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Fruit tree orchard in chicken area - how to reduce nitrogen levels in soil?

 
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Hello, I'm new to the forum, happy to be here.

I live on a small 1/4 acre lot in Portland, OR that we have pretty well planted with vegetable gardens and fruit bushes and trees. I have a small fruit tree orchard in my chicken area, total square footage 1250 sq ft. I have twelve hens back there right now, they are confined to this area. Over the past four years, I've planted six semi-dwarf fruit trees in that chicken area - Asian pear, Fuyu persimmon, peach, pineapple quince, green gage plum, and red flesh apple.

The trees are all good sized and very healthy, I prune every winter and summer. The problem is the trees are not producing blossoms or fruit, just a lot of green vegetative growth. Pollination is not the issue, we have a healthy group of Mason bees.

I'm pretty sure the issue with the fruit trees is that they are getting way too much nitrogen in the soil back there. We get consistent rain November-June every year and all that chicken manure soaking into the soil appears to be stunting any flower/fruit growth.

I'm looking for all suggestions to mitigate or consume the soil nitrogen back there. Thank you in advance for any advice!
 
gardener
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Hi Tom,
I am not an expert, so take this advice with a grain of salt. I would make two suggestions.

First, you could plant hungry plants in that area. Tomatoes, corn, or something that is a heavy feeder. That would help use up some of the nitrogen.

Second, try adding carbon of some sort. Fall leaves, wood chips, straw, etc. Instead of lowering the nitrogen, increase the levels of everything else to help balance it out. Carbon and nitrogen make great compost.

Having said all that... I also wouldn't be too worried about the nitrogen just yet. I know google says semi-dwarf fruit trees should start producing within 2 to 4 years... but I find that there is a lot of variance and a year of drought or a year of wet or a year of heat or maybe stress during the initial planting could affect how long it takes. On the other hand, some people say a stressed tree will produce earlier, so maybe your trees are just loving it too much and not in a hurry to produce.

Good luck.
 
pollinator
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I would cover the area with wood chips or some other carbon material that you have on hand so that the nitrogen would have all that carbon to break down into organic matter and amend with phosphorus and potassium in some form.
 
steward
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Welcome to Permies, Tom!

So the easy answer is, "add carbon, more carbon and more carbon". You need to be adding tons more bedding material, ideally wood chips. You might get away with adding lots of dead leaves, but my experience is that the combination of chickens and winter rain results in leaves packing down and going anaerobic. Straw will also work, but true "hay" is grass cut when it's green and dried so it's high nitrogen also. In certain spots on my farm, I've even used organic coffee sacks because I can get them from a local company at a cheap price ($20 for ~200 which is cheaper than straw costs here!) The downside of the sacks is that as they decompose, you may find less decomposed strings that the birds get their feet tangled in, so it would be better if they were a bottom layer with lots of mulch over them.

Other possible options that might help:
1. What sort of shape is your 1250 sq ft area?   Would it be possible to divide it into 4 paddocks of about 300 sq ft each, which would still be about 25 sq ft/per bird which is a healthy option? This would allow you to give 3 areas a rest to let the earthworms do their thing, and potentially specifically plant a crop that's a nitrogen hog and that the chickens could eat when they move back in? So plants like kale or feed corn would help suck up the nitrogen, but they wouldn't have a chance of getting established if the chickens could get to them.

2. If you can't build whole paddocks, can you build large portable fences that can temporarily surround an area to seed. I seen this done with shallow covers and I have had no success with that approach because the birds kick too much stuff on top of the cover and kill the plants. It would need to be high enough the birds can't sit on top of it, and small enough fencing (1/4" hardware cloth) so the birds can't kick stuff through to cover the baby plants.

3. Chickens don't normally just "poop all over".  Is the run-off from poop under their perches contributing to the overload near the trees? If that's the case, creating some sort of swale to redirect the winter rain and direct it to a deep pit of mulch, +/- nitrogen loving plants that grow during the rainy season.

Those are my thoughts - maybe some other members will have some different ideas.
 
Tom Borden
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Big thanks to all of you who have replied so far! I appreciate it.
Answering some of the questions posted:

1) The shape of our chicken area is rectangular, 50' x 25'. The trees are evenly interspersed in the area. I've been trying to avoid rotational grazing, I like the chickens to have a lot of room to roam. And I'm not sure how quickly I'd be able to get plants to grow in an area before letting these ladies in to quickly decimate them! I think I'm going to hold off on this plan until I exhaust all others.

2) Adding lots of carbon is probably the route I'm going to take first, so thank you for all material suggestions. I currently am starting to put straw hay back there as part of my compost chicken feed system. I keep about 3-4 bales in the coop at all times and then spread one every few weeks around the chicken area. I have an open compost bin, from pallets, back there that I'm constantly adding the hay to, once it has been thoroughly chickened. The chickens jump and climb into the bin and feed and then every 1-2 weeks I pull off two of the walls/pallets and they feed pretty hard for a few days. I've cut my feed bill down to about 30% of what I was buying before. But, I digress... am I correct that straw hay is good carbon to add (as opposed to alfalfa grass hay?).

3) I'm planning to start putting tons of dried leaves back there every fall, which I can collect all over town in my truck. I'm guessing that my ladies are aggressive enough in their scratch and peck skills that I won't need to worry about leaves getting too matted and anaerobic.

4) I too wonder if I'm jumping the gun getting worried about fruit production when the trees are only 2-4 years old. But they have lots of green vegetative growth and I've been wondering if this is again due to high nitrogen in the soil. I've attached pics here of the Asian pear (2 yrs old), Fuyu persimmon (4 yrs) and Aromatnaya quince (4 yrs) for referrence.

