Gilbert Fritz wrote:Are you going to use mulch around the trees eventually? I suppose on this scale it might be difficult. Martin Crawford in England used long strips of some type of fabric to suppress grass. Meanwhile, he would plant running ground covers on one side, which would start rooting and running under and over the weed block fabric. In a year's time, he would move the strip on width over; and the ground covers would follow. He planted all the trees for the orchard in the first year, and used a square of weed block fabric around each, until the rolling fabric/ ground cover treatment got to them to suppress weeds for good.
I don't know if this helps you or not.
I think using cover crops is the easiest option at that scale. I would like to use wood chips around as many trees as I can. Ideally I would like to use wood chips everywhere but am keeping that input in the zones closer to the house for now. I might experiment with a row of plastic mulch just to compare.
I will check out Martin's fabric system. I might try different methods on a few rows and compare them for a year before planting out the whole pasture.