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Here are some pics of planting a netleaf hackberry and a western soapberry.

Yes, this involves plastic, but I believe it is a reasonable compromise for growing a healthy tree.

I plant bare root trees from localy collected seed. I grow some, and I buy some from flora fauna farm (florafauna.farm).

Pocket gopher protection:

Pocket gophers are relentless in the sandy alluvial soil. A few years ago I lost 20 1st year seedling pines in 1 winter to gophers. I now only plant out larger trees and cage the root ball.

The roots are caged with 1/2″ hardware mesh on sides and 1″ chicken wire.

Deep watering pipe:

An 18″ pipe is drilled every 2 inches. The holes face the tree’s root ball. For establishment, I ball up some plastic bag and stuff it to the bottom to slow / stop the water going out the bottom. This plug is removed as the tree establishes.

Establishment wick:

A nylon wick is placed in the center and sunken into the soil a couple inches beneath the cage. The wick will be continuously wet and the roots / taproot will follow it down. This site also has excessive drainage, so the wick also makes deeper water available to shallow roots when the surface dries out. The top end of the wick is placed in a container of water during establishment. The wick is left in place after establishment, but the reservoir of water on top is no longer needed.

Soil added:

Fill with soil and tamp a bit to the level of the bottom of the root ball. The rest of the soil is added around the roots, and topped with compost and mulch.

Irrigation & reservoirs:

A bottle or container of water feeds the wick (a used plastic jar is shown). 4gpm emmiters are added (one feeds the deep pipe). The other emitters water on the surface and fill the depression around the tree (most things here are planted in round, 4″ deep zai pits (same idea as half moon zai pits).

Trees planted away from irrigation get a wick, a larger zai pit to collect rainwater, and a bigger reservoir.

Tree is then caged above ground. This is primarily rabbit and jackrabbit protection. Since they have plenty of other forage nearby, they don’t bother trying to tunnel under.

This is my first garden. It used to be my uncle’s and he already tilled a few years back. Do I need to till now? I know it’s not the best for the environment and I’m sure it’s not cheap to rent a rototiller. If I don’t till, what do I do then? There’s too much information online. Why can’t I just dig a hole and plant? Why do I have to add cardboard or mulch or compost? Where am I going to get all that stuff? What is the point of putting wet cardboard and newspapers into of the earth and dump mulch or compost on top of it?

“We’re dealing with so much abundance this year guys”

Yeah thanks bro. This is the 74th time you’ve said that word. If I drank some of my homemade mead every time you said it I would have to be hospitalized.

As per my understanding, these two systems discourage external inputs like fertilisers and encourage use of stuff like compost that has been sourced from the farm itself.

There is also a notion that food yield would be higher in these cases.

What I am not able to wrap my head around is that the numbers just don’t make sense when it comes to minerals in the soil.

Take potassium for example.

Let’s say, the available potassium in the soil is around 50 Kg per acre. Now, assume growing 2 ton of banana and 2 ton of potato per acre and harvesting it. Both use up about 3kg of potassium per ton, so you are extracting about 12Kg of the 50Kg potassium available.

It feels fairly impossible to be able to replace that amount of potassium back through compost or any means other than synthetic fertilisers.

Given the notional higher yeild than monoculture, you would also end up extracting more minerals from the ground. Also, more of it will be locked up in plant bodies themselves for extended periods of time as there are just more plants in the system

What am I missing here? Feels like the claims don’t match up for yeilds at all. They probably match up for stuff like erosion control, pest reduction, etc. but not for yeilds