Orchard 2: Design

A two-acre orchard barely registers on the radar of commercial growers, but it’s a huge undertaking for an individual on a homestead. Because so many trees had already been planted by John and needed attention, and because I had zero orchard experience, I took ample time figuring out what we have, deciding what I wanted, and making actual changes.

Because I’m a nerdy ex-field geologist, I made a detailed map of the orchard using only the known length of my step (0.8 m)—no compass!

It turned out to be quite accurate, though I fine-tuned it later with a tape and compass (which is how I discovered that the row of hardy kiwis and the high tunnel weren’t parallel to the orchard walls, for some strange reason). I also added all individual trees, shown as yellow dots.

Then I started playing with ideas, which was easy and pretty fun because it consisted mainly of working at my computer and sometimes going out to “ground truth” something. Here’s one of those “work maps” that includes possible future vehicle paths, coppice trees (star symbols labeled wt and PP), the winter flood zone in blue, and even some surveying data that I used to improve the map accuracy.

Here’s a later map, by which time I’d decided to cut way back on coppice trees and instead plant more fruit and nut trees.

Even that plan evolved: This map shows plants currently in the ground, highlighting the ones I planted in winter 2012 (click on the image to enlarge and read the labels and legend).

If you’re keeping score at home, here’s an expansion of the table from the Orchard #1 post that includes my plantings.

For actual pictures of the orchard, check out the Orchard #3-6 posts.