will there be a tree list available for the permaculture orchardists who are wanting to plant soon?

Stephan: Farmer Mike and I (Head Weeder) at Elk Meadow Farm would like to know if there will be a tree list available for the permaculture orchardists who are wanting to plant soon. We've been working up a plot and have been planting bee enticing plants this year so far in anticipation of your video coming out. We need info on what varieties to track down. (I think the same varieties you grow in Quebec will grow here in our zone.) There are really great prices at Wells Nursery in Ellensberg, WA but I'm sure they don't have everything. Best of luck with your video. May you change the world and you're welcome on our farm anytime!

Denice Moffat wrote:Stephan: Farmer Mike and I (Head Weeder) at Elk Meadow Farm would like to know if there will be a tree list available for the permaculture orchardists who are wanting to plant soon. We've been working up a plot and have been planting bee enticing plants this year so far in anticipation of your video coming out. We need info on what varieties to track down. (I think the same varieties you grow in Quebec will grow here in our zone.) There are really great prices at Wells Nursery in Ellensberg, WA but I'm sure they don't have everything. Best of luck with your video. May you change the world and you're welcome on our farm anytime!

Thanks Denice. I appreciate your FB posts.
As much as I want to say get to it, I see you've already gotten to it. June is a hard time to plant your trees. I know Sepp Holzer has a great technique with covering the roots and withering the leaves. Overall the best time to plant trees is in the fall (85% of root growth happens after leaf fall). Use this time to track down your trees. Many will be hard to find or in small numbers. Yes I have lists in the film of what I use and am constantly revising that list by removing the under performers and adding new ones. What works for me may not work well for you. Sorry I wish it was a recipe but it's just not that easy. Many plants have a wider adaptation but some don't. Mollison's <phases of abundance> is a great article for the process you will go through.
Sorry we did our best to get it out as early as possible, Olivier Asselin did a Herculean job of shaving off a month from the deadline. Best regards on you project, or should I say your journey.

When I was first getting started about 6 years ago with my permaculture orchard/forest garden, I thought I'd have everything planted in the Fall of year 1. Fat chance!

I started off being very choosey, reading every book, and selecting all the varieties I wanted. Then, I went to local nurseries, and they had none of these varieties. In the end, I found a hybrid approach better. Find the really good nursery growers who are in your region - the ones who have similar goals in their breeding programs to what you want from your fruit trees. Get their advice, and pick their best varieties. These may be ones that no one else has written about or heard of yet.

While I love the idea of growing from seed the majority of the time, then grafting if you get a 'spitter', I've got a small site, and in order to squeeze in all the diversity I can, I go with dwarf root stocks and grafted variety. If you can get seed from a variety known to grow well in your region and soil, that's a good way to go too - especially if you have a bit more land to play with. It's different too if you have access to scionwood, and a bit of practice with grafting - then you can feel more confident hacking off the top of a tree and grafting onto it.

For apples, I read a bunch of books on apples (The Book of Apples by Joan Morgan is especially awesome), and made sure to select older varieties that sounded really tasty and reliable, knowing that anything pre-1900 would be more pest-resistant. I was lucky enough to find a nursery specializing in antique varieties, and they had all but one of the ten apples on my list.

Rob Read wrote:When I was first getting started about 6 years ago with my permaculture orchard/forest garden, I thought I'd have everything planted in the Fall of year 1. Fat chance!

I started off being very choosey, reading every book, and selecting all the varieties I wanted. Then, I went to local nurseries, and they had none of these varieties. In the end, I found a hybrid approach better. Find the really good nursery growers who are in your region - the ones who have similar goals in their breeding programs to what you want from your fruit trees. Get their advice, and pick their best varieties. These may be ones that no one else has written about or heard of yet.

While I love the idea of growing from seed the majority of the time, then grafting if you get a 'spitter', I've got a small site, and in order to squeeze in all the diversity I can, I go with dwarf root stocks and grafted variety. If you can get seed from a variety known to grow well in your region and soil, that's a good way to go too - especially if you have a bit more land to play with. It's different too if you have access to scionwood, and a bit of practice with grafting - then you can feel more confident hacking off the top of a tree and grafting onto it.

For apples, I read a bunch of books on apples (The Book of Apples by Joan Morgan is especially awesome), and made sure to select older varieties that sounded really tasty and reliable, knowing that anything pre-1900 would be more pest-resistant. I was lucky enough to find a nursery specializing in antique varieties, and they had all but one of the ten apples on my list.

What is the name of this nursery specializing in antique varieties?

The one I was mentioning is Siloam Orchards http://www.siloamorchards.com/ - but note that they are near Uxbridge, Ontario, and almost no chance they will ship to USA, I think just Eastern Canada. (It was a stroke of luck for me though, because they are just a couple of hours away, and it's very hard for us Canadians to order plants from the US).

They run a U-Pick as well, and you can try some of the unusual varieties in the fall. If you prearranged, you could probably try lots of them, but they are not all ripe at the same time.

Rob