Support Species

There is a saying that trees grows on trees, means trees support other trees, remains of tree becomes manure for other trees. I am just listing a set of cases which I came across about growing support trees in orchard.

Fukuoka san suggests to plant 10 black wattle trees per quarter acre for soil improvement. According to him, it acts as a windbreak and also as a shade tree during summer in warm regions.

When I visited a farmer called Iyyunni (Late) in 2009, in Anthiikkad,Trichur he was suggesting to grow as many trees as possible and cut and mulch which shades your main crop.

In a syntropic farming video Byron Grows says about global planting where many support species like eucalyptus,lucern etc...These are planted before fruit trees planted so that environment is first created. In one video he says, he plants support species as close as 75cm.

In Subash Palekar's planting pattern there is a glyricidea planted in every 4.5feet.

K.V.Dayal, a veteran organic farmer from Alappuzha,Kerala says to harvest sunlight as much as possible using plants, and no sunlight should be wasted. Harvested sunlight returned to soil is fertility.

Geoff Lawton, in his video Shade as a dryland strategy says Create shade first ->then soil improves-> then water stays -> then crops grow. Cooling the land is as powerful as adding water. Use tough fast growing trees like Prosopis (Karuvelam in Tamil?), Jerusalem Thorn, Acacia. Shade is managed...more sun in winter and more shade in summer...Instead of We need irrigation to grow plants” it comes to “We need shade first so water can stay”.

Also a single support tree type is not suggested since different strata levels are the ones which cool earth more. Each strata level will shade the land and hence totally it will be more effective.

Rainfed farming is a challenge in summer, temperature reaches above 40 degree and if summer rains are delayed, plants are stressed. So plan is to plant as many different support trees, mostly leguminous so that land is completely shaded.