Prepare yourself for a minute of dry reading to start off. It gets better after all the numbers though, I promise.
So with the rabbits we picked up last month, I've been thinking on a lot of different systems that I can develop with them. Well, not develop, God already developed them. Maybe I can harness them. Being a tree guy, I'm leaning heavily toward an orchard setup. Here's my idea:
Integrated rabbits and peach orchard
In some looking around on another project, back when I registered Foxfire Orchards, I looked at high density orchard planting options. I came across a study using dwarf peach trees at radically dense plant spacing. They were talking about industrial type production that's probably very extractive from the ecosystem, but it got my wheels turning for a regenerative integrated system.
The figures for that table come out to 86.6sf (8.05m²), 43.5sf (4.04m²), 28.6sf (2.66m²), 21.6sf (2m²),
and 14.4sf (1.33m²) per tree, respectively. Those yields come out to roughly 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 29 pounds, 25 pounds, and 14 pounds per tree (roughly 9, 14, 13, 11, and 6 kilograms respectively).
My idea is to do a dense planting of 64 square feet (5.95m²) per tree (680 trees per acre), having the trees planted on an eight foot grid. I'd like a planting of a two foot radius of comfrey around each tree, allowing for four foot rows. The rows would be sowed with diverse perennial and self seeding annual forage as ground cover over which would run two 4x4 foot rabbit tractors. One tractor would be divided in two,providing a generous space for two rabbits, the other would be set up with a nest box to accommodate a mother and her brood. The comfrey would be a living mulch to keep the ground cover excluded around the trees, as well as a chop and drop and fodder source.
Using the math in that chart, it looks like that'd put out about 5-9 tons of peaches per acre. Dwarf trees fruit early, reaching mature production level in about three years. The trees, grafted onto dwarfing rootstock, grow 5-6 feet tall (just under 2m), so they require less space and less specialized equipment to harvest their yield. I think a yield of 300 pounds (~140kg) a season is reasonable from the sixteen tree base model.
This would mimic a natural system I've observed. I don't know about where y'all are, but here in Texas there's wild plum thickets in damn near every pasture. All kinds of critters live in em, and they're too thick for any big critters to get in efficiently. They're a good place for rabbits and birds to hide and nest. Plums and peaches are both stone fruits, and I'd be harnessing the power of the rabbits to make a similar system to the one that God is already running. Those thickets are in pastures usually, and there's almost always bigger trees growing out of them. Succession works like that. So those thickets of plums provide shelter for oaks or pecans or other larger trees that are farther along in the forest succession. So under a few of the peach trees, I'd plant a couple mulberry, redbud, or pecan trees to take over the succession. I've got plenty of oaks here, and a nice clearing already in mind for this project. I wanted to put it up here as an idea and see if anyone had heard, thought of, or tried anything similar. It's a really super high intensive system, which isn't really my thing if it's not set up right, so I'm unsure yet if I'll actually do it. Orcharding sounds fun though, and I love trees. The rabbits of course would be my scaled down version of a cow; herbivores producing meat and a premium soil amendment through their digestive processing.
Cute runny babbit pic to break up the dry talk about production and other boring stuff.
I wanted to bounce this idea around in public and see what's out there. Any feedback from anyone? Sharing would be appreciated, as I'd like to cast a wide net and get a lot of input. Y'all know me; the more minds I can gather information from, the better.
Let me know what youve got
Love from Texas
Nate 💚
Ok mate hold on hold on! This is too much arithmetic before my morning coffee! Soo this grid is about 2.5 meters, right, center to center, both directions? You can plant a normal size peach and just form it with pruning in that space.
Also using a triangular grid would give more space for each tree compared to a rectangular one. The trees in our garden are planted in a 3-m triangular grid.
Yes it will require more pruning but a dwarf tree it's usually much shorter lived and much more susceptible to environmental shock.
This sound like a long term project. If you look at it that way it's best to not use dwarf trees. I go even further than that. I would plant seeds and then graft the two-year seedling trees. If you would like to save a couple of years then go buy bare root rootstock trees. Any slower growing but not dwarf rootstock for Stone fruit would do.
The main idea is to have the central taproot uninterrupted. Peaches are not usually long lived trees. That is especially true for dwarf varieties. Also any tree with eats evolutionary taproot intact would easily beat in longevity and health any seedling that was moved.
Last spring I pulled a peach seedling from our compost and it had 15 cm root before it made it's second set of leaves. I grew it in a tall narrow 10 liter pot and now at the end of it's second year it has almost 40 cm central root!!! if you can get that from nursery at a reasonable price, that would be your best option.
Another thing that got me Warren as well is that you are planning very low diversity system. At the very least you should get it four types of trees 4 varieties each. You could easily have 6-weeks of cherry harvest and go from high summer well into autumn with some apples and pears.
If you are hell bent on eating 100 and more kilos of peaches, then 8 trees should be enough for your insatiable hunger and the rest should provide the diversity (you can also think of it as accommodating God's plan if you need another reason). Even the garden of Eden had a varied polyculture design!
Another thing that left me scratching my head is is your intention to criss-cross the orchard with the rabbit tractor. I would say it will be better any more productive let alone easier to maintain the system if you use just the lanes. In other words graze just one dimension of the grid.
This would require making rows of comfrey that encompass the trees and would allow for fruit bushes in-between the trees and of course much more comfrey to harvest.
Finally I suppose you're not going to swale that project up, so think about raised drip irrigation. Let me know if you need any help with that.
Ok I kinda lied there, there's so much more to say, maybe it's about time we did a voice chat as I'm without a computer right now and all this typing on the phone requires more beer to calm me afterwards that I'm comfortable drunk! 😜
Les deseo mucho éxitos en el proyecto, muy interesante, feliz noche.
¡gracias! Me gusta mucho buscar formas de gestionar y trabajar con sistemas naturales. lo siento, no sé español, así que estoy usando google para traducirme.
💚
Que bueno, gracias a la tecnología todos nos podemos comunicar, feliz sábado.
I'm not an expert, but I grow various kinds of trees and study from others who grow them successfully.
My only concern would be that you protect the trees from the rabbits with some kind of fencing/barrier, as they will surely nibble on the bark and girdle young trees. One of them escapes the tractor, and it may return to cause tree damage overnight. Deer and other wild animals, if they live in your area could be a bigger concern.
This looks like a huge investment in time, money, and resources. Consider paying some local orchard experts for their time, to give you consultation advice based on experience for what works in your area. Find out if the local colleges organize a club to manage an orchard or botanical garden, with educational opportunities for learning. It can take a team of people to manage a productive orchard, and networking with those who love to take care of the trees properly might be wise.
This looks like a wonderful idea for a project. I support anyone seeking to harmonize nature with wildlife/livestock in a sustainable way. To feast in a protected, shaded orchard of peaches and plants, those rabbits will be living in paradise.
Hi there, it is nice to find your post, I am from Aceh Indonesia, we have same hobbies to do gardening things on our own. The idea is quite easy to follow. regards