Hello Abraham,
I signed up to permies just to respond to your interesting thread. I am trying to start a dryland orchard near San Antonio, Texas. My conditions aren't quite as extreme as yours, but I am seeing a lot of the same challenges. I'm worried about planting trees to their doom in full sun. Over the last year, even before hearing of terms like nurse trees or chop and drop, I was planting pecan seedlings under the shade of existing mesquite trees and covering the soil with pruned limbs to keep things cool. Even with those techniques, my tree survival rate has only been about 1:3 for the first summer.
Several years ago I led a project to plant shade trees along a commercial street near our home. We used Groasis waterboxxes, and I kept them after the project was over. I've used some at our farm, and they seem to give seedlings an edge in that first year survival struggle. They are designed to put liner trees into the center of a donut-shaped water basin (with water emitted through a wick), but if I'm planting seeds or seedlings that don't reach over the top of the basin, I just set the basin to the side of the tree. I'm going to try to attach a photo. Just another potential tool.
Regards,
Steven
