How to amend so I have artisanal, hand crafted soil for future orchard

Hi,

First time poster here! I am so grateful for this community and have enjoyed and learned from so many posts already. I have spent a lot of time reading Dr RedHawk's soil threads but was hoping for some specific feedback.

We live in Ontario, Canada (zone 5b), just outside of Peterborogh. We have two acres and are looking to prepare an area of poor soil for future fruit trees (ideally apple, pear, maybe cherry, maybe apricot, grapes, hearty kiwi, maybe pawpaw). The area is very hilly and we basically sit on moraines and eskers (I am not great with my geology). Our neighbour is an aggregate pit so hopefully that tells you something! Our yard is quite hilly. A third sits on the top of a hill (we call it the upper 40), a third is a big slope, a third is the lower 40 (which has some slightly higher and lower areas; the future orchard would not be in the lowest area). We did some grading this spring to be able to use the areas more efficiently. In the process we discovered mounds that were basically just rock. The ground is compacted, poor soil quality and SO many rocks (I have dug up and moved by hand thousands of rocks already). Rocks are largely shale, limestone and granite with some quartz. We would really like to amend the soil in two specific areas (one in the upper 40 and one in the lower 40) to allow for more and better things to grow (specifically the fruit trees listed above). I have been digging up the rocks by hand as I am able. Largely in hopes to allow for better root growth, better drainage, and to make room to add/amend the soil. We have had the soil tested in both areas and the results are attached (B40 refers to bottom or lower 40, U40 for the upper 40).

What I am looking for is help on how to amend the soil. Our neighbour has cattle and we most likely could get cow manure. We also have arborists up the road and can get wood mulch. We are open to securing other materials if something better would be recommended. The agronomist suggested just digging the holes for future trees and focus on amending that area. As I am digging up large and small rocks, I am ok to try and turn over the whole area to be able to dig in manure everywhere (thus the artisanal, hand crafted soil we are aiming for!). Other specific questions would be:
- looking at the soil testing results, would any of the specific trees listed above (apple, pear, grape, kiwi, cherry, apricot, pawpaw) do better in one area over the other (upper 40 vs lower 40)?
- what would you recommend in terms of amending/fertilizing the areas?
- we had talked about planting at least a few trees in the fall. Would that be too early if we amended the soil in the next two months? Is it better to wait until the spring to plant trees? (I have read arguments for fall planting and for spring planting and am unsure which would be better, especially with wanting to amend the soil).
- If we were to add aged cow manure, for an area of approximately 100ftx75ft, is it possible to add too much?
- would mulch help, either mixed into the soil or added on top?
- What about cover crops? What would you recommend planting on top?

Any information or recommendations anyone can make would be most appreciated. We have moved a lot and have finally found our forever home. We want to build a food forest and be good to the land and could use all the help we can get. Thanks so much!

Welcome Carolyn!

How exciting!. I'm excited for you.

I'm fairly new here as well. There's alot in your post. The one place I would recommend is to type hugelkulture in the search box and hit return and the threads that come up may not be all hugelkulture based but will answer many of your questions.

You will have success. So much to learn here. I'm interested too see where others point you. I'll be watching. Photos are cool too.

Hi Caroline, Welcome to permies!
I won't give you much advice I'm afraid, as your climate is so much different to mine! Personally I wouldn't worry too much about the rocks. As long as the tree isn't sitting on top of one (which you will find out when you dig the hole!) The roots will move around them pretty well. They actually can be beneficial, holding heat from winter sun for example, so you may wish to collect them to create microclimates though. As long as the soil drains fairly well as I think that is the most important for most fruit trees - they don't like sitting in water!
Yes, I believe you can add too much manure. Excess nutrients will just wash away, looking at the soil association soil guide they suggest "40 tonnes of cattle manure per hectare per year" as a maximum - that's only 1kg per 10 m^2 ( !). One thing you probably have time for this year is to sow a bulky green manure crop to improve the soil sructure. This could be anything that will grow like blazes in your climate and produce lots of bulky plant material. Preferably something you don't mind seeding around or will kill over winter. My suggestion would be to look at tiller radish perhaps - that has deep roots and bulky top growth, but will winter kill in colder climates. This will help get some life into your soil.
One question I have is what direction your land faces? - that will affect how robust your crops are to late frosts for example.
I wish you well in your new home!

