posted 7 years ago
Hey everyone!
Have long been a reader, not a poster, but finally getting started on a big project that has been in the planning phase for the last decade or so, now that home base projects are (more or less...) wrapping up.
First, some background - we have long owned a plot of land in northern Wa, West of the Cascades but solidly in the foothills rather than the lowlands. It's a secondary forest pretty typical of western Wa, that was probably logged in the early 1900's and never replanted. It is sparsely treed by Western Wa standards, consisting mostly of VERY big bigleaf maples, and moderately sized Western Redcedar, Western Hemlock, and Sitka Spruce. There are a few beautiful, large, mature Red Alders as well, but only a handful. My father bought the land decades ago and did a little selective logging, taking out some of the largest/straightest big leaf maples, but leaving the majority (mostly due to their low value due to multiple stems to be honest). He also put in roads that I will detail on a map soon, and he created several clearings between the large trees. After this, we let it sit for about a decade, and now basically everything in the clearings has reverted to brush and blackberries, with healthy alders growing in the wet areas and unhealthy alders growing in the drier areas.
It's beautiful, isolated, peaceful, has year-round water coming down in a main waterfall and multiple other smaller streams, has roads roughed in, very good access, electricity, a well, etc. We're really extremely lucky to have it and it's a prime location for permaculture except for a few factors:
1. The site is north facing. VERY North facing. In the winter it feels as though it gets essentially no sun at all, and summer some spots feel like they have +- 6 hours or so maximum.
2. It's on the side of a mountain. (the north side...) It's a 20 acre parcel, with 5 of that consisting of a 2-level shelf at the northernmost 1/4 of the rectangular property, and the remaining south 15 acres consisting of extremely steep slope that doesn't quit for at least a few miles. All the water runs down this until it hits the shelf, and then turns one direction or the other, going perpendicular to the slope, off of our property, without doing much to water the flat areas of the shelf that aren't close to the beginning of the slope. (Our property line ends just after the edge of the shelf, where it then drops again even more steeply down to a major river and floodplain.)
3. The soil is gravely, poor, thin, and generally not good. There are a few areas that have fine soil, IE the waterlogged swampy areas near the water sources, but other than that it's basically a big rock shelf with a little layer of soil on top of gravel, rocks, and clay.
So, that provides a starting picture of the property. I'll provide some drawings soon to make it even clearer.
Anyways, I have big dreams and plans for it. I have a lot of experience in Permaculture, know my plants relatively well, and just finished up most of my projects on our 1 acre home site down in the burbs.
Now, moving on to this larger site, I was hoping for some guidance. I have a few short term goals, but in general the long-term plan for the property will depend on the results of some of these initial projects.
I'll try to go in sequential order:
Primary Near-Term (Before End of Summer) Projects:
1. Thin the existing young saplings and trees to a healthy density to promote the increased survival and better growth of those that remain. This primarily applies to the alders everywhere (Alder is actually worth a little $$ nowadays if you give it time!) but also applies to the Redcedars that are popping up periodically as well as 3 small nursery blocks of Douglas Fir, Grand Fir, and Noble Fir that were planned to be dispersed but never got spread out and are now far too dense.
2. Clear out the secondary roadway. The roads consist of a main road traversing roughly the middle of the shelf from one end to the other, as well as a secondary loop that comes off of this one up to the north, going down to the smaller secondary shelf, traversing it, and then coming back upwards to connect to the main road again. The main road is still clear and in good shape, the secondary road needs some clearing of saplings and blackberries.
3. Clear out the current, still existing clearings/meadows. There are 3 sites that are still relatively clear, and will be the easiest to get mowed and back into open space. At the request of my father, these areas will, at least for the time being, stay open to preserve a view and allow for the restoration of a pond in the near future.
4. Find locations for new clearings that can be used for plantings. Here we get into the meat of the issue, and where I need the most advice.
I have two conflicting courses of action, and am having difficulty deciding between the two. The clearings, for the most part, would be relatively small (perhaps 10,000-20,000 square feet at the largest) between the existing mature maples, cedars, and other trees. (I would be willing to take out a big tree or two if it meant a world of difference, but for the most part want to leave the large mature trees and just do high branch pruning on them to allow as much light in as possible while preserving them) Additionally, the way the site is, I can either go on the south side of the road, closer to the slope, where there is higher-quality soil and plenty (sometimes too much) water, but it gets significantly less light the closer to the slope you get. Alternatively, I can push towards the north side of the road, further from the slope, where there is very poor soil, little water (I could easily install irrigation systems in the future) and much, much more sun exposure. The current tree density on either side is basically the same.
My goal for the next 6-10 months is to get my three main nut groups in as much as I possibly can, namely being walnuts/butternuts/heartnuts/buartnuts/hickories/maybe northern seedling pecans (I know hickories and pecans are crazy for western WA but figured what the hell, seedlings of them are VERY cheap), chestnuts, and hazelnuts/filberts. My goal would be to plant 1 of each variety that I can get my hands on/afford. Grafted and clonally propagated for now to ensure good genetics. I love the idea of seedlings and selecting for local adaptations, but I can always do that with my own using the offspring of the cultivars that I put in (The genetic diversity is part of why I want at least one of each variety) The other part of why I want one of each variety is that it allows me to propagate my own of these well-studied and understood varieties.
Option A: Make small clearings as we go in opportune places and get the trees in wherever makes sense in the moment, not necessarily attempting to adhere to rows or being all that organized. I do plan to triple label the trees and create a detailed map with the variety and its location. This may be more conducive to planting in a permaculture/mixed fashion later on due to the varying gaps and micro-environments it will create, but messier and harder to evaluate a variety due to confounding factors.
Option B: Create larger, block clearings suitable for traditional nut-orchard style row-planting. This is fairly straightforward and well understood. These would be approximately 30 trees for the chestnuts (each a different variety), approximately 20 for the walnut+others group (each a different variety), and approximately 20-40 for the hazelnut/filbert group (possibly a few doubles in this one) Obviously this is more work in the beginning, but may potentially save headache later as it is more organized and will be easier to maintain. However, these blocks will not be suitable for significant planting later on with other species. Essentially I imagine that these would function as my propagation home bases, allowing me a neat and organized are to propagate varieties and seedlings to then plant in a more permaculture-type fashion elsewhere on the property and other places.
Option C: When clearing the roads, simply clear them out an extra 30 feet on either side and plant rows of the plants along the sides. This would look cool, but could also be accomplished later. It's also not great for pollination, but better organized than option A and less work potentially than option B.
So what do you folks think about
1. the side of the road to focus on first for each of these three groups? I can easily do them in different places on the property.
2. Option A vs B vs C vs any other ideas??
3. Any varieties of any of these groups that you folks think I absolutely MUST have or that are absolutely not worth the $$?
I've found that walnuts will run about 30-40 for grafted trees, 10 ish for seedlings, chestnuts run about 15-30 for grafts, and hazels I can find for anywhere from 10 - 30 on average.
Notes: Keep in mind that Walnuts must be planted relatively far away from the other species and cannot be co-planted with chestnuts or hazelnuts/filberts. I also thought about Co-planting with alternating hazelnuts/filberts and chestnuts, but since they are wind pollinated and the hazels will be much more productive with full sun, I think I would prefer to keep them separate.
I also plan to repeat this process in the future as I go with other varieties of edibles such as plums pears apples paw paws berries etc.
Thanks for reading, everyone! I'll post maps and lists of cultivars soon. Any and all advice is graciously accepted!