting the yeah you guys doing a great job great job but they're they're impact and let me show you what their impact looks like when we put and we have a few structures so we have the feeder which is the bulk feeder if you saw last Winter's video this is the same feeder that we keep in the greenhouse and so it's a bulk feeder very simple very simple design but we we feed them about once a week and so it stores quite a bit of food this is organic local grain from an organic feed mill organic and so they get in here and they eat well that that's basically taking the fertility of the Grain and spreading it out combined with the grass and the insects that they that they eat this is their their sheltered this is the one shelter they have and we just added this one a couple days ago mainly for the geese to use change of light in here oh they're busy they're busy doing laying their their fruit here good morning so come in and collect the eggs and so see how they've trampled things because they do use these shelters so they trample here's what it looked like just yesterday where they were so this gets really really trampled I mean you can see this grass how crushed it is compared to right here where they really haven't impacted they tend to move from the area they've been to like that's where they were we had the pen running up there and then it comes back so we kind of zigzag it through this parcel they don't use the untouched areas much yet they especially because of the geese and then look at this so they leave their droppings and this is this is gold I mean this is great so what I do is I've been moving it the pen beside trees that look really really weak like here's a a Russian olive I mean this thing is extremely let's see this does not make this species proud but it's because this soil here is I mean it's now it's actually growing grass so just a few years ago this area here was pretty well just hawkweed and we've had the birds in here three times I think in the last few years and each time it's it starts to change it then the grass comes in Alfalfa comes in Alfalfa is a great great um legume plant to have super forage and just yeah great great plant to have in your areas see the manure droppings here so I put it in this case near this apple tree here which also all these trees are super stunted in here like this is this is not the results you want when you plant but you won't have even soil throughout and so yeah you know giving these areas a little bit of chance getting him going is is really useful have you had breakfast looks like you have yeah we've had just to give you a little update on weather we've had an interesting year it was fairly dry and this isn't because it's dry it's because we've had frosts killing frosts already tomatoes are done peppers are done all of that we're into Indian Summer right now it's middle of October here in southern Quebec in Canada and so we've got the geese have started to migrate in yesterday was the first flock of snow geese came in so we know the weather is turning further north and they start to head in come on in they're going to the lake next door and so they the birds are starting to move we've got flocks of wild birds starting to come in and yeah the migration is actually a lot of birds have gone through already all the southern migrants they've gone we're starting to get to some the harder your birds to come in at this time of year so the birds have been a big plus that that's been an extra work have been a big plus what they do just show you some of these these rows so this this block here is different from this one so this was planted in 2008 and this here was planted in 2009 but we've added the plastic mulch and drip irrigation I mean the trees here have done a lot better A lot better than these and the soil isn't that much different this is still also pretty weak but having the extra irrigation these have one line of irrigation and hopefully it's not detached uh but yeah not having the mulch meant the trees got off to a really slow start and they've never really caught up now so if your trees grow slow in the beginning they won't catch up later you really want to get your trees off to a good start so lesson there your first three to five years make sure your trees and we did give these trees a mulch this is these were going to be tearing out now that the birds have been in here we put little squares of plastic which in the end didn't do a great job it did prevent the trees from getting completely killed so that I'd say it did a job but not necessarily a super great job some of these like these plums here planted in 2008 like that's a long time uh 14 year old Plum and it's just basically yeah it's a little higher than my hand but that's it and these just produced last year for the first time so yeah get your trees off to a good start a great start give the mulch give them some hey if you can give them some in your plant them in but really make sure they're not overwhelmed uh by grasses the first few years makes a big difference and I would say now I do say don't try to plant a large area plant what you can plant and finish and maintain properly in in the first few years because if you're just trying to plant out like I did plant plant basically tried to plant part of the orchard what happened is I focused on the trees and I didn't get the other elements in I didn't get the shrubs in I didn't get here's a what's left of a garlic chive because the birds do like this and they eat it uh aronia berry so we didn't put in our shrubs in this area as much we did put in some blackcurrant and some red currant but it certainly wasn't a filled in area hey you're liking that one eh one of the things the birds do as well is they clean up so there isn't much in the way of fruit of what's left the fruit here see that goose is found the pear they like pear more than Apples higher sugar just sweeter and uh yeah they'll they'll clean them up pretty well even geese nice thing is they'll open the Fruit up on their own some of these fall late apples can be quite hard and birds have a hard time opening them here's one example so if I if I take these little bit of apples left and I've left these because I really want the the chickens to clean them up but if I put them the chickens will be curious about it but it's like oh well how do I get at this these are hard apples now and so I even even stomping them they don't stop well but once you open them then