When was the house built? Are you the original owner?

Do you know for certain what's in/under the berm?

The house is about 10-year old. The field was farm land. Builder gave us the option to have the berm, or have the soil dug from the foundation taken away. We chose the berm option. So the soil is just the soil dug out when they built the house.

We have another berm at the far end of the yard. Builder planted more than 20 trees on that berm, as wind breaker.

Just wanted to be sure you didn't have construction debris buried there. Builders have been known to do that....

Just wanted to be sure you didn't have construction debris buried there. Builders have been known to do that....

I replaced and planted some trees on the other longer berm. I did not see much difference with the soil when I dug the old tree out.

Of course since this is the soil dug from the building site, it is not rich. 10-year lawn mulching helps in some regard.

Jujube is drought-tolerant. From what I read, it is not very demanding with soil. It is also relatively maintanence free.

Other than that, I can only think of nut trees. The trees should be landscaping type, not orchard type.

I purposely built berms/teraces on my orchard, so I could plant the peaches in the top. This was done at considerable expense to protect peach roots from water logging. I lost a lot of peach trees from soggy soil before learned this lesson. I know of one other commercial grower in this area who also went to considerable expense to plant peaches in the tops of berms/terraces.

Here, peaches planted on flat level ground decline from too much water on their roots most of the time. NJ may be different. I think soils are lighter in NJ.

This is interesting.

All my fruit trees are on a gentle slope. So they do not have wet feet.

The builder built the berm to slow down the rain water. Our land is higher than our neighbor's land.

Now I run out of real backyard room. I just dug out my perennial beds and relocated all bulbs and daylilies to other area. This area is a very large area, but we never go there. Only kids sometimes run over there to play.

My concern is mainly drought. NJ summer can be brutal (just not this year). I lost a couple evergreen trees on the other berm. The soil is mainly clay, not rich. It is hard to run water hose over such a distance.

Is persimmon tree drought-tolerant?

I planted many chestnuts seedlings in my backyard, and regularly the deer would destroy them. But two large chestnuts (5 gallon pots) near the house, survived and are now nice trees producing quality nuts (too bad I sold the house in 2008). so go big with the chestnuts. I would also plant mulberries, why have fruit only in September? They are just as undemanding as jujube.

Good to know about chestnut tree. I think deer would damage all young trees if not protected. Not sure if deer loves chestnut tree as much as tulip and apple tree...

Redsun: Deer love persimmons more than anything else...they'll choose persimmon over apple. In fact, Walmart is now selling persimmon trees for food plot planting. I think Lowe's is in on the action too.

Persimmon does however (American) grow very nice and straight with very pretty bark. Everything loves dropped persimmons too raccoons, skunks, possum...you name it.

Berms help peaches in most soils in the northeast as well, based on my own experience and, more importantly, quite a bit of research- they are often recommended in university guidelines for peach and blueberry production.

I should think they can only be a disadvantage for most species in droughty (very sandy or hydrophobic) soils, but one as wide as your berm would allow the creation of individual "craters" to help each tree establish if this is the situation. If drainage is good this can be helpful even in the flat to make watering easier until trees are established.

Chestnuts are full sized trees and need about 30' space as a minimum. I'm experimenting at keeping mine more compact with pruning but I don't know how that will work long term and it's a lot of work. Once they plug in they grow like crazy.

If you plant chestnuts, I recommend you get your trees from a source that has grafted trees so you can get really good nuts from them.

Here are some pictures of the berm. I think the width is about 20'.

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Side view. Neighbor's house in on the back. Photo still does not cover the entire berm.
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Front view.
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Top view.
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Another berm with mostly evergreen trees.

Nice site for a real mixed fruit orchard.