It's been a busy summer getting our demonstration orchard ready for planting this fall/winter. Some of the projects have been as basic (and time consuming) as putting up a boundary fence, others have been as detailed as calculating and recalculating irrigation pipe, pump, & emitter sizing. Those calcs and re-calcs have led to a couple updates to our irrigation plan, which we'll provide details on in a later post.
Here, we'll focus on all the ground prep we've recently wrapped up. The best way to show the ground preparation is through a series of pictures and videos in the order that each operation took place. Here we go...
The first was two passes of a large disc to breakdown all the dead grass and show us the ground we had to work with.
We then dug a few backhoe pits in some of the different soil types that were now clear to see. Some places have some flakey rock very close to the surface, like show in the video below - not good. Others have several feet of nicely-textured soils - good!
The next, and most important, step was to deep rip the orchard. Deep tillage helps mix segmented layers of soil, improves water to infiltration and percolation, and softens up hard pans to allow roots to more easily penetrate. Our goal was to rip at least 4 feet down, so we needed a large machine.
A D10 proved up to task, even in the really rocky areas.
As you can see, the ground is very rough after ripping. Some of the mounds of dirt are >2 feet tall. So, it was time to bring the disc back to smooth it out.
Once disced again, we spread 12 tons of organic compost per acre. Adding compost is not as essential as ripping, but it's a great way to add organic matter and a whole range of nutrients to the soil before the trees go in.
Make sure you check the pH of any compost you add. My soil's pH is right in the sweet spot for chestnuts, around 5.5, so I made sure that the pH of the compost and the amount I applied wasn't going to raise the land's pH >6.5 where chestnuts are known to struggle.
After the compost, it was time to mark the tree rows. This is down with a GPS-guided tractor with a simple disc/shank/bar mounted on the back. Marking the rows like this allows us to put in the irrigation submains with a riser at each row before we make berms.
With the rows marked, we dug, glued, laid and buried the irrigation mains and submains. More details on the final irrigation design coming soon.
Then it was time to pull the berms. The same tractor that marked the rows made the berms following the same GPS pattern. The berming implement is a set of 36" discs with a ~24" gap between them. Each set of discs is facing "in" so that they pile up dirt in the middle.
Below are a couple pictures of the berms in different parts of the orchard. The top of the berm is only about a foot taller than the un-bermed land, which will be the orchard alleys. The goal was not to elevate the trees much higher than the alleys, but to pile topsoil & compost closest to where the trees will be planted. These small berms will also help keep the trees at or above grade as the soil settles back down with the winter rains.
The ground is now ready for trees! We need to stretch out the drip hose and install the irrigation valves and then we'll be all set to plant almost a thousand this winter and then more in the spring.