they'll come in and eat them more you guys gonna eat them too so that's nice using animals to do a fall cleanup is really useful but you'd need a lot of animals I mean we have very very low crop this year this year was dismal crop like five percent of what we got last year if that and in a lot of trees just had nothing trees last year produced so much we basically had two crops in one so two crops in one year go see last year's fall walk about to give you an idea of what the crop was like it was just it was incredible it was huge crop beautiful crop this year a tiny tiny crop and the quality was well let me show you another one the quality was just not there and so there look at that there's coddling moth damage in that one uh Apple that's those bumps there that's all apple maggot fly and we trapped we put our traps up didn't do a great job but I think they did lack liquid in the coddling moth traps and the uh apple maggot fly traps I have videos on both of those go see them they you have to we just missed a few key periods and the um apple maggot fly traps it was so hot when we put them up that the glue kind of ran down is he gonna open it yeah I got and look at that eh so the geese are able to open it better than the chickens so having the two around helps use up the fruit completely so I was saying that the traps we had them up and they can work and they have worked but you have to make sure that they're working at the best way possible so there needs to be glue and there needs to be liquid in the coddling moth traps so anyway the quality when there's this little fruit the insects that are around are looking for every last bit of oh here we go where'd you go so the insects are looking for every last fruit where are you so so much for that Apple I don't know that's the one I crushed they like that I like having geese around I like having chickens like I like all the fall uh but they all have their their ups and downs their quirks you get to learn about them as you have them so anyway that's the bird Story the birds have done and they've been and yeah time to time to there are winter quarters the greenhouse is ready what's next we talked a little bit about trapping let me just see if I can cross this without getting too much of a charge out of this there should be a few thousand volts on the fence at any one time if you drop under 2000 volts it's it's not that effective give you an idea of how much these honey locust mulch and so there's a there's a lot of material under there they dry and it actually makes some of the nicest the nicest mulch with time so honey look I like the I like the fertility plus from honey locust and some of these places you'll see the the seedlings can come in quite thick here's see here's just material that's accumulated a little bit of sand and here is a garlic chive oh that one actually found the hole in the plastic there's a little hole so I'll leave it in there but yeah garlic chives go see that on my favorite perennials that's definitely one of my favorite perennials very very nice plant very good cup plant I have a collection of Prairie type plants maintenance has been the only thing we've kind of done this year and minimal maintenance so here you could see mowing so we did some mowing but we did mostly and here it is we did do this one you see how see how there's grass stems all down on the ground even though it was mowed that doesn't get picked up so that's roller crimping [Music] so in the summertime I don't mow I don't mow from June on to basically mid to end of August I just roller crimp pretty well every time uh because it does such a better job go see that video on roller crimp versus mowing versus uh chop and drop it's it's really changed how well the Orchards work these rows would be all very dry so here's an indicator and go see my indicator video series but that's an indicator that's hawkweed this one's orange hawkweed or yellow hawkweed and that's an indicator of very very dry sight like there there's the there's our top soil so it's just it's just uh very sandy soil and so this doesn't hold water at all but by having this any bit of grass growth having it roller crimp and Crush down means the ground is not bare when I used to mow in here it basically would create two months of zero growth so here you get an idea and actually this one we actually came in and just put a little bit of compost we had a little compost so we put some in here so that's that's a little bit of compost on there but otherwise this is pretty well the soil here and that's why some of the trees really don't grow much at all in here like that's that's yeah that's sand so well that's that's basically the extent of the older blocks of permaculture Orchard and then here uh we did a job we did a big job with netsu raising these irrigation lines so that's the old original irrigation system but we raised the wires uh that's that's done a great job because it just it means it's easier to pass it runs better it runs smoother does an all-around better job so here would be mode but just because we did have some rows to harvest even though there's nothing to harvest here this is just replanted and very still very stunted trees I mean these trees have not done well at all and they were planted quite a few years ago so we came in and gave another big ground of wood chips and they get irrigation but yeah these trees that was the original one planted or grew a bit and then a new shoot coming but the growth in here is not not what I would like it to be I'd love to love to get this area going a bit more we haven't had the birds in here that that makes a difference without the birds you just don't have the same plus I'd like to get more of these so here's some Seaberry oh that's one of our suckers from Seaberry and it's doing good because it likes it well it'll grow in very dry sandy soil but things like the plum I mean that's a plum tree it was planted it was probably down to here it was small but yeah things are just hanging on and surviving is not thriving so that there's a there's a a line between that you want to pass the level of surviving so a lot of these trees have kind of survived now we're going a little bit up the hill it gets a little bit better so see these are some of our original trees so that would have been planted 1980 giving you an idea I mean 1980 planted apple tree this isn't what I would call Rapid growth uh well that's that's what we have what do you have