Thank you again - any and all other carbon material suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Tommy
IMG_0671.jpg
Fuyu persimmon
Fuyu persimmon
IMG_0674.jpg
Aromatnaya quince
Aromatnaya quince
IMG_0678.jpg
Asian pear
Asian pear
 
Jay Angler
steward
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Tom Borden wrote:

I've been trying to avoid rotational grazing, I like the chickens to have a lot of room to roam. And I'm not sure how quickly I'd be able to get plants to grow in an area before letting these ladies in to quickly decimate them!

OK, alternatively, have you considered putting a hardware cloth tube at least 6 ft in diameter around each of the trees and planting inside it to soak up the extra nitrogen - or a combo of comfrey and something else, and then undoing the tube for 48 hours occasionally to let the girls in to decimate whatever's grown?

am I correct that straw hay is good carbon to add (as opposed to alfalfa grass hay?).  

I'm not sure what "straw hay" means, but if it is a straw that has been harvested after seed heads such as wheat or barley have been removed, that's what you're looking for. Alfalfa hay is normally a high nitrogen animal feed, so I agree you don't want that. Looking at the ground in the picture, I would definitely want to see more wood chips there if you can get some.

I'm guessing that my ladies are aggressive enough in their scratch and peck skills that I won't need to worry about leaves getting too matted and anaerobic.

I was actually surprised that it happened to me, and it happened in more than one place. Then I was doing some reading about the best materials to use in humanure composting, and it suggested that leaves, particularly large ones like we tend to have (Big Leaf Maple) have that tendency compared to wood chips. My solution is to take my garden fork and use it like a broad fork - push it in, wiggle it back and for, then pull it out so that I'm not mixing the soil, but I am letting some air get down there. Fact is, this happened after a *really* wet Oct/Nov/Dec last year, so maybe less intense wet will be less of a problem.

But they have lots of green vegetative growth and I've been wondering if this is again due to high nitrogen in the soil.

Have you been pruning these trees? I've read that pruning when there's no fruit can actually stimulate the tree to put out more growth (think, the deer came and ate some of me so I'd better grow big fast).  Hopefully one of our wise fruit tree members will notice this thread and comment!
 
Tom Borden
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I'm going to start moving a lot more carbon back there - wood chips, leaves, straw - and see how that goes.
I prune my trees pretty heavily in the winter - structural pruning - and again in the summer - to control vigor. I'm keeping them all at about 8' tall, they're all getting nice and strong and thick in the limb.

I'll check in again later in the summer, see if we get any fruit at all this year.

Thanks again.
 
Jay Angler
steward
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Fruit trees often do better if they have a different variety to cross pollinate them - particularly pear trees. This can be a problem in a small space, so here you can often buy trees which have been grafted so that there are two varieties blooming at once on the same tree. Luckily, I have a neighbor who has most of the same trees that I have, but different varieties or at least not identical clones. If your trees are blooming, but not setting fruit, that could be part of the problem.
 
steward
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I'm not sure if I have any answers, but I've been in similar circumstances.

Three years ago, my apple trees didn't produce any apples. My trees were 3-5 years old at that point. Now all the trees are producing very well. Here's my old thread about it. And this one was about my oldest apple tree--which was 5 at the time--and had never produced fruit. That tree took until last year--when it was 7!--to produce fruit. And the tree was already 6 feet tall when we bought it. All of those trees were semi-dwarfs.

I don't know why they never produced. Maybe it was too much nitrogen from putting duck bedding there. Maybe it was pruning that was too strong/wrong. Maybe it was early frosts. I don't know. I just know that I didn't give up hope, and now all of the trees produce apples.

On a side note: I learned a trick for keeping mulch around trees. If you try putting mulch there, the chickens will just merrily scratch it away. BUT, if you put some big rocks (4+ inches in diameter or more) on top of the mulch, the chickens can't really scratch it away. You can also use a few logs that way, too. The apple tree in my chicken yard had mulch with rocks on top, and the mulch is staying there nicely, and the chickens aren't digging up the trees' roots.

 
gardener
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First of all I love your set up, the chickens will be very happy there!
Second, you already got this-leaves balance out nitrogen, plus the chickens love them.
Bags of leaves can make the difference between a chicken yard that looks like a barren waste land and one that is filled with lush worm filled compost.
While you are waiting for the trees to fruit, consider planting cane fruits like raspberries/blackberries etc.
Willow, is another possibility, great for creating chicken fodder, but consider potential issue with roots and sewage lines before you pull that trigger.
 
master pollinator
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Good suggestions above. Another option: if you have access to free sawdust from a local sawmill or truss manufacturer, that will soak up a lot of nitrogen as well. Beware of places that build with treated lumber or OSB board though.
 
Tom Borden
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Thanks Nicole! I do suspect I'm a little impatient and expecting too much too early from these trees, so it's nice to hear that it might just be another year or two before they really start producing.

I love your idea of the rocks, I'm going to give that a try. My ladies are pretty strong and persistent so I'll need some big rocks!
 
Tom Borden
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Hi William, thanks for the good advice re planting back there. This actually opens up another branch (pun intended) to my inquiry. Our ladies have done a very thorough job decimating any and all plant life back there other than the trees. Not that there was much other than grasses before. We are definitely looking for any and all planting suggestions from the Permies group, this would be bushes, grasses, canes or anything that the chickens will leave alone. We're trying to get that area back there as lush and alive as possible, but those plants will need to be very chicken resistant. The soil is good, great drainage (we're on the former banks of the Columbia River (from the Missoula flood times) with lots of river rock below 10-12" of topsoil. Tons of sun. Lots of rain in the winter and springtime, Portland style.

Thank you for any and all suggestions!
 
pollinator
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My asian pear was 5-6" in diameter when it started producing.
 
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