This book report may challenge our most faithful blog readers! If you stick with it, you may understand why this one was a few months in coming - LOTS of material to work through. Thanks to Jason's study of it, we will hopefully be eater even yummier and even more fruits from our land in the future! Enjoy whatever amount of the info you wish to that is found below!
I read The Holistic
Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way by Michael Phillips with the intention of
learning how we might manage to obtain reasonably sound, chemical-free, yummy
fruits from our several trees, and with an eye to the possibilities for making
more extensive plantings that might also produce reasonably well for us with
thoughtful, knowledgeable, and diligent care.Though our rainy spring weather made implementing any of
this newfound knowledge impossible in the month of May, I was not disappointed
in the contents. It seemed to me that he
was neither alarmist nor irrationally exuberant with regard to the challenges
of fruit growing. His approach, while
marching to its own drumbeat and articulated with generous doses of the
author’s own idiomatic expression, seemed to me nonetheless a very sensible
place to start. It seems helpful for me to relay some tidbits from the many
pages of useful writing that were applicable to our situation and needs. I will organize these quotes and some brief
commentary into three sections: Theory and Principles, Wisdom and Discernment,
and Matters of Practice.
Theory and Principles
Human Nutrition
“Humans evolved eating fruits and nuts and green plants and
the occasional mastodon. None of these
foods was shortchanged nutritionally; every bite had fantastic flavor and
substance. Why we accept anything less
in modern-day fare is a result of effective advertising coupled with an
outright loss of species intelligence.
You reclaim your nutritional birthright when you plant that first pie
cherry tree. How you grow that fruit in
turn determines the nutrient density of your family’s own health prospects.”
–XIII-Introduction
Page 16: “Inherent nutrition in the food we eat becomes a
degenerative joke when there’s little respect for soil biology.”
The general conclusion from the book seemed to be that healthy
trees, well-supplied with a full palette of balanced minerals produce fruits
that support human health in wonderful ways.
Fruits that come from trees propped up with chemical disease controls
and fertility boosters, on the other hand, can be expected to be found wanting,
with repercussions for the people depending on them for nourishment.
Intercropping
He supports the notion of growing plants other than fruit
trees in amongst and under the canopy of those trees, though he discourages the
dominance of grassy plants in the understory.
Page 26: “Far more space in a diverse orchard planting can
be productively utilized than you might otherwise think is possible from
listening to the conventional party line, which says that trees must be
isolated in rows for maximum production.”
Page 285: “An integrated orchard consists of far more than
trees. The very same woodsy ecology
principles apply to all sorts of berries.”
Soils
This aspect of fruit tree and berry cultivation has been
underappreciated and poorly addressed in any other information I’ve ever come
across. What a helpful perspective! Of course tree health would be influenced by
the soils in which they grow, and of course selecting, preparing, and
stewarding such soils ought to be the orchardist’s main tasks. Why didn’t anybody say so?
“Each tree and fruiting shrub is a system within a system
dependent on the vitality of…other life-forms that are invisible to our human
eye.”-XII-Introduction
Page 3: “The progression that takes place when microbial
feeders restore soil balance—and just where that balance point lies for
different plant species—spells out a far more accurate way to grasp plant
dynamics than does available mineral fertility as indicated on a typical soil
test.”
Page 8: “Most agricultural soils (other than the prairie
grasslands) are of forest origin: Soil that has been built from the top down
through fungal action undergoes humic
stabilization—such soil has staying power and maximized nutrient
recycling. Fruit trees belong in such soils.”
Page 25: “Having the proper mixture of minerals, organic
matter, air, and water in the upper layers of the soil—the area where plants
grow—is ultimately more important than feeling limited for the rest of your
life by poor soil structure.”
Page 60: “Biologists describe soil as a marriage between the
mineral world and the organic world.
Many of the elements essential for plant life are provided by the
molecular structure of the minerals.
It’s the organic partnership of the microorganism community that
transforms these nutrients into bioavailable form.”
