orchard – Page 4 – Peacock Orchard

Proof that Permaculture WORKS!

As if you needed proof, I know. Still, I am excited today.

A review of the orchard shows more trees that survived the winter than I had anticipated. The mini kraters and swales have done amazing things. We are set to have a bumper crop of plums this year, so long as we don’t get a late freeze, fierce wind, or some other completely likely weather event.

Why would I say this small 5 acre orchard is proof that permaculture works? It is dry here. Very dry. Made worse by the incredible wind we suffer from. We are high up, cold, besotted with pests. There is no genetic material available from our state to base our plantings on. We have everything going against us, including public opinion.

“You can’t grow _____ in Wyoming!” I hear it every single time I talk to a local about the orchard. When we are open to the public minds are going to be blown!

If I can grow trees here with little to no watering (certainly no irrigation), than permaculture planting techniques are a blazing success.

This winter we harvested so much snow we even created an ideal place for pests to hide.

I do hate those ground animals.

I’ve also been successful at growing garlic and onions for the first time. Ruth Stoute and mulching, a real winner!

I’d highly recommend permaculture planting techniques to everyone and you should too.

Dealing with rabbit problems in the orchard

We have a lot of obstacles to growing here in Wyoming. We’re high. We’re dry. We have insane winds. We have extreme fluctuating temperatures. We’ve got a short growing season.

Hmm. Why do we live here again? I’ll get back to you on that.

A lot of these things we just have to deal with. Rabbits, however, can be….dealt with. Ok, mostly I just complain about them, loud and often. I’m not a particularly good shot. Mostly I just don’t care to learn. Husband is a great shot though. Encouraging him to get out there and do some mafioso style hits is the problem. The rabbits don’t bother him like they do me. Probably because the growing stuff thing is all me.

We had a dog who was great at hunting rabbits once. Now he’s dead and our other dogs couldn’t catch a rabbit if we held it in front of their faces.

They're so cute though! — They’re so cute though!

I know how a lot of permies deal with the rabbit scourge. I tried Sepp Holzer’s bone sauce last year. The rabbits appear to like it quite a bit. Utter failure. I do put tree guards on all of my trees that are large enough to support them, and some that probably aren’t. The rabbits appear to like their food wrapped. Leaving low hanging branches for them to nibble is a great idea. My trees aren’t exactly large enough to do that. Every branch is a low hanging branch at the moment. I encourage predators. Unfortunately the dogs don’t. In fact they do a great job of repelling predators. It’s like a bunny sanctuary at our house.

I suppose beyond wholesale slaughter of Satan’s furred minions I have no idea what to do about this rabbit problem. I guess I’ll try to look at the bright side and think fertilizer. Bunny poop fertilizer. That’s something I’m not lacking.

The above pictures are all of the same tree. Please explain to me how the rabbits did that.

Just a fun pic. It’s SOOOO hard to get good pics of things when the instant I focus in on something my “help” jumps in the way.

Mini-Kraters and Swales handling winter melt

The temperatures are rising and our snow drifts are slowly melting. Snow harvesting was a wild success this year. If you’ve followed any previous posts than you know that the snow is a problem for our driveway but the melt is the real nightmare. Our driveway and road turn into a mud pit. So last summer we trenched with our new excavator and the results have been amazing!

That is one fabulously dry road!

The trenches are full and the area immediately around them is saturated, but the driveway has been maintained fabulously. So far. We’ll let you know if I’m still confident about our earth works after a heavy rain.

All of the water kept off the driveway is then trenched to various places. Our swales receive most of it but we also have some retention ponds that get rather full.

The swales harvested a tremendous amount of snow and that’s melting off right now.

The harvested snow was wonderful for both insulating our fruit trees and now for watering them. The ground around the swales is amazingly saturated.

The kraters (some more than others) are still really full of snow. About 1-2′.

They are holding strong and I couldn’t be more pleased with our decision to dig them!

A downside of such heavy snow harvest is that the trees can be covered quite far up the trunk. We’ve suffered quite a bit of rabbit loss. My best, hardiest fruit tree was attacked. I tried to Dr. it but who knows if it will pull through the damage.

Doctor’d apple tree

Osage orange poking out of snow.

Blackberry. I covered them heavily this year as last year they were all entirely eaten away.

As always children running about with moisture inevitably ends with really wet children. I was taking a picture of the gorgeous ice designs in our trench when Son decided to go ice skating and…… well he learned to check the ice thickness before clambering on.

A life changing hope I have for the orchard

I’m excited about many aspects of our future, mature orchard. One of the things a lot of people probably wouldn’t consider is going to be the most life changing. I live in Wyoming. Windy, windy Wyoming. I also live surrounded by commercially farmed wheat fields. Wind and constantly plowed fields, not a good mix.

So what do I hope for? A plant filter. Dust is all consuming here. It seeps into the smallest crevices. Settles on every surface. Causes breathing problems and is just plain yuck!

I’m clearly a long way away from lush acreage.

My biggest hope is that the plants and trees that will cover our acreage will act as a living filter; stopping, collecting and keeping the topsoil blown to us by surrounding acreages. I can see some topsoil collection already in action, will take pictures when it’s not under snow. Speaking of the snow, it’s a great barometer for dirt. Our snow is quite brown, coated in topsoil from the surrounding areas.

These dogs don’t help.

Such a small thing to hope for if you live in a city, somewhere without wind or somewhere that just isn’t….here. It would be life changing for me. To wash the table and have it looking like I actually washed it. That would make me wonderfully happy.

Big snow!

Yes, another picture post of our snow harvesting.

The snow was deep. About 8 inches. The kids really loved it. Mostly

I was totally impressed with my snow collection though.

That’s a 3 foot deep krater filled to the top.

And the swales are even with the berms. So about 3 feet of snow collection there as well.

Earthworks are a total success!

The commercially farming neighbor isn’t keeping any of this moisture.

How to grow pear trees from seed

Last winter I had a good attempt at growing apple trees from seed. I actually did a pretty good job until summer, when I no longer watered my tree seedlings and they all died. This time around I will have more time and hopefully will not repeat my mistakes.

I’ve found the hardest part is finding pear seeds at all. Most of the store bought pears I’ve gathered have 0-1 seeds in them. I was lucky, though, and found organic pears from Colorado at our local King Soopers. Naturally, I bought two of each variety. They had a lot of seeds in them so I’m hopeful of success.

So, just like apples I cut the pears up, divided out the flesh to the kids and collected the seeds. I cleaned them and placed them on a clean paper towel in a plastic cup. Then I add a small amount of water to the paper towel, put the cups in a plastic bag and wait. I find times vary by seed, though 2 months is pretty standard. I check weekly to removne any molding seeds and plant out germinated ones. Once you see a nice root growing you simply plant out to compost filled plastic cups, water and voila, easy peasy.