Ultimate Guide to Designing YOUR Permaculture Orchard

establishing a successful permaculture Orchard it takes time it takes money and most of all it takes I went through the Steep learning curve to save you the time and money learning about orcharding learning about irrigation about soil biology animal husbandry ruining and trading systems design these are the lessons that I'm going to share with you and they are valuable the first lesson is to know yourself what do you love to do do you love animals do you love plants maybe vegetables and you love the vegetable garden and eat the product maybe you love trees do you love to design something maybe you love flowers hey if you love flowers then focus on that you can integrate it but know yourself please another important lesson is to know your sight what climate are you in are you in a tropical environment are you in a desert environment are you in a temperate climate like we are that's the basic then what's your soil like are you on heavy clay that will hold water and you can easily make ponds or are you like us on a very very Sandy site that's all important we like to say Miracle Farms just add water and things grow when you know your sight you look around find what grows naturally all by itself like a weed on your site for us it's grapes and cherries they grow like weeds that's what you want you want an orchard of weeds you say I don't want weeds yes you do want you want them to grow like a weed what do you do for a weed you don't fertilize you don't plant it you don't even seed it they come up on their own so if you figure out what are the plants that grow like weeds on your site you are well on your way to the most easy planting you can get it may not be what you wanted to grow but it's certainly going to be what is going to grow the easiest you know your site you're getting to know it no side is perfect if your sight gives you ice cubes like we've had then stop gather them up and make some iced tea work with your site don't let it beat you down another valuable lesson is to know your enemies whatever crop you're growing you will have challenges it could be insects it could be disease we began this was a 4 000 tree monoculture organic apple orchard we learned a lot about insects because we had a lot of them now in the permaculture Orchard we still have a few there's three insects that's still affect and we trap for two of them whether it's coddling moth or apple maggot fly we use traps so that's a possible strategy but for your enemies you need to know what's their life's cycle when do they come out that they can affect your crop where do they overwinter what are vulnerable periods that you can catch them or reduce their numbers what are allies birds and insects that will decrease their numbers I like to tell people just do it just start never will the situation be perfect and everything aligns for you to start your permaculture Orchard maybe you don't have enough money great that's a good problem why because you have to be creative you have to learn a few skills and a best place to apply it to save a lot of money is by starting your own Nursery we had a thousand trees in here this spring and we pull them out and we put in some vegetables great but start your Nursery this isn't a large space in 70 by 30 feet you could grow a thousand trees that's how we originally started if you want to learn more how to propagate check out our propagation course at permaculture dot study start for free today don't remove your existing trees over graft them maybe you have The Misfortune of starting with the tree that's there and it's really full of disease or it's not a good fruit that you want to eat you don't have to tear it out like I did you can cut it at a certain point and over graft it or top work it as it's often called within three years of over grafting you will have fruit starting starting your orchard in a place where you already had some trees and over grafting is one option but the best is to start in a blank slate start where you have nothing start an open area much better than starting over but the best way to start is to just start today period in the early years when this was a organic monoculture apple orchard members would come pick because it was a membership you pick and they would gather their bushel of apples and then they would come and say what more do you have all right so I have a couple of more kinds of apples no no what more diversity other than Apples that you have and I realized I had a huge hole and whether for you in the backyard you would see that same hole well I got some apples but what more do you have you want diversity and that led us to redesign and looking at the system design for the whole Orchard there's a couple of important concepts for the system design of the permaculture Orchard the first one I call Trio's what's Trio three three trees as the pattern of the planting you never look at it as I plant one tree and another tree as I had in the organic apple orchard it was all the same tree many hundreds that doesn't work I've been there I've done that please do not plant as a monoculture but in the pattern of trios you can have in this case a plum tree and then a pair pear tree and then a nitrogen fixing Tree in this case a honey locust but there's many species you could use as nitrogen fixing or support species use trios that's your tree pattern it solves 60 to 80 percent of all the problems is by that very designed pattern that's repeated you don't have to repeat the same cultivar you could change it in the case of pear trees here we have four different cultivars in this row what do we do we put the first Trio has one pear tree cultivar cultivar two three four in successive trios and then we start again the fifth Trio would have cultivar one and so on so right in that design even though it's pairs they vary they can be different and that variation is so important but it's not just there's more weight we have the horizontal That's What I Call These the horizontal Trio but then there is a vertical Trio which is with a tree you have something more so we aim to put two shrubs fruiting shrubs underneath each tree and then combine that with a whole range at least 10 perennials per tree that could be flowers it could be perennial vegetables it could be herbs you could put annual vegetables and please do in the first years not once the orchard is established at least in our climate vegetables need full sun they don't do well here but maybe if you're in a just starting or in a really hot and dry climate you can try putting vegetables under your fruit trees the second important vital Concept in the system design of the permaculture Orchard is what I call the grocery store concept you're familiar with the grocery store you walk down an aisle and you have two rows where you'll pick uh one of these and two of those or a couple of pounds of those the same idea applies to the permaculture Orchard that's what I call the grocery store it's logical and it comes from when this was a monoculture organic apple orchard we would Harvest several rows in a same 10-day window so a certain cultivar let's say Spartan was harvested the last 10 days of September that was logical I like that you go in you get it all and you're done then when we integrated all this variety trios and many species in the same Orchard block how does this make sense I simply grouped all the trees that I wanted to plant by their Harvest window so we use 10 day