Hey Permaculturists of Reddit,
We just bought the vacant lot next door, which used to be an orchard. We’re planning to turn the bottom half into a contour-based food forest/orchard. The land is on a gentle 6° slope with mostly expansive clay soil.
We’ve been farming and gardening for about a decade, so we’ve got a solid foundation, but we’d love input from seasoned designers to poke holes in our plan and help us think through a closed-loop system from the start.
Here’s the rough concept:
- Trees are placed along the contours, with berms and swales for water infiltration.
- Natural walking paths wind through the site, and everything is set back at least 10 ft from the property lines.
- The upper area (~20 trees) is stone fruit, cascading downslope into pomes, then avocado, mango, papaya, and banana where the slope flattens.
- Copper fungicide needing trees are grouped for easier foliar spraying.
- Current canopy estimates are 12′ west-facing, based on our mini-orchard experience (birds tend to eat the top fruit and leave the lower fruit).
- There’s also a hexagonal deck for yoga/meditation/relaxation, with a small pond just north of it.
- Existing Canary palms are being removed due to invasive beetle damage (it’s wiping them out across SoCal).
For water capture, we plan to use the pond, a tank off the ADU we’re waiting on permits for, and possibly another tank further downslope. Our rainfall is low (average ~12″ annually), so we’re considering focusing more on in-soil water capture.
We haven’t drawn in the filler plants yet (nitrogen fixers, soil stabilizers, insectaries, etc.) because the sketch would get too messy, but we’re planning a full polyculture approach.
Questions for the community:
- Have you designed or managed a food forest on a similar slope and soil type? Any pitfalls to avoid?
- Are we being too generous with our tree spacing, or could we tighten it up for more layers/canopy overlap? I feel like I didn’t really include a lot of native trees which we will do around the rest of the property and the deck, but maybe through the orchard too?
- Best understory/groundcover options for holding clay-heavy soil in place during establishment? I was thinking comfrey, clover, thyme, etc.
- Would you design this for seasonal grazing integration (e.g., ducks for pest control), or would you keep it fenced off?
- How would you approach pond placement and size for both aesthetics and irrigation potential, given our low rainfall?
- If you’ve integrated community/event spaces (like a yoga deck) into your orchard, how did you keep it functional without compromising production?
- What irrigation layout has worked best for you in a mixed-canopy, contour-based orchard?
- Any must-have perennial filler plants or trees that thrive in SoCal Zone 10a and work well with stone fruit, pomes, and tropicals?
- How do you balance copper spray needs with keeping the rest of the orchard chemical-free?
- Given our rainfall, would you still invest in above-ground water tanks, or focus all efforts on in-ground infiltration?
- What else am I blatantly missing?
Thank you so much!
submitted by /u/NoSolid6641
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