Permaculture Beginning to pay off

[yoderjac]

The above are native male persimmons that were cut down and bark grafted with native female scions. Vegetative growth exploded right off, but it took a while for them to beging producing a significant amount of mast. They are now producing very well.

The persimmon above is a native male that was cut down and grafted with a named variety scion. Note there is much less vegetative growth but the persimmons are much larger than my native persimmons.

It took quite a few years for our pear trees to start producing but now they are consistently having bumper crops. Last year a bear came trough and devoured all of them before the archery season began.

A few of our Dunstan chestnuts are starting to produce.

Permaculture as a component of wildlife management is a long-term investment but it will pay off for many years to come.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Skelly]

The above are native male persimmons that were cut down and bark grafted with native female scions. Vegetative growth exploded right off, but it took a while for them to beging producing a significant amount of mast. They are now producing very well.

The persimmon above is a native male that was cut down and grafted with a named variety scion. Note there is much less vegetative growth but the persimmons are much larger than my native persimmons.

It took quite a few years for our pear trees to start producing but now they are consistently having bumper crops. Last year a bear came trough and devoured all of them before the archery season began.

A few of our Dunstan chestnuts are starting to produce.

Permaculture as a component of wildlife management is a long-term investment but it will pay off for many years to come.

Thanks,

Jack

Great to hear all your planting’s are starting to take off.

 

[Bill]

What’s it been like 8 years since those persimmons got a sex change?

 

[yoderjac]

What’s it been like 8 years since those persimmons got a sex change?

Some, but not all. The first two trees pictured that were native to native grafted started producing a couple years ago but were just starting. They grew like mad vegetatively, but took much longer to produce. Part of this might have been because we got hit by cicadas one year and they were largely defoliated. This year, they have copious amounts of persimmons on them, enough to have an impact.

The third picture is an example of a tree grafted with a named scion. It seems whether named or simply traded with others, scions from elsewhere acted differently. None have had the same vigorous vegetative growth that grafting with local scions had. None of those trees are nearly as large. However, most of them produced their first persimmons in the 3rd leaf after grafting. One tree even produced a few in the second leaf. It is true that none of these trees were hit by cicadas but I think there is more to it. I'm guessing that local native trees are so similar genetically that they are more compatible in some way and are less stressful to the root stock. Once the scion is accepted, the trees just seem to get back to their normal growth pattern. With non-native scions, the trees don't seem to grow as fast but the produce fruit quicker.

If I was looking at it like a race, the non-native scion trees got out in front early producing fruit. The native scion trees were at the back the pack but poured it on in the home stretch and are now in the lead in terms of the number of persimmons being produced and probably the total poundage. On an individual persimmon basis, the non-native scion trees produce much larger persimmons. I don't know if the non-native scion trees will eventually overtake the native scion trees or not since most of the named varieties were listed as prolific. There is simply less tree to produce on the non-native scion trees right now.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Apple Junkie]

I am not familiar with the term permaculture. To make matters worse, I have no experience with persimmons either, but like that you're keeping a record of how each is doing. Help me understand the concept and objective of permaculture. Thanks Jack.

 

[yoderjac]

Permaculture in general is establishing some kind of "agricultural" ecosystem that is intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient. I'm trying to apply this approach to deer management. When we first bought our property, things were so unbalance between deer numbers and food that as I would mow a 1 acre plot of clover in the middle of the day, deer would come out of the pines and feed in one end of the field while the tractor was headed to the other. As I would make the pass back around, the would reluctantly head back into the pines and as I swung back around headed away from that end of the field, they would return.

Our liken our first methods to an emergency room visit. We shot every antlerless deer we say. We would rather error and kill a button buck than let a doe walk. At the same time, we implemented a fuel bore food plot program working up to over 20 acres under till from zero. This was high-input farming type approach. I made the mistake of ding a lot of 2-bottom plowing and hurt our poor soil even more, but we did produce a lot of deer food. Lots of small clover plots sprinkled around the property and a long pipe with about 7 acres of soybeans buffered by bicolor lespedeza for a visual block and more clover on every dip where the grade was too great for regular tillage.

