It might seem a bit strange to say this, but one of the things that has brought me the greatest amount of joy thus far in my orchard has been my cover crops! (Mind you, once my fruit trees are old enough to produce fruit, I imagine they’ll take first place in that race!) But for now, it’s quite a delight to look out over the orchard and see the beautiful variety of plants that are growing and thriving in every square foot – knowing that not only are they beautiful, but they are also saving me a significant amount of work and expense!

“How so?” you ask? Well, let me take you on a photo stroll through the orchard and I’ll explain what I mean.

One of the most noticable plants in the orchard is the bright yellow canola. This wasn’t actually part of my cover crop seed mix, (although some do include canola) but it just came up as a volunteer from the canola crop that was planted two years ago. None-the-less, it’s something I would plant on purpose in the future as canola produces some of the most biomass of anything I might plant. It will add a great deal of nitrogen-rich material to my soil when it dies this fall.

The other crop that I didn’t seed, but is growing anyway, is the barley/wheat that is volunteering from last year’s crop. The plot that I’m using for my orchard was rented out to a local farmer last year who planted this, and there is an abundance of it growing this year – which is great! This will give me a significant amount of straw that will provide the mulch for next years crop. Straw doesn’t break down quite as fast as other vegetation, so it’ll be great for suppressing weeds and holding in moisture.

Of the plants that I’ve purposely planted, one of the most visible right now is the radishes. These are one of the most useful plants growing in my orchard right now. First of all, they are big leafy plants that cover the soil really well – holding in moisture and blocking out weeds. Secondly, they have large, deep roots that drill down into the soil, breaking up compaction and leaving large voids as they decompose and feed the worms. This loosens the soil and provides gaps to hold water later. (The photo above shows the root in late June – imagine what it will be like at the end of summer!) Third, they are actually edible radishes. Put them in salads, eat them raw – how ever you like them! And finally, they have really pretty white flowers!

Crimson clover is another important plant in my cover crop. Clovers are great nitrogen fixers and make a great ground cover. I’m considering permanently planted the rows in between my trees primarily to clover for those reasons.

Field peas are another nitrogen fixer in my cover crop mix. They might not be as good as clover in the ground-cover department, but they’ll be a great source of nitrogen.

This photo has two crops. One is sunflowers and the other is rye. Sunflowers have good thick stalks that take quite a while to decompose. This is like having a layer of armour on your soil – protecting it from erosion, moisture loss, and weeds!

Rye is my main cover crop. I have planted more rye than any other plant in my orchard. Rye does all the stuff I’ve already talked about, but one of the biggest draws for me is that it is relatively inexpensive! I purchased my cover crop seed mix this spring (called “Nitro Seasonal Cocktail”) that consisted of 14 different varieties of plants all mixed together. This cost me about $120. I bought roughly 10x that amount of rye seed for roughly the same price. So you can imagine which one I seeded heavier!

And just on that note, I should mention quickly how I seeded everything. I broadcast my seed with a small push-broadcaster that throws the seed out in a 10ft radius. (When I got tired of pushing, I connected the spreader to my sons bike and had him do a few rows!) After seeding, I pulled a small set of harrows over it to cover the seed with soil best I could. The germination rate this way wasn’t nearly what a conventional seeder would do, but I tried to account for that in my seeding rate.

The last plant that I’ll mention is a new one to me this year. It’s called Phacelia and it’s actually quite a cool looking plant.

It will have some lovely purple flowers later on this summer that the bees will enjoy. If you need to attract pollinators, this is an excellent choice!

All of these plants put together will save me a ton of work. Less watering as they shield and shade the soil. Less fertilizing as they provide nitrogen and other nutrients to next year’s crops. Less weeding as they provide a living mulch for the plants they surround. And less tilling as they break up the soil and feed the worms and other microorganisms in the ground. It’s a win/win/win/win!

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below!

Ever since we first decided to move back to the country, our family has been throwing around possible farm names that we would sufficiently describe our farming enterprise. And over the past several months, we’ve come up with a lot of possibilities! (Some we’ve considered more than others!) ‘The Rusty Bucket Orchard‘ was a contender for quite a while. Nick’s favourite (‘Yaks and Snacks’) had some great marketing possibilities. ‘Boardwalk Farms’ was proposed in honor of the boardwalk we build through the swamp last summer. Even Uncle Mike’s suggestion of ‘Deerberry Farms’ was considered, but the logo for that one might not be good for marketing! But after much thought and careful consideration, we’ve finally landed on the name by which we want our farm to become known.

While we might be inclined to have a more ‘quirky’ name, in the end, Good Roots Orchard is the name that we believe summarizes well both what we do and who we are. Let me share with you the three ways that “Good Roots” reflect the essence of our family farm.

‘Good Roots’ Means Healthy Soil

We believe that healthy soil = healthy food! When you see all the life that is present in the soil and how each organism helps and supports the others, you can’t help but conclude that God’s design is incredibly effective! Over the past couple of years, we have increasingly become convinced that the best way to grow food is to grow it in the most natural way possible. Thus, the term ‘Good Roots’ reflect our desire to keep our soil naturally healthy. That means avoiding chemicals in herbicides and fertilizers, using no-till practices that disturb the soil structure as little as possible, and encouraging an abundance of bio-diversity in our orchard. I don’t know if there is a term that describes our practices exactly, but we have adopted a lot of our practices and principles from studying permaculture, regenerative farming, and organic farming. We may not subscribe fully to any one of those practices, but the bottom line is that we want to grow the best tasting food in the healthiest way while being the best stewards of the plants/land/animals in our care. We want to have good roots!

