Fruit Tree Guild understory spacing and Asparagus

Hello!

First time poster here.

I was hoping to get some feedback on this fruit tree guild plan. The trees were planted just 1-2 months ago, but nothing underneath has been planted yet. The trees are Apple, Cherry, Peach, Pear, and Plum which are planted 10 feet apart and will be kept small. Pawpaws are in the understory, and Persimmons are in the north.

Is this planting to dense? I really want to include permaculture aspects. I am also worried about the asparagus positioning, but also wanted those to be planted in more of a permaculture way than a bed full. (New to permaculture and could be thinking about this completely wrong.
I am in South West Pennsylvania.

Any insights or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

This image was made using Canva. This is the only way I found to rearrange things and get everything organized.

Welcome to the forum!

Are the fruit trees dwarf or standard?

That might make a difference in the placement of the asparagus and rhubarb due to the root system.

They are on standard stock, but I am following the pruning from "Grow a Little Fruit Tree". https://permies.com/wiki/260271/Grow-Fruit-Tree-Ann-Ralph
After planting, I cut them to 2 feet and will train them into open vases that are not taller than 6 feet. I plan to keep them within 10x10 feet, as represented by those circles.

Thank you for the reply!

welcome to the forum, and congratulations on the new orchard!

It took me a long time to fully appreciate it, but in gardening, the first place you try a plant doesn't have to be the last place it ends up.

The best way to find out what works on your site is to try it. If a plant hates where it's at, it'll generally sulk for awhile before dying. If you want to spoil and baby a plant by moving it, when you're early days in things, you're allowed to do that. And everything you're growing will set seed.

Consider framing your goal as "establish enough of these plants that they'll add seeds to the garden's seed bank". You can give them a bit of help by spreading seeds around in the fall to make sure they end up in places you think the plants might like, but then the best way to get plants at the spacing your particular site wants is to let them decide where they want to be. Make sure you know what babies of each of your introduced plants look like, so that you don't pull them when weeding.

"weeding", as a practice of adjusting which plants are at an advantage and which are at a disadvantage relative to others, is one of your most powerful non-chemical tools in shaping the ecosystem toward your preferences.

So to answer your actual question, no, you're probably fine with everything crammed in like that for several years, while the fruit trees grow up. By the time the trees get big enough for light directly under them to be an issue, all your lower story plants should be mature enough to set seed every year, and you should already have little volunteers coming up wherever they like throughout your garden. Those volunteers are better plants than the introduced parents -- they're the results of rolling a bunch of genetic dice for the reproduction process and starting your own custom landrace of each plant, optimized for your conditions in particular. Among the volunteers, if you have one that performs poorly by your standards you can hurry things along by removing it, and if you have one that you particularly like, you can hurry things along by cloning it or going to extra effort to cultivate its particular seeds.