Much Ado About Mulch: Why and How to Use it in Your Survival Orchard

I'm finally getting around to the post I promised on the role of mulch in an orchard. Exciting, no?

What, you don't think it's very exciting? Well, I disagree! By the end of this post, my goal is that you will be inspired and excited about the four main functions of mulch in an orchard setting.

So what's the big deal and why am I so worked up about mulch anyway?

1) Mulch holds in moisture.

You probably knew that already. Mulch can be a powerful ally in all parts of your garden, helping you lower your water bill and keeping your plants happy.

The trees and other plants in an orchard also appreciate a consistent moisture level. Our blueberries and pecans, for example, are water hogs. They need lots of moisture to thrive and at the moment, we happen to be in the middle of a drought. (It might not look like it in the photos that follow, but they were taken in back in early April.)  Mulch might the thing that insures my baby trees and bushes survive.

Note: you should NOT use wood mulch right up against the trunk of fruit and nut trees. It holds in too much moisture and can lead to bark problems. Plus, it makes things a little too cozy for rodent pests like voles. Michael Phillips suggests that you use pea gravel right up against the tree.

2) Mulch keeps weeds back.

Weeding is everyone's least favorite chore. Mulch keeps new weeds from sprouting and if it is done correctly, it can even smother weeds that are already established.

You have to, have to, have to keep weeds and grass back from your newly planted fruits and berries. Hubby Dear and I lost our newly planted raspberries last year because we let the weeds get out of control and they choked out the raspberries. Fruit trees do not like to have grass in their root zone. They much prefer mulch and a mixture of beneficial plants like comfrey.

Okay, so maybe my first two reasons to mulch aren't exactly news to most of you.           

The next two points are what made me such a strong proponent of mulch in our orchard.

3) Mulch can be a powerful tool for soil improvement.

Maybe you have perfect soil conditions in your yard to grow food galore. Well, I don't. Our house was constructed in 2006 and the front 2 acres of our 5 acre property were completely scraped clean of topsoil. The owners at the time didn't do much with the yard and it was taken over by whatever weeds can live in hard packed clay. We moved in a year later and have made many attempts to get grass to grow through that hard clay surface. We've trucked in many loads of topsoil, but that hasn't gotten us very far.

That's why I got so excited when I read about the transformative power of mulch on soil in Gaia's Garden. You can actually use a thick sheet mulch to turn poor soil into the richest, most fertile soil you could dream of. You can read more about this so-called "bomb proof sheet mulch" here. The overall health of my orchard plants will be improved by strategically mulching the areas around the trees. As we expand our orchard and the areas we mulch, the soil will gradually be restored

4) Ramial mulch is a haven for mycorrhizal fungi 

Almost any organic material can be used to block weeds, hold in moisture, and even improve your soil. But there is a certain kind of mulch that is best for your fruit and nut trees. Ramial mulch consists of chipped wood from hardwood trees or shrubs and only from the parts of the tree that are less than 2- 1/2 inches in diameter. These smaller branches and twigs are full of the materials that will nourish your orchard plantings and, importantly, harbor mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizal fungi live symbiotically in tree roots and are essential for tree health. If you want your trees to thrive naturally, you need to do everything you can to encourage the growth of these fungal partners.

The problem with ramial mulch is finding a source for it. We don't have trees and shrubs on our homestead that we can just chop down and chip up. And you can't just go to Lowe's or Home Depot and ask for a bag of ramial mulch. My parents, however, have a small vineyard and we were able to chip massive amounts of grape prunings and random bits of fallen branches from their woods. Of course these massive piles of vines and branches compacted down quite a bit when chipped, but it was a start.


The Method:

I came up with this method of orchard mulching as a kind of hybrid of sheet mulching and a general ring mulching around each fruit tree. I didn't do the whole "bomb proof" sheet mulch, but simplified it and used the materials we had on had.

Newly planted trees. The inner circle is filled with pea gravel

We planted our apple trees and placed a 2 inch deep layer of pea gravel in the immediate area around the tree.

Amendments to add to the soil

Then we gathered our materials for my makeshift sheet mulch: amendments to add to the soil - complete organic fertilizer, bonemeal, bloodmeal, humic acids, and azomite; a large pile of broken down cardboard boxes;

Nitrogenous matter! Fresh grass clippings

And a wheelbarrow full of fresh green lawn clippings.


1) We mowed and closely trimmed the grass (to be honest, mostly weeds!) in the area the day before we constructed the mulch.

2) We would have watered the area to help jumpstart decomposition, but thankfully Mother Nature took care of that for us.

Ground dusted with fertilizers

3) We sprinkled generous amounts of the various organic fertilizers and soil amendments around each tree. Ideally, you would do a soil test and know exactly what you need. We figured that we pretty much needed everything and just added what we had on hand.

In lieu of a garden fork, we used a shovel to poke holes in the ground

4) Then we poked holes all around in the area to be mulched. This will help moisture, amendments, and decomposing insects to move back and forth more easily.

Spreading the nitrogenous layer

5) Time for a layer of nitrogeneous material! The green grass clippings will add a punch of nitrogen and attract worms and other insects to work the soil. We also sprinkled in a bit of bloodmeal. We could have used rabbit droppings, chicken manure for this layer, also.

Fertilized and ready for the fun part

6) Time to lay down a layer of cardboard and water it well.

Cardboard in place

The cardboard is important because it is going to block the weeds and grass. We also used newspaper for this layer when we mulched our blueberries, but we found that cardboard tended to go farther since the newspaper must be spread in a layer that is at least 1/8-inch thick.

Note: if you do this on a windy day, you will find yourself chasing pieces of cardboard on a regular basis.