Windows three 10-day windows for every month the first 10 Days the middle 10 days the last 10 days this one is the bottom so it's the last 10 days of August so I know that this row and the next row are harvested at the end of August if you don't have enough trees to put in a whole row no problem make a roll or a couple of rows to have sections so the first two trios for example would be harvested early August then your next maybe one Trio is the middle of August and then maybe you don't have anything at the end of August no problem the next window of harvest could be early September and so on and so on so you just need to know and that's the vital piece you need to know when it's harvested and if you look through a catalog and look by that cultivar of fruit you're looking for it will usually give you when is the main harvest date find that group them together by the same harvest date and next thing you know when you plant it you've got a grocery store but wait there's more as the commercial says you have your tree Harvest Windows That's the basis of it but there's more than one Harvest period in a row you have your tree which is the main one but then you did have fruiting shrubs that are placed under so that gives you another period of harvesting in the same year and you can combine it with your perennials in this case it's an edible flower a Daylily that is harvested even earlier so we aim to get three Harvest windows for every row every year how do you start where do you start well you know your site hopefully by now you know your soil you know what you may be lacking perhaps it's compost that you need to add we even added coffee grounds that we got from our local coffee shops and we spread coffee over everything as an amendment before we replant it when you plant what you want is some way of protecting the trees we use a lot of this golden stuff as much as we can get our hands on it's wood chips from pruning Crews use this as mulch it will allow your young plants a couple of years of break before the grass can invade and it will add some vital organic matter there's four phases to establishing or planting your permaculture Orchards the first one is to put your trees in which is the backbone which is the structure of your orchard put them in plant them mulch them absolutely then the second phase is ADD shrubs I like to put a shrub on each side of a tree three feet or a meter away on one side and another one on the other side in the row is a good strategy a third stage would be to add your perennials so for each tree I aim to put in 10 perennial plants five on each side is a good rule but that could be perennial vegetables Vines herbs it could even be annual vegetables in your first three years you could grow a lot of vegetables around your plant the goal is to surround your tree with plants that will produce something because otherwise there will be plants that will come in no matter what a fourth phase is to establish your structures for your allies this is your bird nest boxes for example and have a range of hole sizes and have a lot I would say minimum even for a small yard put in 10 nest boxes I don't have room for ten yes they'll only be five pair at most using it because every bird uses two nest boxes so get a variety put it in you can put in all those four phases at once you don't have to phase it like I did over years put it all in at once and I would now even recommend do a smaller area that you can finish all four phases you got your trees planted hopefully you've mulched them well congratulations one of the most important things to starting your trees off right is to learn training maybe you've heard of Solomon and his great wisdom Solomon had a proverb that says train up a child in the way he should go that even when he's old he'll not depart from it the same wisdom applies to a tree train up a tree's branches while they're young and even when those branches are old they won't depart from it training will save you a lot of time in pruning learn the difference training versus pruning want to learn more about pruning or training check out the pruning course at permaculture.study start today for free you may have new trees and then you get a lot of sun take advantage of the open area around your trees at least for the first three years you can grow a range of annual and even perennial vegetables because if you're not growing something under there under your trees while their Sun there's other plants that will try to take that same space so you choose what you're going to grow around your trees maintenance can make or break your project you've done a great job using trios using the grocery store concept planting trees planting shrubs planting perennials how you maintain it can make or break your project I worked as a landscape architect with over a hundred clients and I've seen that what will kill a good design in a project is improper maintenance and the most important part of maintenance is your Edge I maintain over 10 miles of edge in the Perma cultural Orchard I consider an edge anytime you go from one use space in this case grass to another use space in this case our plantings of trees shrubs and perennials where those two areas meet can cause a lot of annoyance or frustration so make sure you have an edge that is really low maintenance Pareto Principle applies eighty percent of your surface will only require 20 percent of your maintenance time but 20 percent of your area will take you eighty percent of your maintenance time so aim to eliminate that 20 percent high maintenance area just get rid of it and have a low maintenance planting because the only ones who make money with maintenance are the ones who are hired out to maintain I love sepolster's take on it where he says if you don't want a pig to do the job then you inherit the job of the pig well do you want to inherit the job of all the caterpillar eating birds or all the pollinating insects I guarantee you don't so give them something add at least some nest boxes so that you can attract birds bumblebees and wasps to nest in your permaculture Orchard they will save you maintenance time do you add irrigation should you add irrigation if you're not in a really reliable rainfall area irrigation is a great insurance policy you may not have to have it you probably don't have to have it when your trees are older but the first three years as your trees are getting established it's just a good insurance to have the ability to put rain you could use irrigation pipe you could use drip tape you could use soaker hose which I really recommend for a smaller surface put it in automate it and forget about the watering by hand stop being a spectator get some diligence involved and put in at least two trios that's the start get two if you have room put more than two trios and pretty soon you can expand to a hundred feet of trios if you have the space with a hundred feet you will have more than enough for your whole family's fruit needs for the year and pretty soon you'll have extra and my goal for you is that you would experience what abundance is like and that you would have so much more that now you have to share with others it takes time it takes money it takes patience but most of all it takes lots and lots of plants so start a nursery today

Channel: Stefan Sobkowiak - The Permaculture Orchard

Views: 81,127

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

Id: lBbTxMdfr_k

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023