Beautiful March Madness

It’s the end of March, and the orchard is a riot of color and growth!

It has been 5 years since we planted the orchard in front of the granary in the what was the old rock/asphalt truck parking and drop off area.  The first several years the trees really were severely impacted by insects and disease.  Three years ago we started planting the fava beans and vetch as a cover crop, dry farmed in November.  The first year the favas grew to about 18″ and were spindly but had some good beans, the vetch was also very thin.  We bough 30 boxes of lady bugs to fight the aphid attack but did nothing else to control pests.

French Prune Blossoms

Crab Apple

Last year we brought in about 20 cubic yards of free horse manure and rice hulls for both mulch and some added nitrogen.  Both the favas and the vetch were pretty prolific nitrogen fixers as well so the combo really helped boost the fertility.  We also planted mustard last year for the first time.  Mustards roots are very strong and work well at breaking up the soils so that water and oxygen can both penetrate. We also bought 10 boxes of lady bugs; there were quite a few from the year before and the aphids were definitely fewer than the year before.

Budding Apricot Fruits

In the orchard, fruit is setting well; a brief cold spell in January may have really helped.  It was quite rainy and we ended up pruning later and later.   It is hard to imagine looking at the orchard and cover crop how quickly it has gone from a parking lot to diseased and sparse to lush and productive.

Baby Figs

This year, once again we planted, favas, vetch and mustard……the favas are currently 4′ tall, the vetch is wild mounds of color and the mustard is also tall and strong.  The impact of the plantings being close together, the manure/mulch, and this year’s additional rains have really come together in a big way!  Even with the past 2 weeks being unusually warm, the plants are really only showing limpness and stress at the very edges.  The favas are all coming on very fast and furiously.

More and more is being said about how we can turn our empty lots into verdant food gardens.  When I first studied French Intensive/ Biodynamic gardening in 1975, we studied the market gardeners in Paris and the amount of food that could be grown with horse manure and compost from the City. Although an orchard is not as efficient use of the space as raised beds, it is a hint of what our future can bring.