Rural Heritage October/November 2025

Pesticide-Free Home Orchards HPD 2025 Seminar

living plants build soil health better than mulch. Grasses should be less than 10% of the population under the trees. John Kempf spoke about Helen Atthowe, an Ecological Farmer and Orchardist in Oregon. Her organic farm was surrounded by conventional farms that used chemicals. She had 40 acres of peaches and other fruit that she grew organically, without herbicides or pesticides. Helen said that fruit trees don’t need mowed grass. She planted forbs or blooming plants under her fruit trees. Over time, this proved to be the solution to insects and diseases. All season long, the blooming plants produced nectar that attracted birds and spiders, major predators of insects. A University of California study found 800 (!) species of spiders under Helen’s fruit trees. Legumes are not good under fruit trees because they produce too much nitrogen. Nodules on legumes are a favorite food for voles. But if you do plant clover, graze it heavily because it will outgrow your other crops. The majority of fruiting is done in orchards. The single greatest cost of a home orchard is labor. You don’t want trees that you have to harvest with a ladder. Forget about pruning to get a nice tree. Prune for convenience at harvest. Summer pruning is best, from June 20 to July 10. When a tree breaks dormancy, there is new growth. Energy stored in the tree in the form of sugars then goes from the roots upward. After June 20, most of the sugars go back to the roots, though until leaf drop in October, there are some sugars stored in the tree canopy. With summer pruning, a 3-foot shoot is pruned back to 1 foot. That way, it’s not such a shock to the tree. Semi and dwarfing rootstocks do not absorb nutrition and water so well as full size trees. You’re better off planting a regular tree that’s kept small by summer pruning rather than relying on root stock. Besides, rootstock has a greater effect on disease resistance than the tree itself. Four minerals that are generally deficient in our soils are magnesium, boron, selenium and iodine. John had to stop here because of the clock, but further discussion on these deficient minerals continued with his seminar on soil health.

by Mary Ann Sherman T en years ago, the consensus was that you couldn’t grow fruit without pesticides. Only sweet and tart cherries were resistant to disease and insects. A lot has changed since then with fruit other than cherries. Some 40 years ago, it took 18 weeks to grow a 6-pound chicken. For a smaller bird, it now takes six weeks. This is because today’s birds are fed optimal nutrition. After the Revolutionary War, 1775-1783, George Washington ordered the military to go into upstate New York to punish the Oneida and Cayahoga Indian Tribes for siding with the British. The military destroyed their food supplies, including hundreds of acres of peach, apple and cherry trees that had fed the tribes for generations. By today’s standards, these were no ordinary peaches. They were 4 inches across and 12 inches in circumference. In another military action out west, Kit Carson was ordered to destroy the food sources that had fed the Navajo families for years. A part of that action was that peach trees that were 100 years old were cut down in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. Conquistador and explorer Hernando de Soto brought two invasive species to America: wild hogs and peach trees. It’s easy to understand why wild hogs would be considered an invasive species, but peach trees? Indeed, in the 1950s peach trees grew in thickets like plum trees and were actually used as fences for livestock. When we use tillage and expose the soil to 30 inches of rain, many minerals like molybdenum, selenium and iron are stripped from the soil. A fruit tree should not be planted in a lawn. A good orchard should look like a meadow, with lots of flowering plants growing underneath the trees. In other words, forbs, that is, herbaceous plants that are not grasses. When you plant forbs like dandelions, onions, garlic and chives, day lilies and milkweed underneath fruit trees you basically eliminate flea beetles and powdery mildew. Under fruit trees, you need to plant eight or more different species, like rye, oats and wheat. For mulch, use hay or straw. Be aware that the root systems of

Rural Heritage

20