and so I'm hesitant to cut out the rest and I won't be cutting out the rest of this Orchard because I know how long trees take to grow in this soil and so if you have a tree that's bigger then try to just use it and so we've done some pretty drastic pruning and so on in here to make these trees revive so you can take an old tree and you can basically give it a a second life so we mold because we picked up in here I see a few fruit it didn't come down when we shook there it comes down and you see see that like that's all apple red bug apple maggot fly yeah a lot of damage on these these these fruit a lot of damage this is not this is not quality fruit but what we did and we were open only one day and I'm glad a lot of people didn't come because we didn't have a lot and we didn't have quality so I communicated that to people saying look will be open only that one day it was October 1st and the quality is very low so because I communicated I can have a crop that's not very nice actually I won't go too close because they're digging and it's quite noisy I can communicate to people that's what they can expect and so people oh I was looking more for better quality fruit well it's not there this year it just isn't I mean look at some video from last year and you'll see the difference when you get so little fruit and this is nothing I mean this is you think oh look yeah that this is nothing these trees should produce tree dish size should have a bushel and a half two bushels of fruit on it which is let's say 60 to 80 pounds of fruit and this has five pounds of fruit so it's really really really down from what it should be but that's that's the ups and downs you're gonna have a project you will have years where things don't just don't produce as well we've had some fall since we we'd finished in here where I thought we finished but we had a few fruit that didn't shake off when I did the when we picked them up and you do want to one of the maintenance Parts is you do want to gather these drops because all these fruit with a lot of damage if you just leave them and I did leave a few so there's probably 20 fruit down on the ground you know here and there some of them didn't Shake I see one left up there what will happen then is if those fruits that fall let me find one and I'll show you the example when you're looking for it you know here's one two so this fruit here that's on the ground what happens is if the insects that are in this fruit are still alive and that's not always a guarantee but if they're still alive then this fruit now that it's on the ground they will emerge come out of this fruit and because the fruit is already on the ground they'll go from the fruit they'll go into the soil they don't go very deep but they will go so depending on the insects but most of them will go right in the ground so what happens there you leave fruit on the ground you will get the insects that are in and it's normal to have a few insects not like this this is this is not a normal year so it's not a normal amount they will go in the ground and where are they so they are right under the tree from which that fruit dropped so you'll have basically the tree dropping the fruit the insects go in the ground they overwinter there and what happens next spring well there's insects that are going to damage your fruit that are right there and when they emerge oh look there's fruit up here and they go back and the cycle starts again so the only way to break that cycle is to gather your drops you don't gather your drops you're gonna have a lot more insect damage so here's a few I don't know how come I missed these but I missed some and um still good oh very sweet very nice I don't want to be chewing in your mouth so I'll put this here and the squirrels or the Chipmunks will pick it up when the time comes so this is very little very little fruit left I mean we shook all these trees that just means that the fruit didn't come off it was still holding on quite well but we have been replanting so last year Matsu did a great round of transplanting in here it was hazelnuts and then in Spring we also put in Eastern White Cedar so there's hazelnut Cedar and raspberries in here in the really open areas we put raspberries so that's how we're diversifying this area oh here's a good one of we did the guards go look at that one from last fall this tree is a good example of how we can renew so that tree was not doing too well it had I'd had problems it's still live it's still producing but it sent out a shoot above the graft from the base so this has turned out to be a beautiful young Tree on an old route and so we're leaving this one this will be a great replacement so we've trained the branches we did a quick round of bending you can go see that in the pruning course did a round of bending these branches to get them properly angled and now this tree will replace so once that one actually there there is three-year-old branches on there like these and you can see here the start of fruit Spurs which can flower next year so because this tree now will start to produce here's another spur now that it will start to produce these are some fruiting Spurs just to give you an idea what that we're talking about because this tree will probably flower next spring and it can start to produce fruit then now we'll be able to take off this one so next spring at the end of winter when I prune these I'll cut out this old one probably and let the new one go because the new ones pretty well as high as the old one anyway and it's got a lean and so on so we can renew some of these old trees and then you get a totally new Young tree which can grow really well gradually transform the replanted Eastern White Cedar it's not the red cedar and I've had lots of comments about don't you have apple rust no we don't have apple rust because this is a thuya it's this is Dewey occidentalis which is the Eastern White Cedar it's not the red cedar red cedar or Eastern red cedar is a juniper and Juniper are the host to Cedar Apple rust so even if we cut that's why the common names can often be misleading so if you have Eastern red cedar you probably will have [Music] Cedar Apple rust non-susceptible cultivars so these yeah these hazelnuts really come in well they've taken well they've adjusted well and it's it's looking good it's looking really good and in here we came in and we have we've added our nitrogen fixers you don't see them much because they're tiny it