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The first thing I would do would be to inventory what is ground around the area that has that kind of soil to see what nature has been able to accomplish! There may be patterns in the vegetation that tell you about fractures or fissures in the rock. Often trees can grow surprisingly well in thin soil. Depending on your location and zone, some productive trees for thin dry soils could be chestnuts, shagbark hickory varieties, yellowbud hickory, Asian and European pear, Chinese Yellowhorn, goumi, blueberry. If you tell me more details I could be more specific :). But the most important is an inventory of what is growing around there now.

@@jkochosc im so happy you mentioned chestnut! I planted 4 chestnut trees anyway to see what would happen, they seem to be liking the sun. I’m in coastal maine, zone 5. My land is cleared with mostly grass but there is one birch, one century old ash (in decline), some sumac, an ancient lilac, and one 20 year oak. The rest is goldenrod, jewelweed, willow. There were also 2 10 year cherry trees that were dead that I cut down.

When you say patterns in vegetation that indicate fractures in rock, do you mean areas with taller grass?

@@rootmother quantity, quality and species all help you get an idea what’s happening below ground. I would suggest to plant a lot of willows, maybe two for each fruit and nut tree you plant. Prune them back over the years to fertilize the fruit and nut trees. I think the general approach in this video would be quite good for your context - make some planting lines where you loosen the little soil that’s there, add some compost and plants, seed in densely with whatever else you can find around that grows well, and all this plants get pruned to fertilize the fruit and nut trees you want to grow. It can seem like a lot of work but managing rows instead of individual trees here and there is really very effective

@@jkochosc okay, I'm going to try this method! I haven't propagated before but I wanted to take a stab at it anyway and I've heard willows are on the easier side. I may also try to plant elderberry as well. Thank you so much, I'm excited to test this out.

@@drewjohnson4673 check out my update on the greenhouse, it shows how well the cutting all grow! Thousands every year in this system.

I think the ergonomics on pulling the lever down in the vertical plane are pretty good, but I’d love to see your idea if you build it! I’m building several of these since they make grafting accessible to more people.

@@rofl970 I’ve had some batches of seed go 100% and others almost nothing. Nothing I can figure out!

@@3FeathersFarmstead yeah they’re really ideal - already come with conical mounting holes for a flush surface, super durable, cheap! I was planning on using a nice chisel until I found the video linked here in the comments.

Yes we had to get a temporary food service permit, wasn’t too bad. But we couldn’t sell it!! Can you believe it? We popped our own fresh popcorn at the farmers market and we sold so little it was laughable. I thought since there wasn’t any at the market people would buy it like crazy, but I was wrong. I’m not very good at marketing I guess 😂

@@jkochosc thanks for the response... very surprising indeed! I will try it out at our market... but maybe not go as big as I'd planned. Good news is if it doesn't sell, we will save on the small fortune we spend on organic popcorn 😁

They do!

Thank you. I’ve contacted Elmer about 3 34x100’ high tunnels and he was very helpful. He gave me a quote over the phone and he is sending me the quote in the mail so I can see exactly what is included. Thanks for sharing your experience and video. I believe that I’ll be going through them

@@joshua511 I just use a bench grinder with relatively quick passes so it doesn’t get super super hot

@@rishtunkhwa8990 yes some persimmons can have both sexes of flower. It’s rare but it does happen! It could also be that some branches were grafted.

@@peterellis4262 yes, in this case it depends on the species. Anything that is in the biomass zone will be coppiced, pollarded, or otherwise pruned until the row of planted trees overshadows the biomass plants. There are a few trees that I will leave and encourage like a nice shagbark, cherry, black walnut. I find this kind of approach gives me better results because of the intensive accumulation of material. Even by next year you will see the herbaceous grows around the accumulated line start to grow twice as fast as the “robbed” area, and all that fertility Will be going into the trees as they get their start in life. As the biomass alley gets continually cut, I will be frost seeding in grasses and legumes to start pumping out more biomass and the cycle continues!

But we do appreciate ur videos for the other to see

@@RachelSalzmancircusdance thanks! more like this in what sense?

@@heavymetalpermaculture I have absolutely nothing against goats - I’ve had them in the past but don’t now. However, I have done calculations and found that hazelnuts can outproduce any milk animal in terms of calories, fat, and protein produced per area. This area will one day be pecans, walnuts and hazelnuts along with the fruit trees that are here. Maybe one day I will graze some sheep underneath the tall trees - that will be a lovely retirement plan!

@@jakob497 yes I have been working with it here for a decade - my farm was and still is covered in it. I find that it doesn’t actually produce that much mass. It looks like a lot and grows 6’ tall but you make a huge row of it and in a few weeks it’s just gone to almost nothing! Not as good as grass from what I’ve seen

@@jakob497 I looked up yields and it looks like 4100kg per hectar dry matter yield which is pretty decent, I guess I was wrong! I may be biased because it’s very very spreading and very hard to control so maybe I’m not as much of a fan of it as I should be!

@@jkochosc where did you find this data? Sounds like a cool resource. I just want to establish it in my tree rows along with all the other medium life cycle ground covers like comfrey (b14), horse radish, sun choke, cardon, estragon, wormwood,sage… it’s nice at surprising the grasses, and I think diverse living cover is preferable to a decomposing one if it’s not to much work. In the end it’s all subjective, right :)

@@jakob497 I would highly recommend against mugwort in the tree row. I have been managing mugwort around trees for a long time and if you aren’t on top of it multiple times every season, it will really stunt your trees. I have learned that the living cover should end at least a foot or so away from the tree row, and that space is for mulch - from the biomass row and from the tree row pruning as well. The trees need a bed of decomposing lignin on top of their roots to reach their peak.