This consumed a lot of resources in time and money with lots of fertilizer and effort. It is not sustainable long term. If we suddenly stop, the amount of quality food would diminish drastically and the deer would really be hurt.

We have been transitioning to a long term approach that is much more sustainable and self-sufficient. First, is timber management. It can provide huge benefits to wildlife in both food and cover if done right and at the same time generate income rather than be an money sink. We used some USDA programs to install firebreaks, spray some hardwood clearcuts, and conduct controlled burns.

Next is soils. Tillage has big negative impact on soils. Google "Ray the soil Guy" for the science. By reducing tillage, choosing the right crops, and building OM, one can improve the nutrient cycling and reduce (or perhaps eliminate) fertilizer requirements. A higher weed tolerance is also a factor. What is a weed for a farmer may or may not be a problem for a deer manager. Deer are browsers not grazers. Food plots are a small part of their diet and should be focused on providing quality food when nature is stingy. Food left in these plots after the stress period doesn't really benefit deer. So, having weedy plots in many, if not most cases, is not a problem. This reduces fertilizer and herbicide cost as well as the time and effort.

As I get older I'll be able to do less and less physically. This brings me to the next leg of permaculture, trees. Not any trees, specifically trees that very low maintenance and produce hard and soft mast that drops and is available to deer over a very long period of time. In my area persimmons are native and grow wild. However few are female and produce persimmons. By grafting female scions to male trees one can effectively do a sex change making unproductive trees productive. By selecting scions from trees with different drop time, one can put persimmons on the ground across a large portion of the year. They don't require spraying, pruning, or fertilizing. American persimmons are astringent which protects them from tree climbing critters until they are ripe and fall giving deer a fair chance at them. This is, by far, the lowest cost most productive thing I've done with trees. I've slowly been adding trees in fair volume starting with the lowest maintenance, native or naturalized. I've finally worked up to apples and even with apples I'm looking for the most disease resistant varieties that will produce with little or no long-term maintenance. Many are crabs.

So, in the end, my objective is to increase the Biological Carrying Capacity of the land sustainably so that as I slow and eventually stop, the land will be able to support more and better wildlife populations for many years before it slowly reverts to wherever nature takes it. That slow change over time will give deer and other wildlife populations time to adjust.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Bill,

Just to give you a sense of the difference in growth, compare the third picture in the original post to this:

This is the tree cluster the first and second pictures in the original post were taken from. Granted these trees were a couple inches in diameter when grafted compared to the 1" diameter of the third picture in the original post. However, other persimmons of similar diameter were grafted with non-native scions and show similar growth to the third picture in the original post.

By the way, even a few of the recently planted apples are producing:

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Apple Junkie]

Thanks for such a thorough explanation Jack. Now it makes perfect sense to me, thanks.

 

[SwampCat]

Trees are my nemesis. I have had planted over 25,000 trees on my place in the last ten years and maybe 15 of them are still alive. For me, they are very high maintenance and not worth the expense or effort. I fought it hard for five or six years, but have finally thrown in the towel. On my ground, when it comes to trees, I have decided nature knows best. I do have quite a few persimmon, fortunately. I envy you guys who can grow fruit trees.

 

[yoderjac]

Trees are my nemesis. I have had planted over 25,000 trees on my place in the last ten years and maybe 15 of them are still alive. For me, they are very high maintenance and not worth the expense or effort. I fought it hard for five or six years, but have finally thrown in the towel. On my ground, when it comes to trees, I have decided nature knows best. I do have quite a few persimmon, fortunately. I envy you guys who can grow fruit trees.

You will notice that in my post on permaculture, I talk about using low maintenance trees that are native or naturalized. Something is wrong when you are planting 25,000 trees and only 15 are surviving. Either the tree selection is not right for your area or something is wrong in the planting technique. Once I put a tree in the ground, I do very little to maintain it.

