Young fruit trees, meadow & guilds.
Targeted plantings to increase pollinators to the flowering fruit trees. Increasing fruit production 60%-80%.
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Pollination guilds have been used well before Christ's era. Without them, people could die. How did we lose this basic knowledge? Worse, today, meadows & guilds are sprayed with weed killers and fruit trees are genetically modified to be resistant to those weed killers.
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I'm a proponent of fruit orchards & guilds for schools instead of vegetable gardens. Much easier to caretake, greater lifespan, & pollinator habitat is increased.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken in client garden this month. Jefferson followed us across the acres! He knows it is all about him. A bit more about guilds.
My orchard plants are blueberries, pears, figs, scuppernong grapes and pecans. Few pests, great return. Beneficials on blueberries and pears in the spring are awesome to see.
ReplyDeleteI think pears are an underrated fruit. We eat pear pie, pear preserves, pear sauce with pineapple and fresh pears. The trick to mellow pears is to pick in August, refrigerate for a few days, bring out to room temperature and let them soften to juicy goodness. The chill period is necessary. Nobody ever tells us these things.
A beekeeper friend is educating me about bees. I did not know, for example, that bees know hybridized flowers because they don't produce much pollen, so the bees learn not to visit hybrids. When she goes to the nursery, she looks for the plants that have the most bees or butterflies on them.
ReplyDeleteInteresting about pears.