@@jakob497 hero.epa.gov/hero/index.cfm/reference/details/reference_id/6979420

@@seanhoward3531 roughly I think it needs to be 18” high and 24” wide minimum. Ideally larger. If you make one check after a few weeks and see what’s going on in there. It should still have moisture and be starting to decompose. If it is drying out too deeply into the pile then you need more! Can cover with herbaceous material too to help lock in the moisture.

​@@jkochosc gotcha. Thanks!

@@JoyoftheGardenandHome sorry, any time! Will email you :)

@@paulyounger1190 it’s wild that most orchards, even organic and biodynamic, just pile up prunings and burn them! And then import nutrients. Of course the big long term question is always about pest and disease buildup. I believe that if all the material is really broken down well and essentially cold composted on the ground it will favor a healthy microbial community and not disease, but much of this is still uncharted territory.

​@@jkochosc Agreed! I'm psyched to see your explorations and results, thanks again for sharing. I am doing some similar ramial mulching experiments on second year mixed orchard rows. I was a little skeptical at first, but I came out at night one time to observe and I heard a rustling noise and looked down and found dozens of huge earthworms that were crawling all around, pulling on the prunings, trying to drag dried leaves off the to their burrows. There are also visible burrows all throughout the rows now, with little bits of leaf stems and stuff sticking out. My branches are still holding up quite a bit though, I think I need a deeper pile like yours to help break down the ramial wood though. Either way, the possibility of converting prunings to in-situe worm castings with only living systems and a bit of manual labor is awesome.

@@paulyounger1190 the size of pile is key - it has to be big and compact enough to lock moisture in all year long. If you can get it to that depth it breaks down in months not years. Great to hear about your experience!

Honestly I think people get too hung up on the pathogen carrying capacity of dead wood in orchards. A lot of saprotrophs and pathogens are also important endophytes that just express different habits depending on context. There are exceptions - I wouldn’t recommend mulching with fireblight prunings. But generally healthy plants should be able to handle proximity to their own dead tissues IMO

@@sambonney4608 totally agree. They are right to worry if they scatter some prunings around and the wood has moisture but also air and drying cycles, like not even enough moisture to decompose leaves. In that case you are building disease potential. But if it’s actively composting and full of life, I feel like it’s very worth it. But with the caveat that I am not a commercial seller of retail fruit! I think I will be one day, but only if this strategy works. If not, I will have to figure out some processing thing instead. In a way it is uncharted territory - I don’t know of a single northern operation that really uses their pruning wood in this way. Flail mowing in the row middle is quite different. This row of apples is a very good test because they are all varieties with very little resistance to scab, rust, or fireblight 🤣. They are 7 years in the ground and have moderate scab pressure, but this year I won’t get any information because the spongy moth took off the entire crop. Still not convinced this is a good context for apples - the pears are happy though!

@@swiss_arborist_barmetbaump3817 I have added all those and more! Continually pruning and adding biomass

@@swiss_arborist_barmetbaump3817 yes absolutely that’s what I want to arrange for my tractor. We just don’t have front mounted sickle bar mowers available here really.

@@gauvaindf I embrace diversity of measurement systems. The width is roughly 2.4 Erik long

@@woodswiser2513 direct seed and I grow a lot of perennials in plug trays for planting with a hori in tight situations - works in these lines. But I think with a larger planting I would leave a bigger planting space for sure!

Use a drill with planter auger. Fast and effective

@@syntropyworks I have used that and it makes sense for tighter soil. This here is nice and loose

Youre too Rude

@@marklloyd6433 I think rye is a good option, maybe mix in some vetch. This form can work with really any material, tree prunings, whatever biomass you have or can plant. You can grow a few species of eucalyptus in the UK too! So many options. Here orchard grass is the most productive cool season perennial bunch grass, then perennial rye, but they are nowhere near the biomass production of warm season perennial bunch grasses like Panicum virgatum.

​@@jkochosc Interesting. Got lots of hedgerow here that needs cutting about this time of year. I have used it as mulch before but only once because when the leaves decomposed it left lots of woody material and the weeds still grew through and hoeing was impossible without removing it. I think with packing it with the mulch former this could be workable though because weeds will be suppressed. We could even use wire loops to pin it down, much like the pins used for regular weed fabric, after pressing into the form to give it better longer term structure and less oxidisation. Great shout on the vetch. I think if I get some vetch in now I can interplant with cereal rye as I get to late august. Not sure how the rye will overwinter if i get it in this early. Keep up the great work looking forward to whatever else you share.. you are a true Agronaut bro!

@@marklloyd6433 using woody material in this way is very doable but needs specific systems of breaking the material down. I will do a video on that at some point as I have been doing that quite a lot lately and have figured out some pretty big efficiencies

@@jkochosc Excellent - looking forward to that!

Oats, Rye, Brome grass will do it. Especially Rye, not Rye grass, Rye

I would suggest to Plant it super densely with hardy trees that can grow in that kind of soil like sycamore, locusts, pin oaks, catalpa, and then prune them as your fertilizer for your fruit and nut trees.

@@jkochosc I like that idea. I've been planting more and more but I need to really go for it and pack things together in the early stages.

@@SteveNoverini sunflowers are a great choice to start mobilizing nutrients and feeding soil and pollinators…and people for that matter

@@jkochosc yes, after a year I had excellent soil in the location. Just needed to bulk it up with free materials and roots in the ground.