Hi everyone,
I'm in the planning stages for a 6.5 acre polyculture orchard. Going to have 9 16' berm/swale structures of varying length with the berm portion being the the planting area. The idea is to leave 45' wide alleys for mob grazing/annual cropping. Going off of an average traditional recommended spacing of most of our cultivars being 20' that gives us somewhere around 220 trees. Now I'm trying to figure out how Farmer/Helper tree fit in to this spacing scheme. Part of me really wants to shove 1 or 2 leguminous trees/shrubs in the space between the 20 foot spacing of the cultivars at 10' or 5', but I'm worried about crowding. Any advice/ideas/input that anyone has to offer would be very much appreciated. I am particularly interested if anyone knows what the Mark Shepard Restoration Ag approach is. I've been able to find a lot of information on Mark's way of doing things, but haven't really found much on spacing or farmers trees.
Thanks.