Page 61: “It’s the life aspect of the soil that introduces
and enforces the whole concept of balanced nutrition, as opposed to the
overstocked flooding of the reductionist chemical approach.”
Page 61: “Healthy soil is a biological factory that with
time gets richer, increasingly complex, and absolutely sustainable for the long
haul…the total amount of a nutrient in the soil is nowhere near as important in
terms of the soil’s fertility as is the availability
of that nutrient…The untapped minerals in almost any soil—once accessed by
a healthy humus complex—are more than sufficient to revitalize every sensible
orchard, year after year after year.”
Methods
Fruit plantings are widely known to take careful attention
in order to produce reliably. The
particulars of this attentiveness are the first thing people want to talk about
when discussing home fruit growing.
Mostly this centers on the decision to use conventional chemical sprays
or not. Mr. Phillips thankfully
broadened this discussion to include a wider variety of strategies and a deeper
understanding of the issues. His full
instructions are too detailed to reproduce here, but I have included some
quotes that set the tone.
Page 14: “Our grandparents’ generation didn’t make the turn
towards chemical agriculture so much out of dire necessity as out of
uncomprehending enthusiasm.”
Page 16: “I’m not going to engage anyone’s beliefs here
about what makes for righteous agriculture.
I am, however, going to make clear what happens in the orchard ecosystem
when chemicals are relied upon as a primary means of growing fruit.”
Page 16: “Short term solutions merely address symptoms and
can never be more than a prop for a sick patient…although they may seem to do good at the time. Eventually stronger medicine is needed as the
system gets weaker from not having relied on its own internal fortitude.”
Page 16: “Perpetuating imbalance takes more effort than some
people might wish to admit.”
Page 16: “Natural defense mechanisms abound in a healthy
orchard. Our job as growers is to
support the underlying biology and abet diversity.”
Page 107: “Stewarding what
needs to be right while intelligently setting limits on what might go wrong describes health-based
orcharding to a tee.”
Page 107: “Our foremost task in the home orchard and the
community orchard is to build health.”
Page 114: “Disease cycles require knowing the beast you face
and from whence it comes. All of this is
why orcharding isn’t necessarily simple…and yet remains so absolutely
fascinating and determinedly doable.”
Page 122: “…we actually need
low numbers of foliar feeder populations to maintain helpful species to a
sufficient degree to keep those same foliar feeders in balance.”
Summing Up
“Organic orcharding can never be a straightforward recipe
where you simply follow steps A, B, and C and then pull a delicious apple
strudel hot from the oven. Nature is
dynamic…climate is changing…and every ecosystem is localized. New growing seasons bring shifts in the
challenges to be faced. Every variety
will not necessarily thrive where you live.
A key quality of a good fruit grower is the ability to adapt. What I love about my fruit trees—and all
plants—is the listening and the observing. Seeing the subtleties brought forward by
healthy management choices. Knowing I
can adjust my understanding in order to help shape a better biological
reality. Appreciating the gifts of this
special place in the universe. You have
that same ability too. You really,
really do.”-XIV-Introduction
Wisdom and Discernment
Mr. Phillips did more than just provide instructions, he
offered advice! Most welcome. Some of that advice was intended to save
readers the trouble of learning some practical strategies the hard way:
Tips
Page 19: “Starting small is far better than going for the
gusto. This has always been true of the
better home orchardists I’ve known.”
Page 20: “Fruit growing quickly becomes a passion. Keep it reasonable enough so that you never
lose sight of the fun.”
Page 37: “Other fruit growers nearby know far more about
what grows dependably in your region than anyone else. Lessons learned over the course of a lifetime
are priceless—being able to tap into such knowledge is a great reason to seek
out new friends.”
Page 160: “A few good tools up the pleasure of orcharding
considerably. Spending several hundred
dollars for quality equipment makes sense when you think about fruit trees
being with you for a lifetime.”