was really tiny plants we got of sea Berry but we put in some sea Berry in here see if I can find one that actually gives you some indication of what the oh here's one tiny tiny plants that we bought this this year has been tough if you didn't order well in advance you kind of got what you're left and this is a little bit of getting what's left so I took these and we bought a bunch of plants from A supplier here in Quebec but they were small plants now look at the grass here the grad This Grass easily is two feet high and these are three inches high now if you're putting such small small plants you will have a challenge we put wood chip mulch so there is wood chips in here and that was one round of what we did but wood chips uh will not prevent grass from coming through where there is grass so we just use these we had these so here's your see how much better it looks and it it survived so we had these pieces of panel my neighbor does components for furniture and so he has lots of odds and ends and so I just took these we drilled a little hole just as a little uh this is MDF paneling and actually there is some there is a little bit of nutrients in there from the glue which I've seen to not harm the plants at all in fact it's a little bit of a benefit so this does a double duty it gives the little bit of a mulching effect it acts a little bit as a bowl because it's a wood fiber it curls if you look at it see how it's curled up and that curl effect actually directs when it rains it directs all that rain towards the hole so this was a little project we tried this year and it's working quite well so you see never stop innovating or trying or experimenting and so that's something that we'll be doing more of and the thing is as this fiber product decomposes and it's not that far away from decomposing you see it's easy to it's gonna flake and it will just decompose here so there's another little little one so that's it with getting started on plants when they're really small there is ways of doing it so a bigger hazelnut like this we added wood chip mulch that helps there will be grass come up anyway but this this plant yeah it was a nice thing to leave such tall shoots and Transplant and they've come in really well we've contributed to Monarch butterflies in a big way I mean all our tree rows Lanes we don't we didn't mow and I won't mold these I'm going to leave a lot more tall grass in here because it isn't the huge Vol year it was a big Vol year I would try to make everything mode but I because we put guards here I want to leave more grass but that is I mean that is look at that go that is contributing to seeding uh common milkweed and we got lots of it so we've had a lot of Monarch butterflies yes we contributed a lot to Monarch butterfly populations that's not what we've been lacking and we produce seed to further further the benefit but this is the newer area if you saw the series on the seeding Orchard this is the orchard Block it's about an acre and a half this was an experiment and learned mind you we had unusual weather in that we've had very we had some really dry Springs in two years we had really dry Springs so I've had to change the kind of the the idea of this Orchard it became a Seedling block so we used seedlings and in the case of some of these which were we transplanted some uh cherry and plums but most of it was seedlings and so here's some some more plum trees so the focus here is away from apples we have lots of apples and towards more drought tolerant plants and here it's cherry plum uh we I may do some grapes but yeah it's things that will be taking the drought and we transplanted Tiny Little Seedling honey locusts and they're all here and it's been pretty simple maintenance I've just been mowing and we put in a round of wood chips and this is important if you're planting a tree please put a steak or put some way of knowing because when the Grass Grows so that it's three times higher then your tree eventually you will lose the tree you just won't find it and what will happen is when you get around to maintaining you probably will cut and and cut down some trees and I've done that I've mowed oh probably a few dozen trees got mowed along the way so just try to Mark where your trees are we just these are honey locust prunings so and what we do is we put this would be it's flagged because this one didn't take so we went by and anything that didn't take so this is to be replanted and we put a a color indicator for what species we're looking so here we're looking for PL pears greeners pears and in here there is no pear seedlings so we would have transplanted a pear seedling but it didn't take that's all so we'll have to come back and in some of these now is coming the time fall is the best time of the year to transplant or to plant and this is actually a very good time you want to get your trees as close as possible to the time that they are going to be losing their leaves so this Cherry was transplanted last year and it's just it didn't really grow but it's it's settled in and this was with nothing there's no irrigation here it is dry and we had a we had a pretty dry year a few bouts of timely rain but on this kind of soil it just didn't stretch between rounds so here's an idea this uh Mount Royal Plum that was transplanted basically this is what it grew this year just this so an inch and a half which is about par for the course here we know that if we don't water I mean trees just do not explode in this soil so we really watering is is the simplest addition of guaranteeing your trees get a better start but uh anyway I didn't put water in here on purpose I want to but it it defeated the purpose of the seedling going around about on that idea but seedlings would have been far better adapted here uh seeding rather like we tried originally they would have been adapted to these conditions but because I took trees that had germinated from other parts of the farm and that soil was not as poor as here because here they literally would not germinate and so those those plants are programmed for a better condition and they're not gonna Thrive as easily in here one of the great projects we got is we put in we put in a blueberry area so here we did it because we have these Pines the pine Roots basically extend to here we know they extend even a little past here in distance because there's the roots of the pine and the mycorrhizal association so I know the pH here is lower because