It’s funny how the same information told differently sometimes just hits you. Watching you and Sean and Sasha has really brought me around to trying a VERY dense planting this winter to jumpstart my orchard lanes. I’ll make a video about the process!
It’s taken a long time for me to get the hang of it, and there’s so much more to learn! But the general idea of taking up the space with plants instead of maintaining space as empty as a design (which always takes some kind of work) seems pretty darn solid!
I find I can't help myself but to overplant in high density groupings. you're absolutely right about the management being less once they get going. also, you don't have to worry about wasted space if anything dies -- just gets absorbed by a more vigorous grower
This dense planting also lends itself to syntropic agriculture. Include some precocious pioneer type species, especially nitrogen fixers, and as they race ahead of the others, these become your source of fertilizing mulch. A complex relationship wherein they can provide "nurse" functions for their companions, help protect them from predation by browsing animals and even insects, and then when the nurse trees are cut back, they provide fertilizing mulch plus the cutting back releases others into the sunlight. This kind of planting needs a different sort of management than conventional planting, but, imo, the intensive planting leads to less intensive management.
I love the "jungle look" of that. I'm working on my own :D I only have about 800m² so I plant trees on dwarf root stock, underplanting with shrubs and surrounding that with many herbacious perennials. I tried keeping grassy walkways, but boy, what a hassle. I will start mulching the walkways. It's just to bad that it's nearly impossible to get free mulching materials like wood chips or saw dust in Germany, because nobody it throwing stuff like that "away"....
@@plantsim I use, what I have (grass clippings, leaves, chop and drop, cardboard...) But that stuff doesn't last as long as woodchips or sawdust and also it is difficult to produce enough material to mulch with on such a small plot.
@@MartinaSchoppe i'm right there with you! my area had freak storms with a real delay on city pickup of brush/logs and everytime i went to a prenatal visit i stopped a put another hunk into our tiny hatchback. for me the mindset is about having more than enough rather than focused on lack, sounds like you are using what you have too!
One thing I've done when mulch is short is to dig the walkways out down to bare soil, which you can put on the beds, and then I wait until weeds get really big and then cut them and lay them in the walkways as mulch. It sounds a little crazy but it really works! My recent video about perennial weeds to nursery shows that technique :)
Great information, thank you. How do you deal with the trees that will need moving later? At about 9.30 you show 3 Chestnuts and mention that they can't all stay where they are in the long run. So would you chop and drop them? Or is it still possible (without using a crane) to transplant them?
In this area I don't think I'll move trees, but if I did it wouldn't be too hard since the beds were dug and loosened. I really don't like to move trees beyond year 2-3 in the ground if I can help it. So yeah, chop and drop if a tree is really not working out...they can be dug but it's so hard and it's also not always successful.
Great video, thanks for sharing! Do you have anything to share about how you establish this type of planting? Do you start with the keystone trees and then add shrubs, then perennials? Do you do it in clumps/permaculture-style guilds? I'd also be curious to know if you feel that one can overplant and go too dense?
In the past I would just plant a few trees and then fill it in. Now, for something this size I would basically just dig and shape garden beds over a few days, take soil from walkways and fluff up beds, add in some compost, mulch, and then plant it out like crazy. It's a lot of work but over the long haul it's less work because if you plant it densely enough there is so much less weeding and mowing to do. If it's sod, I will dig the beds in the fall and cap with a super thick layer of hay and plant in really vigorous herbaceous plants like comfrey, cardoon, whatever grows quickly from root. Then next spring you just mulch out any grass that comes back through.
ua-cam.com/video/LSEv0FB6vX0/v-deo.html In this video I show a little bit about how I changed this planting. It was originally haphazard, and then years later I changed it this way and it's so much better that it's pretty much all I do for gardens at this scale now!
It’s funny how the same information told differently sometimes just hits you. Watching you and Sean and Sasha has really brought me around to trying a VERY dense planting this winter to jumpstart my orchard lanes. I’ll make a video about the process!