Page 164: “Apple varieties ripen over a period of months,
ranging from midsummer to the far end of fall.
Spreading out the harvest across this time gives your family a chance to
enjoy a number of different varieties in their prime.”
Page 170: “One multi-variety tree of several summer apples
will be a happy choice in a tight home orchard.”
Page 188: “Why bother growing grocery types like Anjou,
Bosc, and Bartlett—many of which are fire-blight susceptible, when you can
explore a diversity of flavors and sensational textures better suited to your
bioregion?”
Page 232: “The wonderful flavor of fully ripened peaches—so
delectable you can hardly do anything but stand at the tree and eat away—makes
local peach culture a must.”
Page 233: “Being able to stand up to disease pressure
matters considerably in choosing good peach varieties for your geographic
region. The telltale woes of bacterial
spot, brown rot, peach scab, leaf curl, and canker are best checked by the
innate ability of the tree to resist any pathogen in the first place. But know this: Varietal resistance shifts somewhat from
region to region, not unlike how peak flavor correlates to soil type and that
season’s weather. All indicators are
only that. Given the advantage of
across-the-board health resulting from deep-nutrition choices, the peach you
love may well be the right peach for you to grow.”
Page 42: “Dwarf trees require limiting vegetative
competition, the medicinal support of fungicide, regular irrigation, and trunk
support in the form of a stake or trellis.
Semi-standard and seedling trees, on the other hand, require far less
fuss in maintaining fungal duff; they procure balanced nutrition and moisture
through a vaster root system and thus are more likely to succeed with holistic
approaches to disease.”
Page 259: “Settlers…watched young apricot trees bloom in
Virginia by the early 1700s. Some years
saw a bumper crop; other years an absolute bust due to normal spring cold…and
on that score little has changed since then.”
Page 259: “The plus side of apricot culture certainly makes
a thoughtful attempt worth pursuing.
Apricots surely have more flavors packed into each fleshy orb than any
other fruit.”
Page 259: “The apricot makes a good urban tree, where the
heat island effect often proves the difference in warding off a blossom-killing
frost.”
Page 270: “European plums are less likely to be damaged by
spring frosts, as these trees bloom a good week later than Asian plums most
seasons.”
Page 271: “One of the rarest fruit experiences is a
tree-ripened Euro plum. Seriously. What’s picked slightly green and hard in the
commercial trade is little better than a winter tomato. You get to experience plum finery only by
growing these Old World varieties for yourself.”
Page 284: “No fresh plum keeps particularly well. Those immediate days after picking the crop
are for dribbling juice down your chin, but then decisions must be made as to
putting up jam, drying the prune types, or letting fruit flies run amok. The point here is not to plant more plums than
you can enjoy. A few varieties will be
more than plenty for a family.”
Page 285: “Larger plantings [of berries] are invaluable for
taking advantage of growth habit, being able to protect against birds, and
filling the pantry with the very best jam.”
Page 286: “From North to South, brambles are the perfect
home garden plant in many respects. All
are easy to get started, requiring little more than a patch of full sun and
some well-drained soil.”
Page 286: “Disease problems rarely overwhelm [brambles]
though viruses do indeed set regional longevity parameters.”
Page 308: “Growers in transition zones are advised to grow
both southern and northern highbush [blueberries] as each highlights different
flavor subtleties.”
Page 316: “Gooseberries are typically used for preserves and
pies, somewhat like rhubarb, more than for eating out of hand. Still, the better cultivars will change even
that perception quickly. And then
there’s gooseberry butter: Heat the
berries until the skins pop, then force them through a colander; add sugar in
equal proportions to the pulp, and simmer until thick. Top off a toasted English muffin and you’ll
understand far more than mere words can tell.”
Admonishments
Some of his advice was intended to set us straight with
regard to assumptions we might be bringing to the cultivation of fruit.
Page 9: “I know, I know.
