guildfordcycads

Hello!

My family has a 100 acre farm in Northern Appalachia. It was once a fully working farm with a gorgeous peach orchard but for the last 60 years has went back to forest with 4 or 5 small field exceptions family cut back mostly for deer hunting and so they have a place to drink beer with friends.

I plan to retire to this farm in 18 years or so. (There is a great build site at the top of the ridge.) Between then and now I am slowly improving the place – adding a good dug well with housing, putting in drainage by the access road, etc…. I am super interested in planting permaculture trees now so things are well established and producing when I retire – things like chestnut or oak that take a long time to grow. Mostly chestnut – we have wild oak and walnut naturally. The property is lots of hillside with several wet weather springs through-out and abundant wildlife. Little clearings are mowed with small tractor and brush hog currently to keep forest from overtaking them.

I have family who goes up twice a week and I can visit once a month to check on things, but whatever I plant has to be otherwise hardy. I am happy if wildlife eat the produce for now – I mostly won’t be there to collect.

Everything I find on permaculture assumes someone there harvesting. Am I not looking in the right place? Anyone have leads on where I can learn more or ideas on hardy pairings I can try? I have the luxury of time so willing to experiment a bit but the major disadvantage of living far away. Help!

There had previously been a loading dock that was basically a cribbed railroad tie wall in the shape of a “U” that retained enough soil behind it to create ramp/dock to pull up too. I removed the walls/ties and then removed the dirt to grade. I want to plant fruit trees, plum, peach, cherry in this area. Theoretically the surface area of the ties was small, only three of the ties were contacting the ground and the rest were stacked vertically on top of the bottom ones. I can avoid planing directly in the ground beneath where the ties previously laid, but the trees would be close to there.

What is the leeching potential of the ties over time in this scenario and do fruit trees takes up whatever toxins are in the soil?

Hello!! I have this mix of Honey Bee Flower seeds from Wyatt-Quarles Seed Co. and I had a couple questions about using these in my new permaculture site.

1. Do yal have any experience or thoughts on Wyatt-Quarles as a seed supplier?

2. Would you feel comfortable putting a mix like this into your site? They aren’t natives and some are perennial, but they will be planted in an area that is easily sheet mulched.

3. If you wouldn’t plant these in your plot, what would you do with them?

More Info: We are in zone 6b in the Blue Ridge mountains in VA. The land is completely scraped right now (over zealous contractors).

The mix is a blend of Blanketflower, California Poppy, Cape Forget-Me-Not, China Aster, Chinese Forget-Me-Not, Corn Poppy, French Marigold, Lacy Phacelia, Lance-Leaved Coreopsis, New England Aster, Prairie Coneflower, Purple Giant Hyssop, Purple Prairie Clover, Rocky Mountain Penstemon, Scarlet Cinquefoil, Siberian Wallflower, Sulphur Cosmos, Sweet Basil, Sweet Mignonette and White Upland Aster.

Has anyone ever tried using wire waste paper baskets as cheap air pruning pots, and if so, did it work?

Does anyone have experience burying the root stock graft on fruit trees? I would much rather have a vigorous tree that lives longer and produces more fruit and that I can control the height myself with aggressive pruning.

Dwarfing a tree with root stock doesn’t make sense to me from an investment stand point. I’d much rather have a tree take slightly longer to produce fruit and live 100 years than a tree that produces fruit quickly but then dies after 15 or so years. What’s the point if I have to constantly be digging up these semi dwarf trees every 15 years…

Also, it seems like everything is sold as either “semi-dwarf” or “dwarf.” I rarely see nurseries selling full size trees anymore.

Anyways, does anyone have experience with burying the root stock to achieve a full size tree?

Thanks!

Is there a good, free software for planning a garden, and keeping a schedule of watering, planting, etc.? Possibly for Linux?

Xposting across r/BackyardOrchard, r/garden, r/garden_maintenance, r/gardening, r/Permaculture, and r/SquareFootGardening.