mint as orchard ground cover?
lifesblessings
15 years ago
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spademilllane
15 years agolast modified: 9 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
15 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
Ground cover for new orchard?
Comments (12)Thanks for the replies. The orchard is roughly 85' by 60'. And it's fenced. Too small for the tractor to manuever easily (I'd get hives watching my husband trying to turn around without running over my Red Sheepnose apple) but it's bigger than I'd want to mow by hand. It would take too many woodchips to cover. The trees are mostly apple, peaches, plums, and pears. All are on semidwarf rootstocks. I've solved the deer problem so I'm not adverse to putting in clover. Or even garden crops for the first few years. I didn't think of that, but I like it. It's pretty much weed free right now so it's a blank slate that I don't want to mess up. I would love to grow alfalfa for my milk cows but I don't think it grows well here. Maybe cowpeas or some kind of legume? Or maybe some kind of mix like clover and oats? Then I could scythe it and feed it to the cows. (that sounds really cool but to be honest I'm not real sure what scything involves.) Gosh, I thought everybody would have the perfect answer. Like "The National Association Of Obsessive Home Orchardists has mandated a ground cover consisting of 40% legume, 20% potash, and 30% comfrey. Seeded at a rate not to exceed 30lbs of biomass per square foot." or something like that. :)...See MorePlanning for new Orchard - Cover Crops?
Comments (3)THere is one thing: Many of those "native/naturalized weeds" are some of the best cover crops! Also, in theory there are no native weeds, just plants that we dont want in the yard.. For some people that can be oak trees! First off are clovers - White and red. Cold hardy, attracts bees and parasitic wasps (beneficial). They have massive roots for soil retention. You can make tea from them as well. They are also a nitrogen fixing plant which aids other plants. Dandelion - Thats right, dendelion. One of the earliest flowers here, so it attracts insects first thing. You can make butter wine and eat the young leaves like lettuce. The best thing is the fact their tap root goes so deep it collects minerals from hardpan and sub soil. They basically aerate your soil while putting minerals and nutients on the soil surface. The thing is they will eventually be ut competed wiehn your soil profile is filled and undisturbed. Strawberry - How can you get any better then a ground cover plant that fruits? Strawberries are native to much of the US (F vesca) and make great ground covers. The varieties that produce runners will ensure that you really dont have to do too much to get them to spread. Strawberries have roots that can go 10 feet into good soil. Lupine - These guys are awesome plants. They fix atmospheric nitrogen (like almost every legume), are native, hardy, produce massive root systems and have some of the best flowers in the garden. Bees LOVE these guys along with a plethora of beneficial insects. You usually see them in ditches but they are not limited to moist soil. THere are also a few shrubs that will work with coppocing ( basically cutting them down by half or more in early summer). The one that comes to mind for up here are caregana AKA siberian pea shrub. Hardy, can take being cut down to the ground and regrowing can be used as fodder as well. Once summer comes unto ful swing and these guys are floweriing you cut them down to what ever height you decide and lay down the cut material around the trees as mulch. These fix nitrogen as well. They can also be hacked down every year and still survive for 20 - 50 years. You should also use some annual cover crops like vetch. Any pea will do this as well. The same with beans. At the end of the season after you harvest, in the first few years of establishing the yard, these should be dug into the soil, and then use a cold season grain planted on top to be cut in the spring. Alfalfa is great as well... Perrennial, large roots, hardy and fixes nitrogen.... Interplanted in all of this should be flowers. I hated flowers when I first started gardening but the more i put in the more insects arrive. The flowers will attract beneficial insects to aid in pest control and pollination. These can be short native shrubs like some rose species (which also have hips you can eat and cook with). Things like flax, poppy, herbs (rosemary parsley, mints, oregano, lemon balm etc), native and non native lily and iris, black eyed suzan, coreopsis..... at this point the list is endless and should be done to personal taste! Some perennial grasses will work as well. The thing is in terms of cover crops the trick is diversity. Diversity can protect and build your soil and help protect your plants from stress therefore disease and infestation. I personally advise against only lawn. It causes its own problems. You want a variety of root depths to ensure proper soil retention. Only grass is generally one level of root structure. The higher the diversity of plants and trees, the more root structure therefore the greater soil retention....See MoreHelp please. Ground cover for shaded beds, I'm lost
Comments (12)I second the suggestion for the dwarf nandinas - we have them in our south-facing front flower bed completely under the eave of the house, so they get next to no direct sunlight (and barely any water now that they are established) and are thriving. They're evergreen in our area and stay small (and are almost always available at Lowe's in the smaller sizes which are less expensive than the big ones. If you can stalk Lowe's and HD, they will clearance a lot of those types of things at the end of the season before they bring in the Christmas trees, so you can get a deal but I doubt you want to wait that long with the cat issues ... the skewers in your photo made me laugh - I can tell the situation is getting desperate!). You can see two dwarf nandinas directly in front of our windows in this picture - they're in the shade so look dark but in person they are kind of lime green and bright. I think nandinas alone might be kind of boring, but it depends on how "into" gardening you want to get as to how elaborate you might want to be. This first year as you wait for your shrubs to grow, you might want to plant some inexpensive annuals to fill in (coleus is a good one for shade and is pretty easy to grow from seed, although I've always done my seeds indoors in the early spring.) Golden moneywort is one of my favorite creeping perennial groundcovers, you don't need too many plants to get started and it will fill in and keep weeds down for you and it can get a little ratty in the winter but does stick around to some extent, so it's semi-evergreen. I'd add some seasonal foliage or flower interest with heucheras or variegated hostas. All those are in this picture with the hydrangea (which is definitely a thirsty beast!) I'd definitely add bulbs like daffodils that will bloom when there are no leaves on the tree. Lots of things can be divided from other gardens - do you know any gardeners in your neighborhood or do you walk your 'hood where you could maybe ask a gardening neighbor? If you end up wanting to go the liriope route (I do actually like monkey grass in a landscape, at my old house it edged all my beds, but it needs to be divided every few years to keep from taking over and it is physically hard to divide) for goodness' sakes don't buy any. Send me a message and you can bring your shovel to my house. I also would be able to share daffodils next spring - I'm not entirely sure where they all are this time of year. My hostas are still small and young (divisions from friends, all!) so I can't divide those yet, but I might have some other things to share if I walk around and look. Oh! And get some cat repellent. We had that problem when we moved into our new house about 12 years ago, with cats using our raised planter beds as a toilet, and I went to TLC for cat repellent - probably any nursery will have something like it. The kind I used smelled strongly like lemons and was a granule that came in a milk carton style container. You'd just shake it out over the soil and reapply every time it rained, and after a while the cats got the message. I dug out all the top 8 inches of contaminated soil and replaced it, but I am a germaphobe who tends to garden while gloveless. Then I planted new stuff and it filled in and the cats didn't come back....See MoreWhat ground cover for the apple and cherry orchards?
Comments (5)apparently it is easy to control with tilling and or sprays. If you google it you will see that it is being used in some urban settings mixed with lawn seed to decrease the need for water to keep the lawn green and to limit mowing. Not sure how well it works but they do say that you can mix it with lawn seed but they suggest not more than 5% by weight....See Morelifesblessings
15 years agolast modified: 9 years agomulberryknob
15 years agolast modified: 9 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
15 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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