Spacing trees by limiting nutrient
As
I've been learning more about roots,
I've started wondering --- does that mean we should be spacing our
trees differently? The official spacing recommendations you find
in most books or on extension service websites are based on the width
of the trees' crowns. But if roots extend out 2.25 times as wide
as the crown, on average, won't the trees be competing underground?
My Edible
Forest Gardens
book gave a good suggestion. They recommend deciding which
resource will be the most limiting for your plants and choosing spacing
based on that. For example, if you live in a dry climate, have
sandy soil, and don't irrigate, you probably should be spacing your
trees based on the extent of the roots since water will be the limiting
resource. On the other hand, if you have plenty of water but are
on the north side of a hill, chances are that light will be the
limiting resource and you'll need to space based on crown diameter
(which tends to be the official recommendation.) If nutrients are
the most limiting resource on your site, you should probably go back to
roots to determine your spacing.
In our garden, water
isn't a problem (except when there's too much of it) and we add
nutrients. So I guess we can stick to the official tree spacing
recommendations for now.
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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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