Renowned holistic orchardist and author Michael Phillips shared his deep body of knowledge on how to perform successful biological orcharding for apples and other fruiting trees. His books, “The Apple Grower” and “The Holistic Orchard” go into complete detail on this intriguing topic that examines expanding ways to emulate forest edge ecology. Michael’s methods help trees attain the peak acquired systemic immune response to their changing environment through each season to maintain health and fruit production. Part 1 focuses on healthy plant metabolism.
VIDEO: Successful Biological Orcharding with Michael Phillips Part 15 Beneficial Accumulators
Renowned holistic orchardist and author Michael Phillips shared his deep body of knowledge on how to perform successful biological orcharding for apples and other fruiting trees. His books, “The Apple Grower” and “The Holistic Orchard” go into complete detail on this intriguing topic that examines expanding ways to emulate forest edge ecology. Michael’s methods help trees attain the peak acquired systemic immune response to their changing environment through each season to maintain health and fruit production. Part 1 focuses on healthy plant metabolism.
Thank you for the very interesting talk. The holistic aproach is so beneficial in so many ways. That insect hotel is awesome. I keep a large space in my garden to grow all the 'decorative natives' as i call them. If it's native and goodlooking, it goes in there. They house such an amazing variety of insects, some of them i have never seen before. It is crawling and buzzing with life year round. I had horrible infestations of coddling moth and those caterpillars that clump together, spin in the whole tree and munch the fruitlets off. 5 years later, i rarely see a hole in the apples and the caterpillars are completely gone. Never sprayed a thing, never hung up any traps, nothing. I did pluck bunches of caterpillars out but that's not really doable in a commercial operation. Diversity, diversity, diversity. Pruning it open and airy also helped a lot. Now the birds can actually get in there. I have spent some hours on that tree. It looks like it will produce heavilly and i think i will even have to thin it because some branches will break. We will see after june drop has ended. It's not a young tree, it's a dwarf, well over 20 years old. (you have to replace trees after x number of years? haha! This baby is only just starting! I have taken 3 years to prune it back to it's original form in the way Paul Gautchi would. If you don't know him, check his pruning out. It's kind of funky looking though. Not sending out masses of suckers either. It just flows so beautifully.) Goudreinet, lovely cooking apple. THE local apple for apple pie and apple sauce.
I really love the alfalfa plant and have begun trying to amend my urban yard with this plant that has such deep roots it is able to bring up nutrients from deep under the surface. The space between the side walk and the street had a good enough stand of alfalfa that the city left a note instructing me that 6 inches was the recommended height for plants in that space. I also planted some alfalfa around the linden tree and the tulip poplar both looking good so far. I've moved this fall to another yard which is at a forest edge with some deer grazing around every morning. I have 8 slips of fig branches in pots zone 7 waiting for planting this spring if they look big enough. Is the alfalfa as good for amending the soil as I think it is? There were a lot of mushrooms in the yard this fall. One shady corner of the yard is rather soggy draining into a ravine with a small stream flowing into a lagoon. Will Mycorrhizal inoculant benefit the growth of the blueberries and fig trees I will be planting this spring?