Joe Skeletor wrote:Stefan -
Really looking forward to seeing the video!
I'm working on setting up an urban farm along a new bike trail that the city is working on. Hoping to include a permaculture orchard with the project. Any advice off the top of your head would be a great help -
1 - Some of the sites we may get access to are definitely old industrial (brownfield). I've read that fruit crops are the least likely to transfer contamination to the crop. Any thoughts on using these fields for some orcharding ? I'm probably more comfortable with leaving these sites alone or doing some sort of native restoration project on them. The web soil survey on them shows that the its good soil (minus the god-knows-what contamination).
2 - In the past, I helped to start up an orchard at an organic farm. Not permaculture by any means. The cost of the trees from a nursery + supplies was an eye opener! I've taken some grafting classes, and know that rootstock can be gotten for cheap/free. Starting up from scratch, would you recommend starting your own trees + grafting, or just paying a bit more up front for trees from a nursery? I'm guessing a bit of both. Trying to keep costs down where I can.
3 - Fruit quality - Do you have an acceptable level of insect/disease damage that you and your customers can agree on? Or do you mostly sell dessert quality, no damage fruit? just curious.
Thanks a ton for your time!
Great questions Joe,
Bike paths are the BEST URBAN ORCHARD SITES.
People are going slowly, can stop and pick. I dream of the day that my city, Montreal, will have 100km (60 miles) of
permaculture orchard bike paths. Imagine the productivity!!!
1- RE contamination and transfer I know little. But I understand the power of FUNGUS. These FUN GUYS !!! want to work. Highly recommend 'Mycelium Running' by
Paul Stamets. Great, great Book. They are known to breakdown the nastiest chemicals.
Wood chip
mulch, which cities produce a lot of can be used extensively under the fruit trees as mulch would solve, bind, breakdown a lot of the contamination.
2- yes trees are costly but so is gas! The best time to plant a fruit tree is 20 years ago. Yes we grew all our trees. An intern started our nursery of 6,000 fruit trees on a 50-50 basis. Left to start his own orchard and had 3,000 trees valued at $70,000 to start. Not bad. In the film I show you how we graft now. Tons of good youtube videos on it.
3- Quality we aim for 50% nice fruit and get it. Not nice can be insect, misshaped or disease damage. All good for juice anyway. We guarantee some bug juice in our juice and people love it! My customers are less picky than I am.
Think of it where can you get NO Pesticide on fruit?? Not even copper or sulfur (organic sprays). We use whey from cheese making to
spray. We can eat it.