You have particular ideas about how often the lawn should be mowed. That all trees shall be in a straight
line. That mulch should be applied
uniformly and look tidy. That one
dandelion uninvited is an abomination.
Well, it’s time for you to lighten up!
The appearance of your orchard isn’t about you.”
Page 11: “Human notions of neatness are rarely biological!”
Page 14: “Choosing to spray to sustain system health is
different from choosing to spray to kill.
If you’re in the camp that has always regarded “need to spray” as the
ultimate reason not to grow fruit, shift gears, please.”
Page 111: “…dealing up front with any lingering reluctance
around spraying will be pivotal for your success as a health-focused orchardist.”
Framing
Sometimes it helps to take a step back and think in more
general terms about what we’re trying to accomplish here, and this allows us to
choose our approach proactively.
Page 20: “Be patient about this. Everything isn’t going to go right. Recognize such learning opportunities as a
chance to do better next year. In fact,
be stubborn about this. Every
back-to-the-lander quickly learns that something else does go right in that
very same season. Nature gives and
nature takes. Here’s a beautiful
argument for an even wider diversity of fruit plantings, to gain the best crop
insurance going for your family.”
Page 37: “Think about what it means to stretch roots into
rich soil, to develop fruit buds with vigor, to close cambium tissue across a graft. It’s that oneness with the tree that
accomplishes far more than descriptive words alone can achieve.”
Page 107: “You’ll come back here many times and find
yourself now ready to hear that next bit of guidance about a particular
challenge. Just as trees grow slowly,
you too are developing a strong branch structure as an orchardist over the
course of time.”
Page 334: “Learning to prune, making woodsy compost,
identifying what pests are on hand…none of this comes easy at first. You learn by doing. Just as a fruit tree needs to build good wood
structure in those early years, you are building ecosystem understanding and
personal confidence through genuine experience.”
Page 339: “We don’t need to guess about what’s going right
for our trees or the quandaries that inevitably pop up. We observe, we ask questions, we learn, and
eventually, yes, perhaps we even comprehend…all of which should lead to a
deeper appreciation of this beautiful creation.
That attitude alone can lead to success at procuring the gifts of this
good life for family and community.
Don’t be overcome by learning-curve insistence on orcharding
challenges. Much of this takes time. The biological lessons presented here become
obvious to those eager to grasp the connectiveness of it all. Listen to what the trees and the microbes tell
you to be true. Trust your inner druid
to guide you in these ways. Growing
healthy fruit is for thinking people who embrace being a part of something
slightly more than wonderful.”
Matters of Practice
And then there’s the how-to component:
Establishment
Page 6: “Fruit plantings happen in one of two ways. The go-getter turns the lawn under and, plop,
the trees and assorted berries are in.
No real transition towards the fungal state occurs prior to the nursery
order being made and delivered. The soil
biology can recover from such unbridled enthusiasm—it’s not “wrong” to do
this—but soil preparation prior to planting offers certain advantages worthy of
consideration.”
Page 19: “The absolutely ideal site for fruit trees might
not exist at your place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come up with
reasonable accommodation...Favoring biological advantage will always be the
driving imperative behind orchard layout.”
Page 26: “A broad mix of species belongs under and within
the vicinity of fruit trees. You can
make deliberate choices here to reflect a certain look, or you can trust
serendipity (enhanced by introduced species left to go to seed) to bring a
diverse understory to the fore.”
Page 33: “Wild corners should be granted due diligence—a
dear friend once told me to always leave a place for the fairies to dwell.”
Page 53: “A wee bit of mycorrhizal root investment is a
worthy idea, because all commercial rootstocks lack this basic biological
connection. Planting fields are
fumigated, tilled, and otherwise manipulated as a matter of course. Very few nurseries in turn choose to
inoculate the trees created by grafting onto rootstock purchased from these big
commercial propagators. The soil where
you’re planting an orchard doesn’t necessarily lack the mycorrhizal species
needed for fruit trees—that depends on landscaping history and the proximity of
other tree roots. Yet jumpstarting a
barren root system makes sense to me, as it can take several years for disturbed
soil to otherwise be restored in this important fungal respect.”
