A diverse environment around your deciduous fruit trees is the answer to all your fruit tree problems. Yes! Truly! All of them! Get a bit wild, my friends and loose the tidy. Engage as broad a range of plants, trees, shrubs, a pond if you can – even a small one and perhaps an animal or two to wander though at chosen times. The cascade of benefits that flow from this set up is far reaching.
It begins below ground. The beneficial fungal network (mycorrhiza) establishes in undisturbed, wild, unsprayed places and spreads far and wide. It plugs into the root systems, integrating them into a communication highway that facilitates support and nourishment to all who belong. Its truly wonderous.
An environment such as this isn’t built in a day. Mostly we’ve inherited monocultures with no spine – weakened via over fertilisation and ag chem spraying. A situation that is quickly reversed by developing a diverse, living environment such as I champion below.
Theres alot of info here – and you arent going to be able to implement it all in one hit. Just tick away. Keep returning to this and find new angles to put in action and before you know it, you’ll have set the wheel in motion and can stand back and watch it spin, largely on its own.
I call this laying a strong foundation. Let me run you through the set up.
Start by ensuring the varieties you choose suit your climate and soil. This is key.
Varieties that don’t match will struggle and attract all manner of problems. Rootstocks too, must suit your soil conditions. Peach will struggle in clay as will plum in sand.
There’s a feeling of pressure with fruit trees, to get them in fast due to the time they take to bear fruit. Rushing your tree research is a mistake. Take the time – ask local tree croppers, neighbours or the garden club. Use the time instead to develop herbal leys and gather woody mulches to get the mycorrhiza going.
Create no dig, mulched areas at the base of each tree. If your trees aren’t planted as yet – create the same style of no dig mulched areas where the trees are to be planted. Rather than lots of little circles go big! Perhaps 2 or 3 trees per mulched area, or mulch the whole fruit tree zone if its small enough.
If you haven’t worked out tree locations as yet don’t worry too much, piles of woody mulch are such a huge benefit overall, they’ll never be wasted.
Between these mulched oasis, let the naturally occurring groundcover go as much as is practical. When allowed to fully express itself, it gets to perform the soil correction job it was sent to do and can then evolve to the next phase. Perhaps slash off the immature seedheads of any weed that’s a bit too invasive or smother it with black plastic.
It may help you unhook your grip on tidy/ untidy, to sway your mind to the deep roots of the long grasses. Picture them drilling deep and wide – bringing air and stability and providing homes for a multitude of soil life. Above ground, honor the importance of the flowers and seedheads as fodder for the beneficial insects that are kin to your patch of earth.
Plant your mulched spots in a diverse range of herbs and perennials, whether at the feet of your trees, or as a pre cursor. Nutrition never looked more beautiful.
The end goal is a thriving mycoryhizal (beneficial fungi) network throughout your garden, so trees can self serve nutrients and immune support when needed. This is bought about with undisturbed soil, woody + leafy mulches, being chem spray free and a guild of companion plants.
This is not bought about with knee deep compost, sheep pellets, dead possums and all manner of richness.
Fruit trees and berries need a slightly different compost to vegies. The best support for woody perennial plants, is a compost made with slightly more carbonaceous ingredients to drive a strong fungal community – a strong fungal network in your soil is the secret to healthy fruit trees. Include dry crunchy stuff in your compost and a small amount of woodchip too so you end up with thin white fungal threads.
Biological sprays do your trees and the eco system around them the world of good – especially in the early days of orchard establishment. As you observe a lack of problems, lessen the sprays and watch what unfolds.
Spray for complete cover – bark and foliage, also the soil beneath – go nuts! You can mix the following sprays together in any combination for a lovely bio brew. A good back pack or hortex sprayer makes your spray go further and the job easy.
Prune in dry weather only and don’t be too hard (or too soft) – just right 🙂
Strong cells and active soils make for robust plants that are better equipped to cope with any conditions. Will it be dry? Will it be wet? Hot? Cold? Windy? these things we just don’t know and can do nothing about. Will we be strong – this we can do, this we can count on.
Kath