View from the Country

It can sometimes be challenging to balance ideas that both seem wise.

Anyone looking to plant perennial crops faces this dilemma. On the one hand, the old aphorism is undoubtedly true: the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is right now. Trees and vines take time to develop, and if you had just gotten around to sticking something in the ground a few years ago (you tell yourself), you’d have fruit right now!

On the other hand, as agronomist Chuck Schembre reminds us in this issue, most commercial orchards and vineyards are being planted into horrible soil conditions. Here’s how he puts it:

But the most important conversation to have around orchard and vineyard establishment — where most companies and growers really miss the boat — is building and promoting as strong of fungal soil as we can going into planting. We need to put trees and vines into the most healthy, fungally dominated soil we can. Most trees are being planted into what’s basically a construction site. It’s been completely deep-ripped, pulverized, cleaned, smoothed out. Then they plug into soil that’s bacterially dominated — which brings annual weeds — a tree that actually developed on this planet to live in a fungally dominated soil.

I think we’ve got to start at the beginning and set up these systems for resiliency. And then, when we put the plant in the ground, we’re already able to better manage for soil health and non-chemical weed management.

So, what’s the greater of two wisdoms? To plant trees now, regardless of soil condition, even if they’re bacterially dominated and low in organic matter? Or to wait a season or two and spend that time planting cover crops and balancing the soil?

I’m writing this, to be completely honest, in condemnation of myself! I pretty much totally disregarded the soil-building option when I established my 400-tree/vine/berry orchard about two years ago. To be a little fair to myself, being on a smaller scale, I did amend the holes where the trees went, soaked all the roots in a biological starter, and added mulch each season. The mulching, at least, is a step that isn’t done on most commercial-scale orchards.

But would my trees be better off today (or, more importantly, five years from now) if I had waited a year and had spent that time building the soil? Very possibly. I also would have learned in the intervening time how many of my friends and neighbors here have established fruit trees and vines that they can’t begin to harvest all themselves! I probably wouldn’t have needed to plant as many myself.

While we can’t guarantee that our articles, books and events here at Acres U.S.A. will result in you making the very most wise decision on your farm, we’re confident our resources provide the knowledge necessary and — more importantly — aid you in shifting the way you think about agriculture. When it comes down to it, the plant now vs. build soil discussion is a matter of the mind: how do I think about growing food ecologically, in a way that is most in tune with nature? Helping you do that is truly our goal.