Nick Van Horn

More great ideas, thank you.
My soil is a sandy loam and is considered pretty fertile. I am surrounded by ag for many miles on all sides, everything from stone fruit and nut trees to row crop vegetables to table and raisin grapes and citrus. Pretty much everything short of tropical grows well here if you can get it to survive the 7-10 yearly (but very light) frosts and BLISTERING summer heat. It’s not uncommon to have multiple weeks of 110*+. Water is pretty darn important!

I do use wood chips in my gardens and flower beds as much as I can, but I can only get so much. Chip drop is usually not successful. If I could get a reliable source I would not have tried plastic.

I’m hesitant on some of the cover crop mixes because they say they won’t winter kill above zone 8, and I am zone 9. Does anyone have any experience allowing a cover crop to continue for years on end? Do things reseed well?

I have tried comfrey a couple of times but it is not very hardy in our heat. It does quite well in the winter and shoulder seasons though. I have only used the sterile version, not the kind that reseeds, although it may be safe to try considering it struggles/dies all together in summer?

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures to better illustrate. You can see two rows have plastic and the rest don’t. The middle row is the most overgrown now and I’m letting the chickens work on it before I clean it up.

Thanks all!

Lots of great suggestions, thank you!
I was not aware of the cover crop mix websites, I think that is a great idea.
I do rotational work with my chickens with a chick Shaw, they do love it Vw the stationary coop they used to be in.
I have a couple flats of sweet potato slips, I will definitely put them in!

I will do more research on how deeply rooted the grasses I chose are before implementing them.

I concur on NOT letting nature choose the plants, as I have a TON of noxious weeds here. (Im surrounded by flood irrigated walnut orchards)

Thanks for the great ideas, keep them coming!

Hi all,
I have about 1/2 acre orchard planted with a large verity of fruit trees and vines in central valley California zone 9a. This will be year 4 for the orchard. There are also 20 15yo walnut trees on the north side of the orchard. I have turf grass in between rows and silage plastic in the tree rows for weed control. I have pop up sprinklers every 8' in the center of the grass lanes and drip tubing under the plastic for the trees.
I attempted to emulate Stefan Sobkowiak's permaculture orchard.

I am a busy business owner and new dad to two boys under 2yo, plus I garden about 8000sqft of annual veggies- needless to say I don't get to spend as much time on the orchard as i would like...

My main issue is that the plastic is falling apart and allowing weeds through. I would like to remove all plastic and replace with a groundcover that will not girdle the trees, but will thrive in my climate. I would definitely prefer a mix of species. Id like to maintain the grass lanes with my mower and not maintain the tree lanes, so nothing that grows more then 2-3' tall and nothing that spreads too aggressively.

I was thinking about mixing a bunch of seed and doing a broadcast in the tree rows.

Does anyone have experience with a project like this or have suggestions for species that I should include in my seed mix? Suggestions in management practices in general?