The Holistic Orchard: Tree Tips for Tree Keepers

My second very quick entry for the @naturalmedicine Book Wisdom Challenge

@bobydimitrov recommended this book for me a while back in the @homesteaderscoop discord. I gotta say, I'd be lost without this book. While not specifically about food forestry or forest gardens, The Holistic Orchard by Michael Phillips is an amazing resource. There's a slight difference between orchards and food forests, but not enough of a difference to render any information in this book irrelevant to anyone looking to learn about tree health.

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I can't recommend this book highly enough for anyone that has even a single fruit tree in their yard. From spraying to soil health to pruning (God, it's worth the price of the book just for the pruning section!), this is the book for tree keepers.

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A whole-tree view of tree management through the tree year

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The soil food web and how it relates to your tree

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comfrey!

Another comfrey lover! This model is the one I'm working on in my own system. A ring of comfrey around the drip line of the tree is proving really useful around my baby forest. I read about it in this book, and I'm enjoying it a lot from a practical standpoint and an aesthetic approach.

The book goes into vast detail about the soil food web and how supporting your trees' nutrition is really the superior approach to preventing weeds, disease, and pests. And when I say vast detail, I mean that this guy can teach you more in a couple of pages than you've learned in a dozen blog posts or youtube videos. It's dense, sometimes to a fault. I had to learn a lot just to be able to appreciate some of the sentences he wrote. But despair not! It all comes around in the course of the book!

It's kind of a fun loop in the mind to think of your food as medicine in a preventative sense. Then stack on the idea of your food's food as its medicine to prevent disease as well, ans it gets pretty entertaining. Medicine for your medicine, supporting a healthy lifestyle for your food which supports your healthy lifestyle. It really drives home how dependent our health is on soil health. If we damage the soil, it has a direct affect on the sustenance that we give ourselves. That's the bottom line in most peoples aversion to the chemical approach of farming. Making your plants dependent on chemical soil additives is the equivalent of making yourself dependent on pharmaceuticals for your own health. You'll see that parallel being drawn in The Holistic Orchard.

The second half of the book goes into specific pest, growth, and upkeep considerations for specific fruits. Berries, stone fruits, pome fruits, etc. all like little differences and have specific needs based on their environmental threats. Of course, biodiversity is lauded above all, as well as the almighty organic matter. Any foliar spraying techniques are biological, and made to support beneficial allies, not to kill undesired actors. You'll pick up on that from page one, and Phillips doesn't let your mind drop the idea for a single page.

I've recommended this book to a few people already, and I continue to recommend it to everyone that, like I said, has even a single peach, apple, or whatever fruit tree in their yard. You'll learn a lot, and you won't be disappointed with what happens as you apply your learnings.

Remember: don't plant trees, plant ecosystems.

All action for the good of all.

Nate.


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You've been visited by @porters from Homesteaders Co-op.
Looks like a wonderful book!
Sounds great for what you are doing especially that it stresses the food system and building your soil - so important that when you are first starting to develop your food forest or other gardens!
Glad you had it to help you setting up your food forest and thanks for sharing it so others can gain from it too!
Also another great entry for the Natural Medicine Book Challenge
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It's weird-- I know and understand all the importance of supporting the soil food web, but I feel so deeply that there's a wildly deeper way to understand it. I think one day I'll understand that and maybe be able to experience it deeper. And I think it's going to be a big day when it clicks.

Thanks for stopping in @pprters :) 💚

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Have you heard of Back To Eden (BTE) or lasagna gardening? Paul Gautschi talks about this a lot. I created a file on our FB page with some good resources. I'll post the link here in case you are interested. https://www.facebook.com/notes/kindred-acres/bte-no-dig-garden-style/2241477949406013/

The ring of comfrey around the drip line looks interesting. Living outside of US/Canada/Europe it's frustrating though how many of these "essential" books are utterly useless out of their little climate pocket. For me personally, that is. Trying to work out exactly what comfrey's function IS and then looking for a local Asian equivalent? Might take a while... LOL. The idea of fruit trees of itself is also very western - much of what we eat - pineapples, banana etc grow very differently. I think we need downloadable online modules about food production for every climate zone.... Asians are not big readers traditionally (books mold during the monsoon LOL) so need to think differently.

Good to see you back on your posting horse, young man. :)


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Hmm... I have zero experience with a tropical variant of comfrey... Or a tropical anything of anything for that matter.

As for what Comfrey does, it is called a dynamic accumulator. It goes deep in the ground (I've heard up to twelve feet or 4m) and brings up minerals in bioavailable form. Yes, trees can definitely go deeper, but not many other things do. It's NPK I'd 1.8-0.5-5.3, it has up to 35% protein (massive for a plant), and is a very high source of B vitamins; I think B12. Folks use it as a compost activator and for comfrey compost tea. It is also widely used as a chop-and-drop fertilizing mulch and a living mulch. None of that says anything of the medicinal uses either.

The idea is to have a multi-function food for the tree very close at hand. It's less work than growing your compost and mulch on one side of the garden and your trees on the other. More efficient.

For a source on tropical matters, I know Geoff Lawton is in the sub tropics, so kind of a middle ground between your tropics and my hot temperate climes. I know he works with bananas a lot, and I'm pretty sure comfrey too. It may be compatible with your area.

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We love our comfrey for this reason. Plus we use it medicinally (topically). I love plants that offer multiple functions. And to boot, it's pretty when it blossoms. The pollinators LOVE it. It makes an excellent chop and drop as well and compost tea. I use it to activate biochar as well. It truly is an amazing plant.

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Yay, I'm glad you appreciated so deeply this book suggestion! This kinda give me courage to recommend even more books :D

It's almost reading season :)

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A friend lent me this book a while back. It was a great read. I keep saying I need to get it for myself for reference. I just might.

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