we're still in the root zone of the Pines and so that would be a better area for blueberries because down there just maybe 50 feet away where there's no more influence from the pine the pH here can be up to 6.8 that's a little hard on blueberries and so being in a little more acid soil a little lower pH these have a better chance so these also came from the same place as those house caps they were small but some of them did better than others and so we did we put them in we put wood chip mulch just a basically a little square and we added drip tape these were way too small to probably survive on their own without water they would have really languished because we transplanted them in June as well so put in a couple of hundred blueberry plants and again we tried with these little squares and so we just put the basically make the plant it's a good time and so again you see it's it's a way of getting mulch free you just want to make sure when you put this on you get all the stems not just some of the stems so that should be an interesting addition for the coming years blueberries I want that had blueberries for a long time and finally this year and so our planting pattern here has been a little more one crop so we put three three blueberries and then we have a spot open and then three blueberries so the planting plant here has been blueberries and here we'll go uh sea berries so we'll put our our drought tolerant nitrogen fixer in here and sea Berry should work well here just don't have enough plants right now we propagated up some but we'll need a lot more some of these plants have done quite well so there's some so that's one of the SK Cherry series and shout out to Bob boers and Company these are doing quite well that's probably Juliet and you see a little bit of insect damage on there which for transplant year not bad but it indicates that this tree is stressed well transplanting is a stress and in this row I we put a few just to see how they would do so we put some black currant in there [Music] green so that would be pear so here's one of the pear seedlings and we didn't put single ones we put here so here's two seedlings and there should be yeah here's another two so we used we had lots of seedlings and we put them in and where they took they took well and where they didn't they didn't at all so here all four seedlings are in but you see there's one that obviously is doing better than all the others so we'll favor the ones that do do something do better and that will going forward probably be the tree so we'll leave these for a few years see what happens but that will likely be the pear tree that will remain and so this this area I'm doing one technique I saw in Europe in France by Evelyn latim they have a fruiting hedge so the idea is you put your fruit trees and you plant two Hedges so here a hedge that's about 50 centimeters or a foot and a half away from the tree you put a hedge here that will spread about a meter you give it a meter here and the same thing on this side there will be a hedge here 50 centimeters away and that will make that this spreads a meter and this spreads a meter and so two meters around each tree will be a hedge and this is a full hedge that actually in Europe they were clipping their hedge which we can do or we can just plant like if we plant things like the black currant or Gooseberry they're not going to grow they're not going to grow much above a meter and so they will they will serve as imagine a hedge here on each side of these trees they will serve as the mulch they'll keep the grass from growing much at all and they should be a good home for a lot of insects so we're going to try several species in here to mulch that way to use that double hedge and it's described quite well in her book biodiversity so that is a a really interesting technique and having seen that and learned about it it's like wow I want to try that I want to try a lot of things another pair obviously a lot more stressed and a lot more affected so that would be pair Silla most likely prayer slug but they're there so hopefully that tree if it has some moisture in the spring when it's actively growing it should go from about a foot or 30 centimeters and in a good condition it would well it should more than double so this if it could add a meter of growth or three feet of growth that would be nice by next fall but a lot of it depends on the on the spring so here was a tractor-trailer load of wood chip scored two loads of wood chips semi-trailer load that's a lot of wood chips so we have been busy so that we had one here and there was one at the back if you saw last Falls wood chip mulch we had two loads dumped here last winter in December and so this one's gone it's mulched trees and mostly trees and so on all of the new plantings so all that mulch has been used in here it doesn't go that far I mean a tractor trailer load seems like a lot of mulch but when you have a bunch of trees you can't be super generous per tree you give them enough to cover the base or not cover the base but work around like here this one had wood chip mulch and you will hardly notice it anymore because the grass has already grown through so see the there's the grass to give you some idea oh I even put I had a panel that I put down here and even with the panel underneath the grass still grew up through it so those of you who have this is a lot of it is quack grass couch grass Scotch grass is all different names or those of you and other other countries or continents you have kikuyu there's there's a rhizomatic grass for every every continent because it's a it's a needed uh component of the ecosystem you gotta have a grass that's able to colonize from one area to the other and we have this whole area that is really there for a future project of Construction and building the home base and so on that's in the plans but it's still hopefully not too many years away but a few years away and then back to this block here which we've been basically just maintaining so this year the maintenance and did some mowing everything's gone up in price uh we had tractor problems this year and couldn't get parts and anyway so that's a normal thing there's one fruit left this has kind of become my new favorite Apple uh just because there's no scab on this it did get some insects but this year there's no such thing really as apples without some damage blue per main so you see a little bit of a blue tinge on there that's