The Birth of our Survival Orchard: Planting Pecan Trees

We began our survival orchard by planting pecan trees.Why pecans? I'm glad you asked! I think nuts are really important survival foods because of their protein and fat content. We are at the northern most part of the country where pecans can survive, which violates my principle of choosing only trees that are unfailingly hardy in our area. Walnuts (among other nut trees) would have been a better choice.

Well, Hubby Dear detests walnuts and most other nuts besides pecans. As I needed his help planting and maintaining the trees, pecans it would have to be. Besides, I spent a couple of years of my life living in the midst of a pecan grove down in Louisiana and I have been a fan ever since of the graceful, productive pecan tree. We chose the most cold-hardy varieties we could find (Starking Hardy Giant, Stark Surecrop, and Colby) and are crossing our fingers that they like our chilly hilltop homestead.

How could I resist the opportunity to have my own mini pecan grove?
Image from pawpaw.kysu.edu

The other issue with pecan trees is that they take a long time to bear fruit. It can be anywhere from 5-12 years to get a crop of pecans and 20 years for a pecan tree to reach its full size (and they do get BIG). Pecan trees grown in containers tend to transplant better than bare-root trees and grafted pecan trees tend to produce nuts earlier, so keep that in mind if you're looking to add one or more of these fruitful giants to your landscape. And don't make the mistake that we did. We procrastinated and did not place our order for special "Select" pecan trees from Stark Bros. until they had already been for sale for two weeks. By the time we placed our order, they were sold out of Select trees and we had to settle for the runts of the litter. Our procrastination cost us at least two additional years before we'll see nuts.

A view of the southwest corner of our property

Pecan trees get large, but luckily we have lots of space to fill. They need to be about 40' apart and well away from any power lines. We selected this space at the southwest corner of our 5 acres. We decided to be responsible citizens for a change and call to get our utility lines marked before we planted the trees. Hubby Dear gave a very specific description of the area we would be digging in when he filled out the online form for One Call:

"DIG AREA WILL BE ON THE SOUTHWEST PORTION OF THE PROPERTY, IN AN 80 FT X 80 FT AREA FROM A LINE CONNECTING THE ELECTRICITY POLE TO THE SOUTH FENCE, GOING EAST."

Seems straightforward to me.

I'm glad to know my backyard is OK... 

Apparently not. This is what ended up getting marked - the area between our house and the chicken moat! Oh well. At least we were able to scavenge the flags the doofus left behind to mark the spots where we wanted to plant each tree.

We crossed our fingers that we wouldn't hit anything, marked out positions for the three trees and got to work. Thankfully we had gotten 3-1/2 inches of precipitation over the previous week and it served to loosen things up slightly.

See the line of demarcation between topsoil and clay?

I have a long history of bemoaning our poor soil. I was surprised to find that this portion of our property actually has several inches of topsoil. This is MUCH better than in our backyard garden area. I was excited to find lots of earthworms as we dug.

One hole down...

The goal is to get a hole that is roughly 2' across and 2' deep. We dug down to 18" pretty easily, but past that point the clay was impenetrable to our shovels. Oh well, it would just have to do!

We took the topsoil and the best bits of the clay and mixed it in a wheelbarrow with some peat moss and compost. We used this mixture to fill in the holes. The addition of peat moss and compost  will help loosen things up a bit for the trees. The trees themselves were tiny and came in 4"x10" pots. By the time they grow enough that their root systems fill the hole we dug, they should be strong enough to contend with the unamended soil that surrounds the place they were planted. That's the theory, anyway!

Our teeny tiny Colby pecan tree. Don't be fooled by the much larger bamboo support stake!

We tamped down the soil mix tightly around the tree, eliminating air pockets that could cause the tree to dry out and die. Then we watered, watered, watered. Pecan trees really need a lot of water but unfortunately, these trees are far away from any faucet or hose. I'm comforting myself by the thought that lugging 5 gallon buckets of water around all summer is sure to build up my biceps.