Water in it well

It is best to water it as you lay the cardboard down so that it will stay put. Make sure you are overlapping your cardboard or newspaper by about 6 inches to keep that pesky grass from creeping in.

More nitrogen

7) Add another thin layer of nitrogenous material.

A thick covering of mulch

8) This is where I diverged from the "bomb proof" mulch. I skipped a lot of the other layers that you would ideally put in place and simply added a very thick layer of my ramial mulch, covering the cardboard completely.

The completed apple trees. I also did the same thing with our blueberries and pecan trees 

Time will tell if the extra care I put into the mulching process will help the trees. The cardboard is already proving to be a very effective weed barrier. After the project was completed, I had some ramial mulch leftover, so I spread it in the area between a couple of the apple trees. My fungi should love me!



References:

1.Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway

2. The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way by Michael Phillips

How to Plant an Apple Tree

We've lived on our property for nearly five years and we have wanted to plant fruit trees from the beginning. Between Hubby Dear's grueling work schedule and the birth of two more children, we've had to postpone that plan. Last fall we were finally able to make a beginning; we set in motion our orchard plan and planted three baby pecan trees.

The additions to our orchard for Spring 2012 are three semi-dwarf apple trees and three highbush blueberry bushes. I'll cover the blueberries in a later post. :)

The first thing you need to do before you plant apple trees is find a good place for them on your property. Ours are located on the southwest corner of our 5 acres, the area we have set aside for the bulk of our fruit trees.

We marked the locations for the trees, taking their mature size into account and siting them well away from the pecans

The apple trees are just east of where we planted the pecan trees last fall. Since a mature pecan tree can have a canopy in the neighborhood of 80 feet in diameter, we made sure to select locations that would not be shaded in the future. Of course it will be a looooong time before our pecan trees are large enough to be a threat to the apples, but we're planning for the future!

Our apple trees are semi-dwarf, which means they can grow to be about 15 feet across. We measured out and marked an equilateral triangle with sides that measured 15'. Who said high school geometry isn't useful?

The night before we planted our trees we soaked them in buckets that contained a solution of liquid kelp in water. Our trees came bareroot and Michael Phillips, author of my much-beloved The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way,recommended soaking them in kelp overnight to help reduce transplant shock. I added about 2 tablespoons of organic liquid kelp to each bucket and then filled it with enough water to cover the roots.

Soaking the trees overnight in a kelp solution. Our storage
room is the coolest place I could find, so that's where the trees
landed until planting. 

The next morning dawned sunny and warm. Ideally, you would plant trees on an overcast, wind-less day. It's better for the plants. We didn't have much choice in the matter, however, so we trusted in the awesome  power of kelp to keep our trees from freaking out and got underway.

Please learn from my mistake: if you are going to dig halfway to China on a unseasonably sunny and warm spring day, apply your sunscreen with great care. I just kind of slapped it on and by the end of the day the back of my neck, ear lobes, part of my left cheek and triceps were burnt to a crisp. I look like I have some rare kind of skin disease.

It felt like we were digging to China 

Now for the hole.

You need a hole that is about 3 feet wide and 16-20 inches deep. If you are digging through clay, you will want to give up about halfway but persevere! A large hole means you are loosening a lot of soil and your tree will pay you with abundant growth.  We tried to break up the sides of the hole as much as we could because "otherwise [the roots] may circle around the glazed bowl that can inadvertently result from clay particle adhesion caused by digging the hole." (Phillips, 52)

After you have dug your hole, you will look at your small tree and wonder if it will be completely swallowed up by the giant chasm that you just made in your lawn. Nope, because the next step is to take some of the best quality dirt (i.e. topsoil, not clay) plus the amendments I will discuss and form a mound of loose soil on the bottom of the hole. Gently place your tree on top of the mound and spread the roots out.

Hubby Dear placed the tree on the mound of loose soil and spread the roots out

Check the graft union - that's the bumpy part where the rootstock has been joined to the trunk. Make sure it is about 4 inches above the level of the ground. If you plant your tree too deep, the rootstock might send out growth of its own and the resulting tree would not be the variety that you desire. As you add dirt back into the hole and tamp down the soil, the tree will settle a bit so it is important that the graft union starts off high enough.

Now let's talk soil amendments. Michael Phillips recommends the following: 

Organic soil amendments to add at planting: rock phosphate, mycorrhizal inoculant, azomite, and humic acids

Each tree gets 1 lb of rock phosphate and 1 lb of azomite. We mixed this as well as some humic acids into the mound at the bottom of the hole and into the soil we filled in around the roots. The roots themselves were sprinkled with mycorrhizal inoculant.

What's mycorrhizal inoculant, you ask? Mycorrhizal fungi are present in healthy woodland and orchard soils. They partner with trees in a symbiotic relationship. It's too involved for me to write it all out here, but suffice it to say fungi are the key to healthy, happy, organically-grown fruit trees. Mycorrhizal inoculant is the best way to insure fruit trees have these fungal partners from the beginning.

After we dusted the roots with the inoculant, we continued to fill in the hole with the best dirt, reserving the worst of the clay for the top. The roots will thrive in the good stuff and the tree will grow strong quickly. The clay will get improved over time from the amendments that will be applied from above.

When we had the hole about 3/4 of the way filled in, we placed a stake on the side of the tree opposite of the prevailing winds.

Then we tamped down the soil firmly and watered well. I took some of the remaining chunks of clay and arranged them in a ring around the tree to help hold water in the root zone.

Our new Jonafree, GoldRush, and Enterprise apple trees

And that's it! Most people recommend that you do not fertilize fruit trees the first year after planting, so other than watering as necessary, they won't require too much attention this year.

Other than a whole bunch of  ramial mulch. But that's a post for another day.