AJ Bullard's permaculture orchard
Even though I'm
telling you to watch it out of order, lecture 12 seems to go along
with this section on trees
and forest gardening. The video consists of a field
trip to AJ Bullard's experimental orchard in Calypso, North
Carolina (zone 8). This seventy-plus-year-old man has been
experimenting with fruit tree varieties on his farm since 1967,
and distance learners like us really miss out by not getting to
taste all of the fruits being offered. We can, however, take
advantage of his wisdom to learn about varieties we might want to
try in our own gardens.
Bullard tested 35
varieties of pears for dessert quality (flavor) and resistance to
fire-blight, and proclaimed Shin-li his favorite (although one of
his trees of this variety had moderate fire-blight damage).
An even more extensive fig planting resulted in the recommendation
of Celeste, Kadota, and King, while his favorite Asian persimmon
is Fuyu.
Mulberry stars
(which Bullard explained are his third-favorite type of fruit)
consist of Silk Hope and Pakistan alba. In fact, I
planted the former in my garden this past winter and am
still looking forward to tasting the fruits, although I'm
disappointed to learn in this video that the variety was named
after a town and actually produces leaves unpalatable to silkworms.
And, although Bullard's description of Pakistan alba sounds
fascinating, I recommend that readers outside his location take
the internet's advice and only plant this early-wakening mulberry
in coastal areas of zone 8, California, and Oregon, where late
frosts are seldom a problem.
Next up (in a week...or
more), Lecture 6 will return to basics with an emphasis on
design. The assignments to prepare for the lecture include:
- End of
Suburbia
- Gaia's Garden --- chapter 3
- Introduction to Permaculture --- the part of chapter 2 on design (although I'll probably just read the whole chapter), the part of chapter 3 on patterns (ditto), and pages 95 to 111 in chapter 5 (not sure what pages this is in my older edition)
I hope you'll join me as
we continue to work through this free permaculture video series.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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