why it's called Blue per main a very different Apple I consider it I wish you could smell or taste that I mean that's that's a very nice very nice Apple so we've been multiplying some of those and that's part of the process try things try as much as you can different things and then Whittle down your list yellow rumped warbler right there and some of these eastern white Cedars so tuio occidentalis they're really coming in and the purpose of these because this is the middle of the orchard these rows here the purpose of this was to eventually add a few basically uh Windbreak Rose so these trees are going to be left taller We'll add these evergreens are really important now you don't see it yet but you're starting in the winter these will be the only shelter for birds and the reason putting them here is it's far enough to the Pine Hydro where the birds use in the winter they don't like coming in the orchard this this piece it's about uh 150 feet from from there those Pines to here this is a bit of a no man's land for the birds in the winter and if you don't get them coming then you don't get them patrolling the trees and catching the insects so by creating this these rows here in the middle what happens is the birds will eventually because they're not quite tall or full enough yet to provide uh cover you imagine a little chickadee trying to hide from a sharpshinned hawk and it's sitting close to well the sharps and Hawk can come right in pick off that bird so what happens is these will have to get a little filler thicker and taller so that they will be an actual shelter for the birds and then once the birds feel safe enough here then they'll feel much safer going this way and the other way to patrol the trees on both sides so that's the idea we will see we will see and just a word on that when when you start your project this is a good time just get started just plant two trios I did a a course for Verge permaculture and I said you know that it was the idea of starting your permaculture Orchard and oh that's a good presentation to give you an idea what to expect but get it going because here's a little tree planted so it's grown not a whole lot but it grew you know three inches a year it's like well come on three inches a year that's nothing well this is a slow growing tree in the beginning and then it kicks in and time is your friend when you're planting trees or it could be your stressor I should have Shoulda Woulda Coulda Woulda just get some trees in the ground you can say well it's not the right one maybe look you will make mistakes no matter what so go out there make some mistakes and put in some trees and you go I don't know this tree is right here try it this is American chestnut is this the right tree for here well you know what let's try it uh this is uh Autumn Olive oh my God what a weed well depends where you are these have put on incredible growth this year did really well after they died out so this spring all of these were dead right to the snow line so they all had to come back from the base because everything froze we're in our climate these plants are not totally Hardy the above snow growth just got mowed right down so uh yeah it's it's try things that's Korean Pine so these little pine trees that we put in here are Korean Pine for future pine nuts yeah get get things trying here's some uh ground nut ground nut what's the scientific name I don't remember I'll put it down but yeah we put some of those in here put some Oak in here because these will be hedgerows basically long-term hedgerows some blueberries why not black raspberry they grow quite well and they don't mind being a little bit in the shade here gives you an idea of that here's another one but you see how it froze and look at that it's being colonized it won't take long this will all drop down but it did come back from the base autumn autumn Olive and Goomy and even things like regular raspberries so go see my how to prune black raspberry but these are pruning fall bearing raspberries hmm don't mind me if I eat well talking so get some plants in the ground try something get going get started and time will be your friend you will I mean oh I'm don't give don't don't make excuses just make some results for example here strawberries you think whoa whoa strawberries this is almost the woods yes the plants are still here they don't produce I haven't seen a strawberry on here for well at least anything of any production for a few years because they were here the plant Still Remains green it still grows but it doesn't produce fruit well that's an indicator of what well it just doesn't get enough sun to provide enough energy for that strawberry to produce the plant survives it's not thriving so that distinction is important like this plant here that's a surviving black raspberry but that's not a thriving black raspberry that one I should just cut it out it's not doing well at all Cherry yeah that's doing well Kentucky Coffee Tree what yeah Kentucky Coffee Tree grown as a Seedling it's six feet high wow that didn't grow fast house cap just giving you an idea uh that's one of the White Oaks uh different Apple cultivars so get trying look at this this is thriving not surviving so that's doing way better uh pear that's doing really well here so there's an example you try different things this one we call it round green and maybe actually savingak we discussed with somebody this last week and this may be savingak pear really really nice no no disease not highly susceptible it's they've all had fire blight but they've all persisted through it go see my fire blight video and so these seem to be or develop an immunity to fire blight even though they had all had signs of it one of the old hats one of the original apple trees that was in this block so that was planted in 1980 had a really rough time has been actually I cut that down years ago thinking well we're not planting here we're replanting here so I cut it and it actually came back and it's producing well so sometimes don't be so quick in cutting trees that you have because you always have the option of over grafting and go see my grafting videos over grafting one of the biggest things this year that we did was really just focused I've not done many videos I really haven't uh put much attention in videos at all and it's been a break oddly enough for me to farm is a break it's like going on vacation because I've been so busy with so many non-farm things and