Page 242: “Siting for shade is a far different notion from
creating a microclimate facing due south in hopes of assured warmth. The best place to consider growing a peach is
in the winter shadow of your house or
barn, a conifer stand, or what have you.”
Pruning
Too much detail on this subject to treat properly here, but
here’s one more generalized gem:
Page 87: “Evaluating the light space between branches and
competing shoots—and thereby considering how the chosen limb will develop to
fill this space—has helped me more than any other pruning parameter in making
good decisions. Pruning rules (about
vertical shoots and the like) are useful up to a point. But it’s only when you grasp what happens
beyond the moment of the cut that you truly become effective from the tree’s
point of view.”
Plant Health
Mr. Phillips’ emphasis on fruiting plant health and his recommended
strategies clearly set him apart from the crowd, and are bound to win him a
devoted following, though I am sure his descriptions of how to go about this
have also convinced some that this is too much trouble!
Page 141: “Non-aerated
compost tea won’t satisfy purists, but I do see a place for this simple
brew in orchard culture. This liquid
extract of compost requires none of the fussiness of the aerated version. A few shovelfuls of rich compost soaked for a
day or two in a 5-gallon bucket, stirred on occasion, then strained, yield a
less defined yet still helpful range of organisms to enhance leaf decomposition
beneath the trees in the fall.”
Page 150: “Wet springs will always be a fungal challenge.”
Page 152: “There are times in the organic orchard when you
may think it best to reach for old-school ways.
That’s okay in the short term.
Just understand there will be more and more biological ramifications the
farther you go down this road.”
Page 246: “Barrier protection for stone fruits needs to be
in place prior to petal fall on apples.”
Page 257: “The successful nectarine grower will find trap
tree selection paramount in making organic approaches work.”
Page 283: “Plum borer larvae tend to be somewhat gregarious;
spotting as many as twenty larvae around a single wound site is not uncommon.”
Tricks of the Trade
A few things we might not have automatically known:
Page 250: “…flavor is accentuated by a degree of water
stress going into harvest. Conditions
that are overly lush do not bring out the flavor profile of any fruit.”
Page 254: “Painting trunks white in fall to lessen the
chances of southwest injury also works to delay the awakening of buds in
spring. This effect can be amplified
with early applications of refined kaolin clay throughout the tree well before
any sign of bud swell.”
Page 259: “Tree-ripened fruits will keep in premium
condition for three to five days after picking.
Refrigeration extends this to two weeks, though the fruit will be far
from its best after serving time in the tundra.”
Page 284: “Plums do not continue to ripen completely after
being picked and so, just like all the other stone fruits, should be picked
fully tree-ripe to taste their best.
Picked underripe, plums will still soften and some of their complex
carbohydrates may break down to sugars, but those changes are more akin to the
first stages of rotting than the flavor changes associated with true
ripening. That’s what you buy in the
supermarket, but not what you should be picking in your own garden of eden.”
Page 333: “Every orchardist needs to create a task checklist
to keep biological timing of orchard tasks throughout the year clearly
prioritized….Knowing what to do when
becomes far more manageable when you take the time to organize your thoughts on
paper.”
Conclusion
I was quite relieved to read Mr. Phillips’ several
reassurances that orcharding is a discipline that has to grow on you, or rather
you have to grow into it. A person would
be well justified feeling intimidated about the prospect of jumping in with
both feet, I do declare. I personally do
not feel prepared to act with confidence after even this fairly comprehensive
treatment of the subject. It will
require an open mind, reflective character, opportunity, patience, and
time. The good thing is that most of
those factors, minus the time, are probably safely declared as being in
place. Therefore I am encouraged to
believe that our farm becoming productive of delicious, usable, and healthy
fruit from various species is only a matter of time.
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