Welcome to my first blog post! It's snowing this Tuesday morning here in Madison, WI! This is the second snow of the season, and while I don't expect these flakes to stick around (the ground is definitely not cold enough yet), I'm still glad I got out and did some raking and bed work over the weekend.
I've got a decent suburban size property with a fenced in backyard and no HOA, and I'm working on turning my yard into a permaculture forest/play land for my kids. We've got LOTS of projects going on - that's just how ADHD families roll - and I'm hoping that talking about them in my blog here will help me weather the winter cabin fever. This post is all about my food forest, specifically the fruit trees I've planted and their guilds. I also have two berry patches and a micro grape "vineyard" that I consider part of the food forest project, but today is all about the fruit trees and their guilds.
Let's get to know my micro orchard!
Cherries, Pears, and Guilds
I have 4 pear trees and 3 cherry trees. MOST of these have the groundwork done for their immediate proximity guilds, but a couple I still need to put guilds around in the spring. Of the ones with guild space prepped, the most basic just includes mulch and some rotted wood, and a few bulbs of garlic I sowed in late October. I'll be adding plants in the spring to those first, to get the root systems kickstarted.
Some of the tree guilds are decently established already, though! My first fruit tree, the Lapins cherry, has comfrey (Russian blocking 14) and Ozark Beauty strawberries. The Bartlett and Suncrisp pear trees have either comfrey or false indigo (a cultivar, but I forget the specific line; I'll have to look for the tag), as well as Ozark Beauty strawberries. Those two pear trees, as well as the Lapins cherry, are from the 2022 season. This year I also added a D'Anjou pear, Patten pear, Black Tartarian cherry, and Montmorency cherry. Those are the trees whose guilds mostly just have mulch, rotted wood, and a couple bulbs of garlic around them right now.
I am VERY proud of my micro orchard work. I love these trees and I can't wait to see them grow. I am concerned about the health of a couple of them, and I would like to invest in some RootShield Plus+ (I'm not sponsored in any way by this; I just highly value the scientific research from Gary Harman on Trichoderma) to see if I can protect them from further trauma. The science on the trichoderma strains in RootShield products is, simply put, absolutely fascinating. I learned about Dr. Harman's work from an episode of a podcast I listen to - In Search of Soil - in which Dr. Harman was the guest interviewee. REALLY good stuff - if you're into science, I cannot recommend it enough.
The future for these trees includes further development of the guild members and then eventually interconnecting the guilds to create a food forest habitat. In January I will be starting seeds for the bulk of the remaining guild members:
* Desmodium glutinosum (Pointed-leaved tick trefoil) for nitrogen fixing
* Fragaria virginiana (wild strawberry) for ground cover, pollinator magnets
* Allium tricoccum (wild leek/ramps) and Asarum canadense (Canada wild ginger) for pest deterrent (assuming there will be enough shade generated by the trees and the tick trefoils)
* Geranium maculatum (wild Geranium, a favorite of mine), Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed, another favorite) for pollinator magnets. I also have an unspecified type of milkweed; I found a stray mature pod on the side of an urban road (no greenery nearby) and decided I could justify taking it because I would ensure the seeds go to good use.
* I'm just remembering that I scattered a bunch of chive seed heads in some of those guilds as well, so hopefully we'll see some volunteer clumps of chives appear, too! They're a cultivar but I don't recall the specific name.
In all likelihood, I will be adding annual plants to the guilds as well, either edible from whatever seeds I buy from Baker Creek. Maybe some fun pollinator magnets like an annual lavender or something similarly spiky to deter pests (BUNNIES), or some climbing fruit vines that won't overtake the trees.
I am not a cultivator of beauty. I took my fairly-well-seeded grass lawn and turned it into what is basically a field of creeping Charlie in between spots of garden, kids toys, and food forests or berry patches. The guilds and fruit trees are also not things of visual beauty to the typical suburban eye, and thank goodness for that. But I grew up in a national forest, wild to the core, and I love every square inch of the natural chaos I have been cultivating. So, as I add photos of these projects, just keep in mind that you are seeing the work of a goblin gardener who finds purpose and fascination in the bond between native plants and their soil companions, and not in aesthetic arrangements of sterile cultivars. 