whether it's videos and videos take time so actually not doing the videos has allowed me to focus on just doing some of the farm work which has been a break I mean it's a break for me and it's also allowed me to focus and our big Focus this year has been on the master class and we have launched it already so there's people who have it it's the beta launch group so they're testing it they're finding problems they're like a beta test it's debugging the whole system and if you're interested in in the idea of the master class go to permaculture.study and get on the email list that's really your best way to get on there and and get the best value in the future so that has been a big Focus we've done I think it is the right amount of movement the lengths we go through to get the right shot yeah you can see macro photography for the Master Class we filmed over 3 000 Clips in here this summer spring summer to fall so every week we've had rounds of filming so that has been a big big piece of time that we've used for it master class going forward I would say get in early because those who are in the first waves will certainly be those who basically get the most attention because in a few years maybe even by next year it will pretty well be on on cruise control I will not be I'll be interacting but it anyway I'll just say that that is the best opportunity for you to get the best information so if you're thinking of your project if you've gotten your project uh in the planning or if you've already started that will be by far get in from the beginning and you'll get the most of my time Matsu put in a little Nursery this year so that was nice to have Nursery going again there will be some plants available I'm not sure when he wants to put them out for sale whether it will be this fall or uh next spring but there will be a few extra plants I know he's got some he's got some black currant in here a little bit of Elderberry lots of grape the grape did incredibly well it's funny that it just frosted so hard that it's all browned out but this has been by far the easiest Technique we found for doing a nursery so we just put a piece of silage plastic down bury both edges so it's buried in here buried in here this is directly in the ground and this was basically a grassy uh piece here so this was not tilled or anything it was just the tree was planted in the grass and then mulched heavily and look at the results I mean these trees have done so that's yeah that's five feet high and it's done really well in Factor still barely yeah they're still haven't initiated their terminal Bud they're like yeah still conditions are good nutrients are good and the nutrients come from the decomposing grass you pass you turn the lawn into whatever lawn into garden lawn into nursery and that lawn will nourish your plants for at least one season if you add wood chip mulch like this and you say well what's going on here well that's just our chickens they're not chickens but one or two Rebel chickens that come in and like to scratch at the mulch which is good because they actually do a bit of weeding at the same time as they're scratching it exposes some of the roots I see a little bit exposed that are growing in the mulch but that's all right at this time of year it's not a not a great stressor let me show you one that's got a terminal Bud form because a lot of these are still still growing wow still growing taller than me yes that's good results in a nursery these have done very well here's one so see that one that is the bud forming so that's the terminal Bud that tree is staying okay uh fall is here and this one too so it's probably by cultivar too they just tend to form the bud sooner and you look at this one for example which is still got leaves there so it hasn't formed its terminal bud it will in the next few weeks for sure but yeah these have grown extremely well you could even see and that's unusual very unusual here but see how the leaves are curled that was a bit of aphid damage probably here to some aphid or yeah probably some aphid damage which aphids here are extremely rare on our fruit trees because we don't add uh any fertilizer so this is just the conditions here were good the addition of mulch was a good addition of fertility so I mean that's that's beautiful growth this Nursery is done very very well and so there will be some plants available if you're at all interested write them down in the comments that'll be an easy enough way for Matsu to contact you somehow and a little bit of walnuts so this is edible acres has a nice Channel if you're interested in Nursery things and this was his design of of a root pruning box so underneath there I can't lift it up but underneath is a wire mesh and then there's soil and and a little bit of compost put in so that the trees and this started off just as as nuts so that and there was an excluding box on top here so there was a box to keep the squirrels out so it's a way to keep the squirrels and seed eaters out until the seeds germinate and grow and as they send out their Tap Root The Tap Root grows and once it gets close to the air it stops growing so air root pruning is a long time known technique so because underneath you know this is It's it it's not down to the soil so it grows and then it's air root pruned and then they go they grow laterals so this is a good way to get your trees to grow and for four inches back they will grow a lot of lateral branches so your trees in here will be well well rooted with a lot of side branching yep all the vegetables here it was tomatoes and we've started that's our strawberry bed I'm saying a bit about the birds before so all this frosted the tomatoes are done but this is where we had the birds in July and look at look at the growth in here I mean we didn't have them in the garden but the the grass in here is doing extremely well actually I even mowed it already a few times but here I didn't so I just let some of this grass grow to stockpile I mean this is this is really thick grass so I'm leaving this because if we don't have snow or even if we have some snow in December we're going to put the birds back in here because this is their winter parcel if you like there's the greenhouse and that's where they're winter but they'll will have a big big enclosure fenced here for the winter so as long as there's no snow the geese especially but the chickens as well will come in and they will grease down this stockpile uh all winter