Chestnuts and more being interplanted into persimmons

[@peterellis4262]

That excavator is a gigantic broadfork ;)

[@jkochosc]

That's exactly what I said! I had worked all day and was about to broadfork this and then thought....hmm....maybe I'll burn a cup of fuel and do this WAY deeper and faster and better and save some personal energy!

[@peterellis4262]

Looks very syntropic agriculture ;)

[@jkochosc]

It's the only kind of agriculture that actually makes sense to me. Still just trying to figure out how to implement it though - it is a whole universe!

[@mountainfigsperennialfruits]

Great going. Seems like black currant and comfrey would go easily and well in the existing persimmon rows. Simple spade planting and cutting sticking. Comfrey will help the soil in various ways and black currant will improve the ground shade while handling the persimmon shade and add a crop.

[@jkochosc]

Agreed! I went to mowing underneath to save time on management a few years ago when we had a baby! Now I’m back to planting :)

[@nathanielgraham622]

keep it up! it''ll be lush woodlands before you know it. Im also rehabing poor soils in zone 7a doing 40 acres of pecans, walnuts and hazlenuts. 30' row spacing and alley cropping giant sunflowers, cowpeas and milo sorghum. namaste

[@jkochosc]

That’s amazing!! I plant a lot of the northern hardy pecans too - a guy can dream! I bought a small combine last year and will be alley cropping tortilla corn between hazels soon as well :)

[@smueller12244]

strawberry groundcover is the bomb, it dominates and the animals plant it for you with the runners helping too.

[@BroadShouldersFarm]

Just to get the big tree spacing: how far apart in the row are persimmons? The space between rows of persimmons is 25’? And the chestnuts are planted on the diagonal intersections between 4 persimmons, at 30’ between chestnuts in their row? Would that make the distance between chestnuts and persimmons roughly 12.5’?

[@jkochosc]

Yup that's it! The chestnuts will be pruned up to fit in here - I will keep their trunk straight as high as I can and let them branch out over the persimmons, which will be pruned to stay underneath them. This spacing definitely wouldn't work without a permanent pruning strategy to keep them working together.