Welcome Carolyn!

The questions you ask are all great, assume I don't know anything useful for the ones I ignore.

I'd plant trees this year -- always start now. Like Nancy, I wouldn't sweat the rocks too much. I'd also plant daikon and clover. And while I don't know about too much manure, I don't think you can reasonably get too much wood chips.

Fun project!

If I wanted to amend soil for a future area for fruit trees, I would first get loads of wood chips delivered.  Chipdrop.com is where to find free wood chips.

I would start composting veggie scraps and fall leaves.

Next I would learn about growing mushrooms.

I am not big on gathering manure as I feel the other activity are more beneficial.

Your project sounds exciting! It is good to hear you are taking such care planning in advance.

Amendments of many sorts can be expensive in terms of labor and money. If you have the money then that is wonderful and a head start.

If you can get free wood chips then that is lovely. I cannot where I live. But sawdust and wood shavings are available abundantly for free from local wood workers. Finding the best local source of organic material for compost and mulch will save you some headaches.

For various forms of uncomposted matter, they can be laid on top of the soil and that is perhaps the most beneficial way to do so with trees. (If it were squash or tomato I would have no issue mixing in smelly food scraps and comfrey leaf, but squash is squash.)

It is excellent that you have access to so much manure. Someone I know, who lives up in the rocky hill-lands like you, mentioned an apple tree growing out of their compost pile and producing lovely fruit in seven years, and we’re likely in a similar enough climate, so I don’t know that there can be too much as long as it is well aged enough. High, thin-soil areas here seem to be the perfect habitat for wild apple trees.

Supposedly certain fungi store calcium in the form of calcium oxalate crystals. That would be beneficial I am thinking for the fruit trees, so it could be good to introduce mushrooms.

Because you appear to have access to a lot of manure, I would introduce slender nettle (Urtica gracilis) who you can probably find growing wild—they are like stinging nettle but don’t sting as badly. They should thrive in the rich soil situation and provide nutritious and abundant greens that don’t sting too much. There are lots more you can plant too… raspberry, black raspberry transplanted from the wild might work… Common milkweed can provide lots of tasty greens too underneath the trees.

Anything might work for cover crops. You could grow a crop of good turnips to last the winter, or any garden crop that can be summer sown, before the trees are in. It may help to add some winter hardy grasses to protect the soil. But perhaps it could be filled in with edible and medicinal wild and cultivated plants as time goes on. As long as it isn’t tilled, and is covered by some sort of mulch, I believe the soil should become richer every year.

Hi Carolyn, welcome to Permies!!

You definitely have challenges!  But you did start reading the RedHawk series and there is no better authority on soil health than RedHawk, so good for you for starting to soak up all that soil wisdom.

I have a couple of thoughts, but they are a bit involved.  How likely are you to be able to get access to a bunch of wood chips—or make them yourself?  The reason I ask is that it seems that with your poor soil, you might be best served by basically making your own topsoil.  I have converted all of my gardens to raised beds that are filled with wood chips.  But to really get them to be magically fertile, I break them down with Wine Cap mushrooms.  Wine Caps aggressively break down wood chips and the resulting compost is amazingly fertile.  Further, Wine Caps actually like to have some interaction with the soil as they do their magic and the soil and chips sorta merge together.

Another approach is to make a compost pile right next to your little trees.  I will give you an experience of mine.  Years ago, I, too was starting an orchard, which happened to be a fair distance from my house.  At the same time, I had one of those springs where the rain wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t get out to mow for weeks by which time I had a hay field.  After mowing I absolutely had to rake as the clippings would have choked new growth.  I had to put those clippings somewhere so I made a pile out near my orchard, simply because it was out of the way.  

I piled the clippings about 6’ tall and probably more than that around, and I just let it be.  After a few days I noticed that the pile was shrinking and when I felt the outside, it was very warm.  I pushed my hand into the pile and nearly burned it.  I had accidentally created a hot pile—but probably the worst constructed one ever.  Over the weeks the pile shrank down to a couple inches high and virtually disappeared!