‘Good Roots’ Means Awesome Ancestors

We are incredibly blessed to have an amazing family heritage! Our children have the benefit of being the fourth-generation of God-honoring, hard-working Alberta farmers. On both sides of the family, their parents, their grandparents, and their great-grandparents have all farmed in Central Alberta – and they all loved, honoured, and served the Lord! What a heritage! We are so grateful for our amazing family! We would most certainly not be where we are today if it were not for help and support of our extended families. We have some very good roots!

‘Good Roots’ Means Faith in Jesus

Jesus Christ said in John 15:5, “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” We believe that the most important thing in life that anyone can do is to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ – our loving Creator and eternal King. We strive to follow this verse and to ‘remain in him’ – that is, to develop an ever-deepening relationship with him. We don’t always do that perfectly, but that is our goal and highest priority. We desire to stay rooted in our relationship with Christ and to produce good fruit (both literally and figuratively) for Him. He Himself is our Good Roots.

This last week I reached an important milestone in my life-long dream of establishing an orchard… I bought a SCHWACK of plants! So far, I have ordered 150 Raspberries, 200 Strawberries, 26 Cherry trees/bushes, 6 Pear trees, 6 Apricot trees, 19 Plum trees, 10 Siberian Pea Tree (that’s a fancier name for caraganas!), 5 Seabuckthorn, 10 Hazelberts, 4 Grapevines, 4 Kiwi vines, 6 Gooseberries, 2 Jostaberries, 8 Blueberries, 6 Lingonberries, and 3 Hazelnuts. I also plan to order 96 Haskaps and 20 Saskatoons before the end of the year. If I did my math right, that’s a total of 581 plants!

Now of course, those plants won’t arrive until sometime this spring, but arrive they will!… ready or not! So there is one part of me that is almost giddy with excitement – and another part that is wondering “What in the world have I done!? How will I plant and care for 581 plants this spring!?” To be honest, there is some concern that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

However, I do have a plan! I am the personality type that will research extensively and then make a comprehensive and detailed plan before ever taking a step – so for me to make the conclusive decision of purchasing all these plants, I do feel confident that I know what I’m getting into! (Although I’m not sure my wife is convinced yet…)

So what my plan? I’m glad you asked!

The Plan

Beside our house, I have measured out an orchard area of 230′ x 400′ – which works out to be about 2 acres. This is where I plan to plant all these trees and bushes… and perhaps a few more! Last fall I bought nearly 3000′ of 4ft welded utility fence which will enclose the area with an 8′ fence, so hopefully, the deer won’t be be able to turn my orchard into their personal all-you-can-eat buffet!

I’ve always been inclined towards the odd and unusual when it comes to growing things and I’m always eager to try new plants or new methods of growing. So my plan may seem a little bit different from what you might see in a regular orchard – but let me show you my plan and then I’ll explain WHY I’m doing WHAT I’m doing.

Here is my plan!

Yes, that is a schwack of plants! And you might ask – why so many!? Well, if you read my last post, I mentioned that my initial goal for our orchard is to grow enough food for 5 families. This probably isn’t quite enough for that yet, but it’s a good start! There’s an old proverb that says “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago – the second best time is today!” So even though this will be a lot to take care of in the next couple years, I really want to get things started today!

Plus, I want to see what varieties grow exceptionally well in my particular location – so I’ve planted several different varieties of each type of fruit. For example, I’m planning for 8 different kind of plums, 12 varieties of haskap, 4 kinds of cherries, 3 types of pears, and so on… But I’d never know what grows best until I try growing it! So far, everything I’ve ordered is hardy to zone 3 or colder, but as my orchard expands, I’ll likely try some zone 4 things too.

You’ve probably noticed that I have some rows that are all one type of fruit (rows of raspberries, strawberries, haskaps, and saskatoons) and then there are a few mixed rows with all kinds of different fruit growing together. This is done for a reason.

Ideally, I would grow everything in mixed rows for the sake of soil health, pollination, moisture conservation, disease control, weed control (and I’ll talk about this in more detail in another post), but for some fruits, it just makes sense to keep them all together. For example, haskaps require netting to protect the berries from being devoured by the birds – so it makes sense not to interplant them with large trees! But whenever it makes sense, I plan to interplant different types of fruit trees, bushes, and a variety of other plants.

The other thing you might have noticed is that I plan to grow caragana (or Siberian Pea Trees!) in with all my fruit trees! For most prairie farmers, this seems like a crazy thing to do – caragana’s are almost weeds around here! They don’t provide fruit – so why would I grow them?

The reason why is because I want to limit (or even eliminate) the need to use chemical fertilizer, and so I intended to grow both caragana’s and seabuckthorn in my fruit rows because both of those are nitrogen-fixing trees. As nitrogen-fixers, they can take nitrogen out of the air and put it in the soil where my fruit trees can make use of it! To this end, I will be planting one caragana or seabuckthorn for every two fruit trees. This does take up some extra space and resources in the orchard, but I believe their benefits will outweigh their costs. Time will tell!

But that, in a nutshell, is my plan for my orchard. Of course, plans always change and we’ll see by next May how much we’ll have to adapt! But one thing is for sure – 581 plants are on their way and they’re going to need a home!

Anyone want to help plant a tree or two?