We used some of the most dense pieces of clay to create small berms around the planting site. They work nicely to keep water around the trees and prevent it from running off downhill before it can soak in.

Stark Surecrop Pecan Tree with Typar weedcloth circle and mulch

The next step was to lay a circle of landscape fabric around each tree and cover it with several inches of mulch. This will help to retain soil moisture and make mowing and trimming easier.

The finished product. As you can tell, it took us all afternoon to complete the job. 

The final step was to place a tree guard around each tree. Tree guards are white plastic coils that protect trees both from rodent damage and sunscald.

That's it! Hopefully the little trees will thrive and grace us with beauty, shade, and lots of pecans.

Planning a Survival Orchard

We've made a lot of progress towards self-reliance on our little homestead this year. We converted our vegetable garden to a square foot-type garden and had our first successful growing season since we moved to this location. Good thing, because it was a lot of work building all those boxes and filling them with 1,000s of pounds of Mel's Mix! We're also set up to get chickens in the spring. The next step is to begin planting our homestead's orchard.

I know not everyone lives on acreage in the country, but that's not a reason why you can't plant something. If you live in an apartment, why not try a window box of strawberries? If you have an average-sized suburban yard, you have lots of options. Many fruit trees come in dwarf varieties. Or you could train them against a fence, put a colonnade-type fruit tree in a pot on your deck, or even fill your flowerbeds with gorgeous, edible landscaping. Have you seen The Prudent Homemaker's garden? Wow! Talk about inspiring! Also, check out the book Landscaping With Fruit by Lee Reich for lots of great ideas.

You can train fruit trees against a sunny wall
Image from allaboutfruittrees.blogspot.com

When considering what types of trees to plant in a survival orchard, you may want to keep these things in mind:

1. What can I plant that will give me the most vital nutrients? 
2. How easy will it be to care for?
3. How will I use the fruit?

Vital nutrients - fruit and nuts as survival food

Many of us today are over-fed and under-exercised, myself included. In the future, instead of counting calories for weight loss, we might be trying to scrape together enough calories to survive. A survival orchard would be very useful in such a scenario. Take pecans, for instance. One cup of pecan halves contains approximately 700 calories, 71 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber. Pecans also have a decent shelf life, particularly if you store them in the shell. Or you can shell them and then freeze or vacuum seal them. This makes the pecan - or any nut, for that matter - a great survival food. Check out this post on Survival Blog for someone else's take on the apple as the ultimate survival food. 

Ease of care

When it comes to fruit trees, there are so many choices. Take apples, for instance. My favorite nursery, Stark Bros., sells well over 30 varieties of apples. The selection is mind-boggling. 

Once you select the kind of apple you want to grow, then you have to consider how large you want your tree to be. Dwarf fruit trees generally run 8-10 feet tall, semi-dwarfs are 12-15 feet, and standard sized trees are about 18-25 feet. Dwarfs are obviously smaller and therefore easier to care for, but they also have a shorter lifespan and do yield less fruit per tree. A standard sized tree has a long life span and will yield a ton of fruit, but you have to contend with harvesting and pruning such a large tree. We have decided to go for the best of both worlds and get semi-dwarf trees when we have that option.  

Semi-dwarf apple trees
Image from mainelyapples.com

Yet another consideration is disease-resistance. We try to garden organically, so selecting disease-resistant varieties is really important for us. Even if you don't garden organically now, when TSHTF, you may be forced to. A survival orchard is best served by selecting varieties that thrive in the weather conditions of your area and that are resistant to the prevalent pests.   

Fire  blight - a major pestilence around here
Image from ipm.msu.edu

Don't forget to plant pollinators, if necessary. Some fruit and nut trees self-pollinate, others must be pollinated by another tree, and still others bear more fruit if they have a pollinator nearby.

How will you eat it?

Lastly, think about how you exactly you will be using the fruit. Have you ever noticed that some apples that taste like ambrosia when eaten out of hand sometimes taste like nothing when baked in a pie? Certain varieties of fruit are best for canning. Others are great for drying, stay fresh even after months in a root cellar, or are best appreciated fresh off the tree. Decide how you will be eating the fruit now so you will not be disappointed later.

