Andrea Cunningham

I'm a partial permie, if such a thing is possible.  Love the ethos, the practicality, the idiosyncratic nature of it all...  and yet, I'm not in a "forever" home.  The ability to appeal to a variety of potential buyers is going to be a thing at some point, so wilding out with all of my quirky ideas isn't 100% viable.  

That being said, I still have my Pinterest addiction, where I collect impractical ideas that I may or may not put into action.  I stumbled upon photos of people using old bicycle wheels for trellising, and I immediately began looking for instructions (and found precious few).  So I made it up as I went.  You can see phase one of the rose/trellising project in the photo above (yes, I know roses are fairly frivolous for permaculture, but I did say partial.)  

I've started a blog about our adventures in partial permaculture and the detailed instructions are there...  it wasn't a complicated project, but I'm pleased with the results.  In the next couple of days, my second upcycling bicycle wheel project is going to show up on the blog: yard art to distinguish our driveway.  Same basic principles, this time the wheels are spray painted different colors and attached to aluminum tubing, then strung with solar-powered fairy lights.  

The next project is creating raised beds, and I suspect that the bicycle trellising is going to appear again as support for peas and other vining veggies, but if I get to it this year, I'll be lucky.

CAL


Aufplum Acres

Dan Fish wrote:I too will dump my ash bucket in my driveway and report back if anything of note happens.

How did this go?  We've had a ton of rain and our driveway is mush right now...  I'd love to be able to use our ash in this way.

Eric Hanson wrote:Andrea,

As the wine caps break down the woodchips they establish a rich colony of various microbes, microbes which help to feed the plants.  Were you to establish wine caps early, they will wrap themselves around the tree roots and feed them.  Something I found about my project was that wine caps grew best when plant roots were available.  I pulled a couple of small plants out of my garden and their roots were intertwined with wine cap mycelium.  And those plants were extremely healthy themselves.

I imagine that if you were to start a colony of wine caps (or a host of other mushrooms, but wine caps are just so easy) then they would get established with the tree roots and help it grow.  Like I said earlier, if you don’t like mushrooms, don’t eat them (I imagine that I would not like the taste of manure, but the plants certainly like the stuff!).  It is worth growing for what they will do for the plants themselves.

I can be talked into trying just about anything, particularly if it is going to help me eat peaches out of my yard. Where does one even begin to get the necessary items for establishing wine caps? Is there a preferred purveyor for the spores or methodology for getting them started?

Peter Sedgwick wrote:

Satamax Antone wrote:Peter, do you have strawbales available nearby in the summer.

Hey Satamax,

Probably not bales per say. Will have to look into it. Do have access to rice straw. Just not sure how much in the spring as the rice cropping season is in the early fall.

Been considering a simple pole frame structure with the timber we have here. Double studded small structure with some sort of stem wall and straw light clay infill on top.

This topic is definitely a conversation for another thread. I’ll start to put some ideas together and make a new topic.

Have you thought about retrofitting the existing building with straw light clay?  I don't think there are any impediments to using the rice straw, people do light clay with all kinds of materials, including hemp.  I don't know if hemp is available in Japan, but hempcrete uses lime and hemp and has the added benefit of being a carbon sink.   I have (perhaps unrealistic) visions of redoing our house entirely...  taking off the outer and inner layers and the conventional insulation between and treating the existing wood structure like it was always built for straw light clay walls (or hempcrete), then plastering over them with lime etc. for the breathable walls, insulation, and feeling just a touch smarter than my neighbors.  Tearing out the old materials comes with a footprint, but so does our crummy current insulation and the electrical bills that go with.  Starting over with a brand new building seems like a comparable level of work, and then you still have the old house to contend with.  

Just my two, possibly ill-informed, cents...

-cal

Eric Hanson wrote:Andrea,

Feeling really ambitious?  You could try to plant comfrey about 18”-2’ away from the tree itself,  the comfrey is a nice companion plant and it’s leaves will drop and provide a nice chop and drop fertilization.

Feeling even more ambitious?  Try inoculating those woodchips with wine cap mushrooms.  You will likely want to start with a layer of chips at least 4-6 inches thick, spread the wine cap spawn, water and wait.  The comfrey should provide a bit of shade for the wine caps, and the wine caps will turn your woodchips into amazingly fertile compost filled with healthy microbes!  Even if you don’t want the mushrooms, the compost they leave behind is amazing.  Best of all, the peach tree, comfrey and wine caps all form a synergistic relationship.  I try to incorporate wine cap mushrooms into just about every corner of my garden and fruit patches.


Eric

I do want to get into the companion planting business.  I hadn't thought too much about mushrooms (not something I want to eat), but I was thinking about critter-repellent things to keep close like lavender, rosemary, and mint (all of which I find more interesting and useful than mushrooms...  I think it is the mushroom texture that gives me recoil.)

Marco Banks wrote:Peach trees grow great on heavy clay soil.  I've got 5 peach trees, all doing fantastic and our native soil is brick material.  At least it used to be brick hard, but after years of mulching with wood chips, its amazing.

Mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch.  Wood chips.

As you put wood chips down, the soil becomes lighter and drainage improves exponentially.  That's the secret to a thriving orchard on heavy clay soil: mulch.  Plant your tree and then put down 8 inches of wood chips all around it.  In six months, add another 8 inches because those chips will bread down quickly.

Our first summer in the compound, the local utility was doing tree work around the power lines.  I told them they could dump as many wood chips as they wanted - we had the space, and I had been doing a lot of reading/youtubing about the no-dig approach to gardening.  Everyone else in the house thought I was nuts, but we've used wood chips for *everything* including temporary pathways, mulching beds, "paving" a parking area...  And now that we're 18 months in, what we haven't used as chips is turning into straight up compost and I'm not looking quite so crazy.  

In other words, I'm 100% prepared to follow the mulch, mulch, mulch advice.  The area that the trees are going into is already covered in a couple of inches of wood chips, I'll have to see about getting another truck load or two put into place so everything is prepared for when the trees arrive in the spring.  My current anxiety is over having the trees arrive and not being ready for them.  

Mihai Ilie wrote:Biggest danger on your land is not your lack of experience  but the deers.
Read about how to protect the young trees from the deers .
Do not entirely follow the guidelines that you see on the label when you buy a tree.You can sometimes plant them closer especially if the soil is rich and has good moisture retention.
I have doubts that you ordered trees from a nursery and they sold you non grafted varietyes.Basically 95 % of the trees sold in nurserryes are grafted.
You could post pictures here and i will be glad to help you with somme advice.

With our clay, I'm not sure we have "rich" soil...  I'm used to thinking of rich soil as being the deep, loose, black stuff.  We're pretty slim on the top soil, it's weeds into clay for the most part.  I guess I'm following the spacing instructions on the trees after all.  

I went back to my order and it looks like I have a mix of grafted and trees grown from seed.  My crab apple and american plum are grown from seed, the peaches and the damson plum are grafted.  In 10 years, I'll be able to have an informed opinion on which has done better.  :)

I guess my next adventure is figuring out how to add photos of the compound.  Thanks for all the input and knowledge.  

-cal

Mihai Ilie wrote:Paw paw is a nice tree to have and tolerates shadow  ( young trees actually need shade or elese they get sunburned).
I would plant cherryes,apples,red fleshed apples ,pears almonds,hazelnuts,apricots ,quince if you like to cook with them and all soird of temperate fruits not necesarely native like the paw paw.
Grafted trees if you want high quality fruits.I have manny seedlings not geafted that i make moonshine from the fruits because they are not too palatable.

I don't think I can cram *all* of those trees in the space I have, unless I start chopping down existing trees.  Cherries, apples, pears, peaches, plums, persimmon, and apricots are all on the list.  I've ordered my first batch of trees from Willis Orchards, but I worry about getting them all at once and not being able to get them in the ground properly.  Part of my work this winter is being ready for what I've already ordered. (!)

As for the grafted trees... I understand the reasons why you would go that way, but resilience is really important to me.  My sister planted a bunch of fruit trees at her place and had a lot of them fail after about 3 years of production.  I'm buying into the theory that genetic diversity is important.  For me, it is worth planting a bunch of seedlings and seeing how they turn out.  If I end up with applesauce, or cider, or fat and happy deer... each of those is an acceptable outcome.  Of course, a touch of experience may send me screaming for the closest grafted tree I can find.  I'm YEARS away from knowing how any of this turns out.  

Above all other questions/concerns, there is this: how ideal does the situation need to be for a plant to thrive?  If I have five hours of sun, can I put a full-sun plant there?  What if I have full sun in a spot in June, but by the time we get to the end of August, it isn't quite full sun anymore?  If the guidelines for the tree say to give it a solid 15 feet of space between it and the next tree, can I make it 10?  What do I risk if I'm not fully within the guidelines and preferences of the plant?  

I can let go of the idea of doing things perfectly, but I'm really struggling with the idea that I need to do this *right.*

James Landreth wrote:I agree with Mihai's suggestions and will add that you can plant them in a mound, mixing looser soil with the clay, gradually transitioning to the pure native soil. This will help especially during wet times. I know of a woman who grows peaches in a swamp in Georgia this way!

I am all for the idea of planting on a mound...  digging in our soil is no fun.  There is so much to do, it helps if I don't have to do *everything* the hard way.  

Has anyone tried this?  I've been doing a lot of reading - I adore peaches, and I want to be able to grow my own, but our heavy clay soil isn't what peach trees like, at least not from what I've read.  One mitigating strategy is amending the clay with sand and compost, which I can do, but what happens when the roots of the peach tree out-grow the hole I've amended?  Do I need to dig a giant hole and amend the whole thing?  How deep do the amendments need to go?  

Is there an alternative planting strategy that will increase my chances of my peach trees thriving?  

Master Gardner YouTube offered a fruit-tree planting strategy of building a mound and planting above the ground for better drainage.  Does that work with peach trees?

Other suggestions/strategies?  

Thanks in advance...

CAL.