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Wind Blocks and Bird Deterrent

 
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Location: Arizona
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This year I'd like to grow strawberries and raspberries to sell. The problem is we get big wind storms that blow dust around. We're planning to start planting wind blocking trees but that will take a few years to be effective. What are my options for a temporary wind block around a 1/2 acre berry patch?

For the tree's I'm planning to start with 40 low thorn Honey Locusts around the 40 acre perimeter. These will be 2-3' trees and more will be propagated as time goes on. I was also thinking of using a hedge but this is a dry climate with sand and clay in the soil. The monsoon season dumps a good amount of rain on the land then it all drains off. There's been destructive sheep ranching out here since the 19th century. The land is over grazed but I have six months worth of goat, pig, chicken, and rabbit manure piled up.

There's already established Juniper trees. One cluster seems to block the brunt of wind, you still feel a breeze but it's not blowing you around. Long term I want to thin them out but as a temporary wind block I could plant berries around them, if they don't interfere with growth.

The birds and other critters can be a problem. Last year we had all our tomatoes robbed by something. I was thinking a scare crow, because bird netting over 1/2 acre would be expensive and time consuming.

I'm willing to experiment and maybe loose this years crop if it means later on down the road I can make it work.
 
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There are a few factors here.
First - wind,  in a funny way, follows the rules of "liquids". You can change where water goes, so long as it still goes with gravity, but you can't *stop* it .

I have read reliable sources which suggest you are better to "slow" the wind by multiple layers with gaps than try to eliminate it. I don't know what resources you have, but my first thought was this fence idea: https://permies.com/t/8617/fence-pallets .
The idea is to upcycle pallets from a free or cheap source, but the video makes it look easier than it is from my experience. It either needs really flat land, or you will need to dig to level each of the skids horizontally.

The side benefit is that the pallet fence would protect the young trees from excessive wind, which will help them get started.

I have also read of people planting the large sunflower varieties to slow wind (think Russian giant). I have read of them being used as snow fencing to trap snow on fields to keep the winter moisture for spring planting. The sunflowers are "standing dead" at that point, but those big varieties have tough stalks!

Second - the issue of dust. If your goal is to improve your soil, you sure don't want your top-soil blowing away! My question is: Is this *your* dust going up into the air, or is it coming from surrounding land? (Or all the way across the Pacific Ocean which has been known to send volcanic ash as far as North America!)

If it's your dust, I would try to plant whatever cover crop is cheap and will grow easily everywhere you can. It could even be grocery store seeds (dry beans will sprout) or animal feed seeds (we buy wheat for our ducks and it would sprout), if that's the cheapest or most easily available source. So long as the seeds germinate and put down roots, even if they die back, the decaying roots will both help to hold the soil in place, and help to improve the soil. Nitrogen fixers are popular for this sort of task, but any plant that won't turn into an invasive nightmare, is better than bare soil in wind.

If it's other people's dust, then you're looking at trying to "filter" it, and "slow" it, so that it will drop where it won't harm your target crop. Again, I'd look to fast growing annual polyculture like sunflowers or corn, beans to grow up the stalks, possibly spring peas in first if it's too cold for beans and corn. Possibly squashes as they cover a lot of ground and play nice with corn and beans. I would consider these "sacrificial" plants, but I planted sacrificial beans in my tomato bed last year just to hold the soil and ended up getting enough to feed my family fresh beans for 2 months.

I'm not in your ecosystem, so hopefully another permie will speak up with plant choices that might work better.

Third - why honey locust?  Have you considered that your tree break could also be more of a polyculture? Are you in Mesquite territory? Brad Lancaster's info suggests it's important for sinking water during the rainy season.  Are you dry enough for some types of cacti - some of those can either produce food, or act as a low, living fence.

A big principle of permaculture is stacking functions, and one of the easiest ways to do so, is to consider what needs you have. The Honey locust apparently has edible pods, but its nitrogen fixing ability is apparently still being debated (Help fellow permies - anyone know the up-to-date opinion?) Is it deciduous in your region, in which case if you're able to use the leaves as mulch, they will help get carbon back in the soil which will help both water storage and infiltration. However, most of us have grown up with the "this is the best" mind-set, rather than the "polyculture" mindset. If you want to stack lots of functions, let's see if we can come up with a poly culture - think British hedgerow idea morphed for your ecosystem - that will provide many more functions.
 
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