Permaculture Orchard from Design to Delivery

Chestnuts, apples, hazelnuts, asparagus, herbs like Wormwood and mint, comfrey, blackberries, Milpa garden beds, and annual beds.

In Spring 2021, I extended my homestead/permaculture orchard by 80 feet. This was the initial design:

permaculture design — Initial rough design. Bet you can’t read my handwriting!

This was a section at the edge of the pasture that I fenced in.

Plotting contour

Started with using an A Frame with a plumb bob to plot out the rows on contour. The land slopes down toward the SE.

A Frame on contour — A Frame with plumb bob

permaculture on contour — The land plotted out on contour, using wooden garden sticks to mark the rows.

Digging swales

I hand dug all of the swales and mounds. Starting uphill, I used a broadfork to create a swale area two broadforks wide. I double-dug down and then used the shovel to dig out the dirt and pile it all up on the mound.

permaculture swale — This swale above is one broadfork wide. I enlarged it to two broadforks width.

Planting into the mounds

I planted trees and bushes into the mounds, sowed buckwheat as a cover crop in the gaps and in the swale, then covered with wood chips.

permaculture mound and swale — Mound with a chestnut tree, covered in buckwheat cover crop

permaculture mound and swale with apple — Mound with autumn olive and apple, covered in buckwheat cover crop

I sowed asparagus and annuals in some of the lanes. I will have a follow up article on how I used Milpa as a cover crop and got a multi-month harvest of different veggies.

Lessons learned:

Grafted apples don’t like the STUN method (Sheer Total Utter Neglect). In KS they usually need extensive irrigation. These swales were one of the few times that I have had widespread success with apples. The chestnut trees did fairly well planted in the mounds with swales. Hazels failed or were eaten down by deer, who found a way over the fence. Asparagus didn’t last, even after being replanted and reseeded the next season. A lot of infiltration by haygrass = need more woodchips and cover crop.

This article is cross posted from Thriving News – Thriving Community News, without the Noise.