It’s taken a long time for me to get the hang of it, and there’s so much more to learn! But the general idea of taking up the space with plants instead of maintaining space as empty as a design (which always takes some kind of work) seems pretty darn solid!
Hi Eric I’m in the same zone in northern Jersey . I find commentary really really valuable to me please keep putting it out I really appreciate it
Thanks Peter! Trying to make time for the vids, I really enjoy doing it :)
I find I can't help myself but to overplant in high density groupings. you're absolutely right about the management being less once they get going. also, you don't have to worry about wasted space if anything dies -- just gets absorbed by a more vigorous grower
This dense planting also lends itself to syntropic agriculture. Include some precocious pioneer type species, especially nitrogen fixers, and as they race ahead of the others, these become your source of fertilizing mulch. A complex relationship wherein they can provide "nurse" functions for their companions, help protect them from predation by browsing animals and even insects, and then when the nurse trees are cut back, they provide fertilizing mulch plus the cutting back releases others into the sunlight. This kind of planting needs a different sort of management than conventional planting, but, imo, the intensive planting leads to less intensive management.
I love the "jungle look" of that. I'm working on my own :D I only have about 800m² so I plant trees on dwarf root stock, underplanting with shrubs and surrounding that with many herbacious perennials. I tried keeping grassy walkways, but boy, what a hassle. I will start mulching the walkways. It's just to bad that it's nearly impossible to get free mulching materials like wood chips or saw dust in Germany, because nobody it throwing stuff like that "away"....
everything is mulch! can you get leaves, newspaper, twigs, bark, pine needles, or cardboard?
@@plantsim I use, what I have (grass clippings, leaves, chop and drop, cardboard...) But that stuff doesn't last as long as woodchips or sawdust and also it is difficult to produce enough material to mulch with on such a small plot.
@@MartinaSchoppe i'm right there with you! my area had freak storms with a real delay on city pickup of brush/logs and everytime i went to a prenatal visit i stopped a put another hunk into our tiny hatchback. for me the mindset is about having more than enough rather than focused on lack, sounds like you are using what you have too!
One thing I've done when mulch is short is to dig the walkways out down to bare soil, which you can put on the beds, and then I wait until weeds get really big and then cut them and lay them in the walkways as mulch. It sounds a little crazy but it really works! My recent video about perennial weeds to nursery shows that technique :)
@@jkochosc i love to hear it! i tried that this year to my sunflowers, mulched them with big weed pieces.
Looks awesome! Thanks for sharing. May I ask, what zone and state are you in?
Zone 5. Got it!
Great information, thank you. How do you deal with the trees that will need moving later? At about 9.30 you show 3 Chestnuts and mention that they can't all stay where they are in the long run. So would you chop and drop them? Or is it still possible (without using a crane) to transplant them?
In this area I don't think I'll move trees, but if I did it wouldn't be too hard since the beds were dug and loosened. I really don't like to move trees beyond year 2-3 in the ground if I can help it. So yeah, chop and drop if a tree is really not working out...they can be dug but it's so hard and it's also not always successful.
Great video, thanks for sharing! Do you have anything to share about how you establish this type of planting? Do you start with the keystone trees and then add shrubs, then perennials? Do you do it in clumps/permaculture-style guilds? I'd also be curious to know if you feel that one can overplant and go too dense?
In the past I would just plant a few trees and then fill it in. Now, for something this size I would basically just dig and shape garden beds over a few days, take soil from walkways and fluff up beds, add in some compost, mulch, and then plant it out like crazy. It's a lot of work but over the long haul it's less work because if you plant it densely enough there is so much less weeding and mowing to do. If it's sod, I will dig the beds in the fall and cap with a super thick layer of hay and plant in really vigorous herbaceous plants like comfrey, cardoon, whatever grows quickly from root. Then next spring you just mulch out any grass that comes back through.
ua-cam.com/video/LSEv0FB6vX0/v-deo.html In this video I show a little bit about how I changed this planting. It was originally haphazard, and then years later I changed it this way and it's so much better that it's pretty much all I do for gardens at this scale now!