Spring 2002 Planting an Orchard

I'm sitting at my dining room window looking out over the new part of our orchard. It is the apple and pear, grape and kiwi fruit part of the orchard, and the herbal ley under the trees looks absolutely stunning. The vetch and phaecelia are full on flowering, all beautiful shades of purple, blue and red. The Bishop's flower will be out any day, the white and blue borage is full on, and by the time you read this it will have died back and the comfrey and clover will have come through it. We added subterranean clover to our orchard herbal ley mix last year because we were so impressed with it as a ground cover that was actively growing all Winter, we're even more convinced of its value as an addition to the red and white clover after seeing it in our orchard this past Winter. It's one thing establishing a herbal ley in free draining silty loams, quite another in these heavy soils. The clovers, together with the comfrey, loads of Spring bulbs, borage, bishops flower, phaecelia and vetch seem to be working well for us. Of course they establish a lot better if the ground is rotary hoed before planting which is what we did in our new orchard area. This new part of our orchard will be open to the public for the first time this Summer during our Harvest Festival.

We've been living here on this site for 14 years now, it's taken the whole of that time to find a good range of apple trees that I know will fruit well here, so the varieties we've planted are all trees I've collected in Northland. We took out the last of the apples from our apple selection block last Winter that we'd been trialling that didn't make the grade. They were all apples we'd brought in from other bioregions, ones with excellent reputations. Those we've ended up with, and are happy to recommend for our warm Northern climate, are Vaile Early, Early Strawberry, Freyburg, Captain Kidd, Mayflower, Ahipara, Haywood Wright, Giant Geniton, Golden Russet, Bill Rogers, Red Spy and Northern Spy. We have half a dozen others in our selection block at the moment which look like really good Heirlooms from the North, so we are definitely building up a nice little collection for this bioregion.

The more feedback we get from all of you about how our trees are doing in your areas the better. Our information tells us to date that most of our varieties are doing well South of here except perhaps the early flowering ones, which get hit with the frost.

We're doing a lot of work with some of the old peaches, nectarines and apricots that we have in our collections that do not seem to do as well when they're grafted here as they were where we found them. Looks like the rootstocks we're using are affecting them adversely, so we're working on that. We're also going to be doing more propagation from seedlings in the case of peaches.

Our Subtropical orchard is looking fantastic, well worth a visit on an Open Day. We've had our own fresh fruit for breakfast all through the Winter, Rainbow Valley Paw paws, cherimoya, various coloured tamarillos, tropical guavas and bananas.

After years of trying to grow citrus, we took them all out and replaced them with trees on Flying Dragon rootstocks. These trees have done really well for us and after 3 years we now have our own fresh citrus fruit as well as the subtropicals through the Winter. The reason they've done well is that they are dwarfing trees, less than half the size of the others, so their root systems are far smaller, so it's more easily possible to take good care of them. We built stone retaining walls on a hot bank and filled in behind with a mixture of compost and soil so they were planted on mounds. Their feeder roots are very shallow; they hate getting water logged, as they do if planted out into the clay, and they also hate drying out, which they do if you're not careful when they're planted onto mounds. Lots of mulch is essential.

Planting an orchard is potentially one of the best investments you could ever make. It's an investment in your health (keeping in mind that our current western shop diets contain only 3 of the 8 polysaccharides essential for a strong immune system and that they're actually only present in tree ripened fruit!) and the health of your family, it's potentially a way of saving a lot of money (not only on your food bill but also on your health medical bills and you can also make great savings on gifts, by using produce flowers, fruit, jam, pickles, baking etc from the garden); it's an investment in your mental, emotional and spiritual health, it's an investment in the health and future of the planet.

I regard my orchard as my superannuation. I'll always have fruit I can sell at the local Green Market, and I'll always be able to propagate from these trees and sell them as well.

If you're thinking of planting an orchard, or you're just having problems, or not coping with the orchard you already have (there can be many pitfalls), the following are some pointers from us:

Buy a copy of Design Your Own Orchard; it takes you through the whole process so you can understand what needs to happen and will ensure you get the result you want. Most of the questions we get asked are answered in this book. Often it takes a long time to explain things when it's Permaculture systems we're dealing with, so if you have problems, buy this book first, and really get your head around how the whole orchard ecosystem works before trying to find answers to specific problems like What can I do about the Pear Slugs destroying my plum tree?. In our orchards the best answer is not the name of an organic spray that will kill the bugs, it's looking to see why the tree is so stressed that it's being eaten. This book will explain what the needs of all the trees are so you can make sure they aren't stressed! etc, etc, etc.
Visit a few people in your local areas who have Permaculture orchards, and check out how you feel about what they're doing. Every orchard is different, what do you want yours to be like?
Decide if you want to buy well grown grafted trees or learn to propagate and grow your own. Buying them saves a lot of time, at least two years, and I know we're not all propagators, but it does restrict you to the varieties commercially available. If you want to buy trees then you'll need to order them now if you're planning on planting this Winter.

If you're interested in propagating your own fruit trees I strongly suggest you come and do the propagation and grafting workshops which are detailed on the Events page. Although propagation is something that everyone can easily do, there is a lot of detailed information about rootstocks, and compatibility that has to be understood. There is no single book that has all this information in it, these workshops cover all I've gleaned from people and books, experience of over 20 years of doing it. We get lots of phone calls asking questions that are answered in these workshops, and the answers are usually not easy to give short answers to without all the other background info that you get in the workshop.