Cherry production. Asberry Acres Forest Garden - Permaculture Plan Update: Improved Polyculture Guilds. My previous plan didn't properly take into account that my nitrogen fixers (Caragana arborescens, Elaeagnus umbellata) tolerate some shade in the Low Tree layer. The Apios Institute Polyculture wiki has an entry for a fruit tree-gooseberry-pea shrub polyculture. I'm also going to try polycultures centered on each of my nitrogen fixers with Castenea pumilla and some Corylus spp. hybrids. These polycultures also allow me to pack the trees in more densely and encouraged me to use a more interesting layout than simple staggered rows and columns. I've also added a Weeping Willow and a Rose of Sharon hedge around the north and east sides because they're pretty ;-) Polycultures in Orchards. By C.J. Walke Driving by a fruit tree orchard or walking through a local pick-your-own operation, we typically see long rows of evenly spaced trees, where the undergrowth is regularly mowed to reduce competition for vital nutrients and the overall look is one of uniformity.
This design focuses on labor efficiency, where long rows facilitate the mechanical chores of mowing, spraying, irrigating and harvesting, helping reduce costs and improve profits. In the home orchard and garden, we tend to follow the same patterns for similar reasons, but here, the random can be righteous and the haphazard can be helpful. I view the orchard as an ecosystem, where all life is connected and health depends on diversity. Even pests have their place, as a European apple sawfly pollinates an apple blossom on its way to laying an egg at the base of the flower. Dynamic Accumulators A few common dynamic accumulators are comfrey, stinging nettle and red clover. Comfrey and nettle do come with warnings. C.J. Fruit Tree Polyculture | Still Water Permaculture Guild. Apples and gourds onsite at the Stillwater Permaculture Gardens This years polyculture experiment included an unplanned partnership between the apple and the dipper gourds.
The gourds were started from seed in April and tranplanted outside in the summer. This particular gourd bee-lined it straight to the apple tree and trampled a nearby aster on its way to the low hanging branches of the apple. By late august it reached a sunny spot about 10ft up the apple and all its hard work paid off. It then grew and multitude of leaves and flowers up in its new sunny home and the rest is obvious in the picture. The timing was impecable as the early season apples were perfectly ripe just as the gourds began to spread out in its late summer burst. It is currently early October and the Gourd is still basking in its sweet sunny success(destined to become both soup ladles and drinking gourds).
Like this: Like Loading... The Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri. Forest Farming In forest farming, high-value specialty crops are grown under the protection of a forest canopy that has been modified to provide the correct shade level. Crops like ginseng, shiitake mushrooms, and decorative ferns are sold for medicinal, culinary, and ornamental uses. Forest farming provides income while high-quality trees are being grown for wood products. Turkey, deer, songbirds and wildlife may find ideal habitat in a forest farming setting. Forest Farming Success Story Cultivating Specialty Mushrooms through Forest Farming Ozark Forest Mushrooms, Timber, Mo. One of the state's most significant demonstrations of a successful forest farming practice is Dan Hellmuth and Nicola MacPherson's Ozark Forest Mushrooms, Timber, Mo.
Of mushroom bed logs while simultaneously maintaining their forested acres in a healthy ecological state -- and what began 14 years ago with only 100 oak logs in production has grown to include 12,000 shiitake logs in production. Additional Resources: Agroforestry: An Overview. Agroforestry Profile. By Dan Burden, content specialist, AgMRC, Iowa State University, djburden@iastate.edu. Developed August 2010. Production Due to the diversity of practices encompassed by agroforestry, aggregate production figures are difficult to determine.
The Census of Agriculture will have the first agroforestry-related question in 2011. Agroforestry takes advantage of the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock. The USDA National Agroforestry Center lists some specific practices that include: Alley cropping (growing hardwoods and nuts alternatively with agricultural crops). Exports and Imports Due to the diversity of practices encompassed by agroforestry, this also is difficult to determine. Trends Agroforestry has been slow to develop in the United States, because it takes many forms and is not as easily understood or widespread as row-crop agriculture or traditional forestry. Sources Links checked July 2013. The Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri. Internet Sources: Understory Crops Non-Timber Forests Products - National Agroforestry Center (many resources on numerous Forest Farming Products): UM Center for Agroforestry: (publications on a variety of products and practices) Missouri Alternatives Center: (topics alphabetically organized) Association for Temperate Agroforestry: (many topics) ATTRA - National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service: (numerous publications) NC State University Cooperative Extension: (numerous publications) Finding a Forester (In Missouri): Pricing Timber Managing Timber In Print: Hill, D.B., and L.E.
Buck. 2000. Polyculture « Healing Tree Farm. One of the primary objectives of HTF is to foster an understanding of how we might convert some conventional methods of farming, to ecologically-friendly methods that are equally effective for farmers. We’re working, experimenting with ways to solve some of the more pressing issues for conventional orchardists including controlling aphid populations, use of fertilizers, examining cost-expense ratios, etc. The conventional farmer approaches growing fruit drastically differently from the permaculcuralist. An obvious example may be found within an acre of each, the conventional and permaculture orchard. The typical apple orchard will contain within one acre, approximately 40 dwarf varieties. The permaculture orchard, just 20 semi-dwarf to standard sized trees.
The Conventional Approach Dwarf apple trees go into production earlier than semi-dwarf to standard size trees and produce about 65 lbs of fruit compared with their standard relation averaging 90-110 lbs. The Permaculture Approach. 20-Year-Old Permaculture Forest Garden in the Mountains (Videos) Image credit: Perennial Solutions Whether it's an awesome tour of Mike Feingold's permaculture allotment, footage of the famous Greening the Desert project in Jordan, or the BBC's discovery of forest gardening, we have seen plenty of great videos about permaculture gardens. But examples of truly mature permaculture forest gardens are few and far between—the concept is perhaps just a little too new. But the garden at Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute may just be what every permaculture garden wants to be when it grows up. Designed by Jerome Osentowski over 20 years ago, the garden at Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute is a well-established 1-acre polyculture garden that features an over-story of fruit trees, which shelter a mix of perennial and annual vegetables—many of which seed themselves, while others are planted traditional—as well as nitrogen fixing shrubs to maintain fertility.
It's a pretty impressive set up, as the videos below show.