and even next spring so not mowing everything will give them a bigger access to all this area may as well show you the greenhouse how it's it's almost finished prep we just have to fill a few more cubes but we've been working at it see this fence roll of a kind of our grape collection everything frosted heavily in here Frost Frost Frost oh my wife's been in here moving some chicken manure and so here's where the chickens will be that's the manure piled from last winter so we'll be reusing some of this we had all of this in Jerusalem artichoke so this one really grew in here and so we'll put that enclosure where the chickens lay their eggs so it's a pan and I suspect we'll be able to get it one length two lengths and three pans wide so we'll be able to move it rotate the pan six times because wherever they are for a few days they accumulate a lot of manure and then we'll put some bedding so we have our bail in here all ready for the winter we have some more dry hay and those cubes will all be filled basically as storage a little bit of water so it extends our water season last year it froze solid we hit minus 34 Celsius so that's cold enough that even in the cubes even in a greenhouse the water froze that's a cubic meter of of water and it froze solid I got cold the chickens did well go see that video and so it acts a bit as a climate battery not not on in soil this is above ground climate battery but it's any thermal Mass a greenhouse generally doesn't have much thermal Mass like where do you want to heat the store do you got plastic you got the soil so by storing it in these cubes this is a bit of a thermal battery and it just helps temper the the extremes a little bit but getting ready we had even look we even had frost in the greenhouse we had the doors open and Frost came and hit our tomato plants we had the Jerusalem artichoke I mean this is this was some pretty massive massive Jerusalem artichoke those are like 12 to 15 feet high Jerusalem artichokes let's say having had the birds penned in here over winter and coming out in the spring for a while they added some fertility to this area the asparagus also loved having the chickens so that that should be a big plus next year our little pond on sandy soil and I had to empty some of it just to give you an idea this was the addition of basalt rock dust if you want to go see that video on making your soil young again but that's what we did this was originally uh right around here there was a tractor-trailer load of basalt rock dust so that addition of rock dust basically made this soil become clay sand or Sandy clay and this was just I dug we have a barrel in the bottom of the pond here and that Barrel and goldfish and that Barrel is where the fish went there because this will actually go dry because once we stop adding water this Pond will dry up so we do add water because by capillary action the soil around pulls the water normally your pond should be in a low spot this is not a low spot it's pretty well the same level as everything else so the the soil around it just pulls water out of this Pond to irrigate and because it was fairly dry it was really pulling a lot of water out of this Pond all winter but that's what the soil can be and that's what actually we'll be using not this one but we'll be using this soil to make the Cobb pizza oven so I started there have a video on that as well so that gives you a look gives you an idea what went on this year a little bit of what went on my lessons for you is get started just start time is your friend this is the perfect time of year to be planting your young permaculture Orchard get two trios in you'll you really won't regret even if you did the wrong choice a cultivars then you'll learn to over graft and you'll get another cultivar in a few years that's fine but just take one of the weekends and it really won't take you longer than one weekend most people one day to plant out two trios that's six trees two shrubs per tree so 12 shrubs and even if you do just five perennials but you could do ten you could do 15 perennials per tree you will have a collection you will have an example of what this can be and you'll start to see for yourself is this something I want to do is this something I want to have more of if you have space that's great yeah in a couple years don't wait a couple years start this year even if it's you make look making mistakes with two trioles I could tell you go see my mistake series is a lot less costly than making a mistake with Acres so make some mistakes the sooner you make them the better and the cheaper long run it will be but you'll already start learning you'll go oh yeah yeah he said about mulching in the first years oh yeah I gotta protect the trees oh maybe I need to put a dear friends all these things you learn much faster when you're doing than just knowing watch the other videos I suggest in here if you find that yeah I really needed but learn and do so if you haven't signed up on the mailing list of the master class go to permaculture.study sign up put your email in your best email and be on the list to be notified that is really my life's work transferred to you so that you'll go oh I got I expect most people many people will do better than what I did because I had to learn along the way I didn't have the information like you can have I didn't have a lot of things to get going like you can have so balance learning yes get the master class yes look at the videos but start start just start it's so important and you will learn because you are doing that's it until next time thanks for following thanks for watching thanks for subscribing yeah sure share the video if you found you know somebody who's a not talking about fruit trees and nut trees and wants to do something share it if you like if you didn't like this it's highly unlikely that you got this far and you say I didn't get value I didn't like this then I'd say if you were subscribed then this didn't help unsubscribe because it's not a matter of how many it's people who are really getting something out of it and are doing that's what I want enjoy your week enjoy the season enjoy each other's take care bye

Channel: Stefan Sobkowiak - The Permaculture Orchard

Views: 60,593

Keywords: permaculture, permaculture orchard, stefan sobkowiak, miracle farms, food forest, homesteading, forest garden

Id: GIiAZYGIpFM

Length: 81min 51sec (4911 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2022