Mixed Fruit Grove

[fremmel]

At our house near Udon I'm getting ready to plant a little over a rai with one or two each of a lot of different kinds of fruit trees. We've made a list of around 30 different fruit trees we'd like to plant, including avacado, tamarind, citrus, mango, guava, and a bunch of other stuff. This will be primarily for personal use but maybe when the trees are bigger we'll sell the surplus. I've set up the rows 5 meters apart and figure that for bigger trees, like tamarind, I can just skip a row or space them farther apart on the rows or, like mango, keep them trimmed back. I know some of the fruit probably won't do well here but we can irrigate when we need to and I thought we'd give it a shot.

But, are there any trees that are going to have problems in a mixed grove like this? I've read that some vegetables don't like each other, like peas and beans with garlic and onions, but I don't know about trees. Are there any incompatibilities among tropical fruit trees?

[drtreelove]

I can't think of any incompatible fruit trees, except in respect to shading of smaller trees by larger growing trees; so consider the spacing as you mentioned, and think of the path of the sun and plan your home orchard as best you can to allow full sun to each tree.

A very important factor has to do with cultural conditions and especially watering and drainage. How are you going to irrigate? And what is the drainage like? Avocadoes and citrus are notorious for developing Phythophthora root rot if kept too wet, especially at the root collar (base of the tree trunk). So plant those in the best draining area of your plot, not at the low point where water collects.

Here's some other information that you might find interesting.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad230e/AD230E02.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how_5090143_fruit-tree-bear-fruit.html

[fremmel]

Well, I'm glad none of my trees will hate each other. One less thing to worry about.

The grove is laid out with the rows running north/south and there's nothing around the grove that will shade it so there should be good sun for the trees.

Drainage on the land is kind of a mixed bag but I've tried to compensate for it. The field where I'm putting the grove has a slight slope of around 2 or 3%. The soil is a layer of 1 to 1/2 meters of fine sand with some clay on top of an impermeable layer of hard white clay. The net effect of this is that during the rainy season the soil gets saturated and then the excess water flows downhill. If there's no grass cover the soil goes with it. But at least there's no standing water. I've had the field plowed at an angle not quite perpendicular to the slope to channel the water slowly to the deeper drainage ditch along the road by the field. I had the tractor reverse direction when it was plowing to throw the soil toward the rows where I'm going to plant the trees and away from a center line between the rows. This gives me some raised ground for the rows and channels for the water between the rows. There's a difference of about half a meter between the bottom of the channel and the top of the row so I hope that's enough to head off the root rot.

For irrigation I'm planning to go with a drip system so I can just water the trees with the amount each needs and not water the weeds. I've still got some reading to do to find out the best way to do that.

Thanks for the links. Looks like some helpful info.

[sid1967]

Would be nice to hear how the trees are doing.

[fremmel]

I'm afraid theirs very little to report just yet. We did the plowing last week and haven't quite finished dressing the rows. But my wife's been frantic to plant something so we do have some coconuts and bananas that are not officially part of the orchard but we've planted at the row ends next to the drainage ditch.

The stubs you see behind the bananas are part of the lemon grass we've planted to stabilize the sides of the drainage ditch. We've planted them on about 12" or 18" centers across the face of the ditch. We water them with a soaker hose I made from drilling small holes in a length of the cheap 5/8" clear plastic tubing. Seems to work pretty well.

I hope to start setting out some trees over the next few weeks. We've been collecting trees from plant fairs and road side shops over the past year or so and have most of them under a 50% shade cloth. This time of year I'm assuming it will be safe to just set them out under full sun. The avocado seedlings, I've been told, need to have extra protection so I thought I'm build a shade cloth tent over them for a few months.

To actually plant the trees, unless I'm told differently, I'm planning on digging a hole bigger and deeper than the existing root ball. Then toss in a couple of handfuls of manure, backfill a little and mix with the manure, backfill some more, water well, and then put in the plant. I'm going to dike around the trees like with the bananas and coconuts and add mulch to make it easier to water.

From the picture you can see that right now the trenches just dead end. I'll connect them to the drainage ditch after I've run some water down them to make sure it doesn't stand anywhere. As you can also see, right now it's all bare, loose sandy soil. I want to plant something soon to stabilize the soil before rainy season and to keep the weeds down during rainy season. I need to do more research but I was thinking something like sowing wing beans and then watering them in. Probably been covered here before but I haven't looked thoroughly yet.

So begins the career of a fledgling fruit grower. Hopefully in another year or two I should start to see a little fruit coming in. If nothing else, at least some bananas.