james buttler

I’m in the process of looking and aiming to purchase around 100 acres to setup as a permaculture farm over next few years.

I’ve got big ambitions I’m doing lots of research going forward. One thing that I’m struggling to find much on. Maybe I’m using the wrong search terms or I am trying to achieve something completely new is designing the farm to create higher temps.

So micro climates happen all around us. I’m trying to figure out if there is a way for me to do Earth works and plantings on the land that will create a microclimate that stays atleast a few c warmer than outside the microclimate. So I can zone push things like almonds the land will be in the north east of England

I know water acts like a massive heat sink storing the heat of the sun and releasing it slowly.

The land will have a lot of lakes/ Swales as fish farming will be a massive part of what I want to do.

I’m thinking possibly dumping all the earth from
The lake digging on the border of the land to create a hill to plant a wind break of trees for privacy and to also retain water on my own land since rainfall should flow down the hills and into my Swales.

Although this could potentially create more cold as heat rises and cold air falls down? - not sure

Does anyone have any ideas and input about this? Point me in the right direction on where to go looking for facts about this?

Thanks

I like the idea of having tall trees to use the space more wisely. As you say vertical gardening.

I suppose there is the option of having nut trees as the main trees that grow to those heights in the centre of the guilds and having smaller Apple and fruit trees under the canopy of the nuts.

Am I right in thinking nuts can be harvested with a net under the tree and let the fall naturally or does this not work?

I like your tool that picks the fruit I am wanting to setup a large commercial farm though and I am trying to figure out how I would manage a farm if it was to be run as a permaculture farm. Hand picking 100 trees myself would be one hell of a chore for little return considering the sale price of apples.

What permaculture methods do you use for tall standard apple trees, pears, etc?

If you have a large farm taking a ladder to each tree seems very time consuming

Mark how many years does the rootstock need to be?

I was under the impression they could be grafted at one year. A local nursery selling root stocks here are selling 1 year old root stocks. If I have to wait until the rootstocks are several meters tall and then chop them to the ground to graft I may rather look into buying older root stocks to save some time.

although I suppose I could let the rootstock reach 3m and then graft my fruit variety onto the top? I would of thought this could cause issues with branches from the rootstock forming

Natasha I havnt bought the land yet I’m looking into options. Most land I’ve seen though usually has a hedgerow containing it however usually they aren’t ideal or completely secure in these cases I think I’d slowly chop them down using the chipping for mulch whilst growing my own hedgerow.

For Income for the past 6 years me and my wife have been putting away 65% of our income into investments and I own two night clubs which are mostly self sufficient now and I get a passive income from them. I’ve delegated management to other people. We don’t spend much to live since I spend as little as I can on everything

Im struggling to actually find many pieces of land for sale. It does seem like a lot of the land here in the U.K. is possibly hoarded by the rich for inheritance tax relief.

For permaculture I do have the advantage of being able to buy any type of land right? I don’t need to look for amazing quality grade 3 agricultural land as if the land has been destroyed I can always rebuild it? As long as it hasn’t been severely contaminated that is.

I’d plan to buy the land without a mortgage I don’t like the idea of having any debt I’d just use one of my investments to buy the land I’d lose the growing interest on it but I see land as a massive investment to live on for years to come - eventually building a house on it.

For Earth works id be looking to find a company to do the work once I have a structured plan. I don’t like diving into things without knowing everything I possibly can before doing so. So I’m looking into everything as much as I can now before I even buy the land. Since land is few and far between waiting probably will let me see what kind of lands become available from time to time here aswell.

After Earth works are complete ideally id dedicate myself to the workload of the land full time.


Got a few trees here in my garden so I’m gonna give grafting a shot on a few of these and see how it goes. As I think I’ll buy a couple of fruit trees I want now with the fully vigorous root stocks and clone the root stock and the fruit tree so I can get many clones in the future.

Not yet mark reading through bit by bit - slower than I’d like at the moment due to little one keeping us up every night so far.

For fruit trees if you want full 7m tall trees do you need a rootstock?

What would happen if you bought a Golden delicious on a dwarf rootstock, took clones off the top and just rooted them without a rootstock? Wouldn’t that give full size plants? It would be easy and cheap to clone thousands that way.

This conversation suddenly died down where’d everyone go?

All this talk about greening the desert has got me thinking...

What’s everyone’s opinion on greening the “Ice” there’s plenty of land up north and down south that most people wouldn’t want to bother moving too. Would be a nice peaceful place!

What would you do? Could you create micro climates to increase the temp?

Thought it might be a good discussion whilst I read all my books on permaculture

Thanks for the congratulations lots of long nights been kept awake to come. No sleep in two days now lol

3ft in a year I wasn’t expecting that. Everywhere I’ve read supplying trees here say around 12 inches a year.

How do you go about sourcing your trees?

I can’t simply grow fruit from seed can I? Most apples are not edible. I do want to have full sized trees with the canopy layer 7+m

How do you find your fig trees? I read that their roots are very invasive and it can be difficult to plant other plants in that guild?

Sorry for the delay my first son was born yesterday morning.

There’s a lot of learning to do but it does seem to take a very long time for trees to establish so I’m thinking of buying land soon and doing the first step of Earth works and green manure whilst I read read read.

How do you guys speed up the fruit trees in the canopy layer? All you can do is wait a long time or buy larger trees for thousands?

30cm of growth a year average even on standard root stocks... that’s like 16 years to 5m tall?