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With all these factors in mind, we've created a general outline for building our orchard here in USDA Hardiness Zone 5.

Our Existing Perennial Fruits:
1. Blackberries - 3 Chester and 3 Triple Crown. This is just about the right amount of blackberries for our family.
2. Raspberries - Heritage.  The raspberries we planted this spring to add to our existing patch didn't make it. We'll try again in the spring.
3. Strawberries - Earliglo (June bearing) and Tribute (everbearing). The majority of our strawberries mysteriously died, but they will be replaced next year. The strawberries that survived produced fruit that tasted amazing.
4. Sour cherry - Montmorency. This freebie has never gotten the TLC it deserved. I'm going to pamper it next year and see if I can't get it to do something.

Triple Crown Blackberries, Raspberries in the background, May 2011

Orchard Planting Plan (Type of plant, varieties, date of planting): 

1. Pecan trees - Starking Hardy Giant, Stark Surecrop, and Colby, Fall '11.
2. Apple - Goldrush, Enterprise, Jonafree, Crimsoncrisp, Honeycrisp, Spring '12/Fall '13
3. Blueberries - Bluecrop, Blueray, Earliglo, Jersey, Spring '12/ Spring '14
4. Almond - All-in-One Almond, Fall '12
5. Pear - Maxine (aka Starking Delicious), Seckel, Fall '12
6. Plum - Stanley,  2-N-1 (Shiro/Redheart) Spring '13/Spring '14
7. Peach - Intrepid, Contender, Spring '13/Fall '13
8. Cherry - Surecrop, Starkrimson Spring '13/Spring '14
9. Nectarine - Sunglo, Spring '13
10. Apricot - Harglow, Fall '13
11. Walnut - Stark Champion English, Lake English, Spring '14
9. Lemon* - Meyer Lemon, Spring '14

*The lemon tree is the one plant we've selected that is not hardy in our area. I am a true lemon lover, however, and cannot imagine a world without lemons. We plan on planting it in a container and bringing it indoors in the winter.

Fruit and nut trees do take several years before they will bear fruit. Ideally, we would get all the trees into the ground now so they would be productive ASAP. We have to balance that desire with reality. We are expanding our homestead rapidly and are likely to crash and burn if we don't pursue moderation.

We broke ground on our orchard over the weekend. I'll post all the hairy details in an upcoming post.

Do you have any fruit or nut trees? Plans to plant some? Do tell! :) 

My summer reading list and plans for the future

In between accidents and trips to the hospital, I've been busy reading and making plans for our homestead. Can you guess what we're planning based on my selection of library books?

My reading material

Of course, when I say "we're" planning, what I really mean is that I'm planning and Hubby Dear is tolerating, albeit with sighs and massive amounts of eye-rolling.

We're going to begin with two or three pecan trees this fall and add in several apple trees in the spring. We want to plant lots of other types of fruit trees, but I know better than to try and do too much at once. We I decided to start with apples and pecans because both are nutritious foods that have the potential to store well. Pecans, in particular, take a few years to start producing, so they got bumped up to the top of the project list. Since we have such rotten soil, we're going to have to take particular care to prepare the planting sites.

We're also going to expand our square food garden and fence it in preparation for the spring's big project: a chicken coop, chicken moat, and, yes, chickens.

A chicken moat plan from Mother Earth News

The above diagram is not exactly what our chicken moat will look like, but you get the picture. The idea of a chicken moat is that you surround your garden with a chicken run, which reduces weed and bug problems. Plus, you raise your own meat and eggs and get a rich source of compost for the garden. We need to start setting up the fencing around the garden area now because we are going to be swamped with garden work in the spring. I'd rather get the chickens now, but first things first. :)

Summer's not even over, but I just can't resist planning for next year. Are you planning a major addition to your yard, garden, or preps in the year to come? Do you have any advice for my ventures? I'd love to hear from you!