The key is working with what works in your area. Persimmons have provided more soft mast sooner for less time and effort than any other tree that I've used. If God gave you persimmons, use them. Find non-producing native trees and graft female scions with different drop times to increase their time of availability.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[SwampCat]

I had planted almost forty acres of a combination loblolly pine, shumard, white oak, and sawtooth. The first three are native on my land. About 24,000 trees. The worst drought in over 100 years hit that summer and killed 95% of them. Another severe drought hit the next summer and finished most of the remaining trees. The winter of 2013, I had planted 23 acres of loblolly pine and willow oak. They were planted on ground where loblolly and willow oak had been cleared 20 years earlier. Two years later, in the spring of 2015, the flood of record hit and the trees were completely inundated with water for 60 days. Had they been five or six years old and had their heads above water - they might have pulled through. But they didnt. I had quality trees planted, native to my ground, by professional tree planters - and two of the most severe weather events in the last 100 years hit within four years of one another. So, no, the lack of success was not due to poor selection of trees or planting technique. I have also planted a number of apple, peach, and plum trees and I knock the fruit out of them the first five or six years - and the coons still break all the branches and all the fruit is still taken by coons, possums, crows, and squirrels. I just recently had a five year old apple tree persish - I am assuming to this years drought - less than two inches of rain since the first week of May with temps as high as 107 degrees. Wouldnt have mattered - the tree next to it was literally torn apart by the critters when the apples were the size of quarters. So for me, it is the already growing persimmon. I do have a couple of dunstan cheastnuts about five years old that actually bloomed this year. Maybe they will beat the odds and make something one day.

 

[Telemark]

I had a similar problem this summer, swampcat. About half my trees died due to the lack of rain. I just couldnt keep them all watered back on the hunting property. I lost a couple dozen apple and oak trees, and all of my spruce trees.

Next year I will buy a big tank, but for now the damage is done. Also had beetles attack my pear trees, and some critter got into a cage and strippedall the leaves off the pear tree that the beetles and caterpillars didn't get.

It's especially disappointing because it is very unusual weather for that part of Ontario, and last year was especially mild and rainy there. As they say: if i only knew then what i know now...

 

[TreeDaddy]

Difficult NOT to take the failures personally

I try to autopsy every tree i lose to learn from the errors

Sucks to lose trees 2-3 years old to seasonal droughts,etc that you have grown from seed

bill

 

[yoderjac]

I had planted almost forty acres of a combination loblolly pine, shumard, white oak, and sawtooth. The first three are native on my land. About 24,000 trees. The worst drought in over 100 years hit that summer and killed 95% of them. Another severe drought hit the next summer and finished most of the remaining trees. The winter of 2013, I had planted 23 acres of loblolly pine and willow oak. They were planted on ground where loblolly and willow oak had been cleared 20 years earlier. Two years later, in the spring of 2015, the flood of record hit and the trees were completely inundated with water for 60 days. Had they been five or six years old and had their heads above water - they might have pulled through. But they didnt. I had quality trees planted, native to my ground, by professional tree planters - and two of the most severe weather events in the last 100 years hit within four years of one another. So, no, the lack of success was not due to poor selection of trees or planting technique. I have also planted a number of apple, peach, and plum trees and I knock the fruit out of them the first five or six years - and the coons still break all the branches and all the fruit is still taken by coons, possums, crows, and squirrels. I just recently had a five year old apple tree persish - I am assuming to this years drought - less than two inches of rain since the first week of May with temps as high as 107 degrees. Wouldnt have mattered - the tree next to it was literally torn apart by the critters when the apples were the size of quarters. So for me, it is the already growing persimmon. I do have a couple of dunstan cheastnuts about five years old that actually bloomed this year. Maybe they will beat the odds and make something one day.

Sorry to hear that. Mother nature can be brutal. I've had that happen with crops but not trees (fingers crossed). We get pretty reliable spring and fall rain here. Each region has it 's own challenges.

Thanks,

Jack