The real magic happened the next year.  It just so happened that my pile was ever so slightly above one of the peach trees in my orchard.  There was a dark, rich green ellipse that stretched from the base of the pile and just encompassed one little peach tree.  That green ellipse lasted for several years, and that one tree grew twice as tall & large as the others in that row.  When it produced fruit, it produced more fruit than the other trees by far.  People use to walk by and ask “What type of tree is that one?”  They were all the same variety, but by accident, the “compost” pile seeped out to that one tree and the soil beneath absolutely thrived!  And I made about the worst compost pile ever!

So I know that this is a long post, but if you can get some good, healthy microbial activity going, nothing could be better.  I can think of no way better than to use either a compost pile or Wine Cap inoculated wood chips.  

But want to go even better?  I saw one orchard owner who utilized this exact premise, but on more mature trees.  He made a partial ring at the dripline with one third of the ring being compost, one third being mushroom inoculated wood chips, and the other third left clear.  Each year he rotated and the wood chips added fungi, the compost bacteria and the third year they had to grow on their own.

Perhaps you could make a row of wood chips on one side of the trees and compost on the other.

So I threw a lot at you but the idea is to get soil microbes working.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Good luck!!


Eric

Hello Carolyn,

I live not too far from you (outside Norwood), so we have a similar climate and likely similar soil. We planted a number of fruit trees 4 years ago, apples, pears, peaches and plums and have added a few more things in since then.  We didn't do much to ammend the soil beforehand, that may have been a good idea, but I guess I subscribe to the philosophy of the best time to plant a tree is yesterday, failing that , today!

Since planting,  I build fairly sizeable mulch rings around the trees.  These vary abit in their makeup as I use materials that I have to hand. Typically a lot of dried leaves,  weeds that I have pulled out. If I've been splitting wood down in the forest, or have moved brush piles, I will add wood chips and bits of decaying twigs and wood, as I clean up.  We also have a number of comfrey plants around the food forest (which the pollinators love) and I will chop these down and add to the mulch piles. My aim is to have comfrey near every tree, as I notice that I'm lazy, and the trees closer to the comfrey plants receive mulch more regularly!  

In terms of general ground cover, we had a lot of disturbance to the soil after we built our swim pond and we've seeded white clover in those areas, just to act a ground cover and add nitrogen.

As yet we have only harvested peaches from the trees, maybe if we'd ammeneded the soil prior to planting, things would have established more quickly but things are growing. I think we would have had plums this year if the ice storm hadn't done quite so much damage to our plum tree.  

Good luck with your journey.   Enjoy it!


Richard

I should say, since you are in the area, we could connect at some point if you are interested in seeing what we're doing. Not that we are experts by any means!

Thank you so much, everyone, for the warm welcome as well as all the great questions, suggestions and feedback. I will share a bit more information, as has been requested, with a few more questions.

Answers: we have heard of hugelkultures and have utilized them in other areas in our yard. I was just looking for something more specific related to more immediately and more directly working with the soil at this time.

Our two acres is a rectangle with the length running east/west. There are a few mature trees in lower 40 but it is largely open and full sun or the large trees are mostly on the north side.

I did hear the comments to not mind or worry about the rocks too much. However, when working with the skid steer, I could only scrape off an inch or two every pass as it is so hard packed. Almost like deadpan. Most of that area only has an inch or two of soil (if that) and then it is solid rock tetris. It is so much work, and a bit back breaking, but I do think digging up some/most of the rocks will in the end be a very good thing. I have excavated rocks that were 3' wide by 1' deep. Already there is so much more breathing room breaking up the first 6-8" that I think once I add manure and mulch, it will be able to get worked in so much faster. In some areas, it is 70% rocks with very little dirt/soil.

Currently my plan is to dig up/break up the area as much as I can by hand. I will then dig the holes for two apple and two pear trees we would like to plant in the fall. In those holes I will add mushroom compost. In the meantime, I hope to get some cow and chicken manure (just a bit) and dig that in as much as I can by hand over the whole area. I would then add mulch over the whole area.

My additional questions are:
- should I by trying to lower the ph (it's currently in any more aggressive/faster/more direct way than what my plan above would contribute?
- I am assuming it's best to plant a cover crop in the fall? We do hope to do companion planting with the trees. I am assuming there won't be many cover crops that would grow in the heat of the summer without extensive watering (this area is the farthest from the house)?
- We have a lot of snakes in the area. I know they have their place in nature, but I don't love having them in my yard. Are there lower growing cover crops that would not encourage them to hang out in?\

Again, thank you everyone!