Choosing the types of fruit you first wish to grow begins the process of putting in an orchard.

Lay of
the land insists that certain practicalities be met, and chief among these is well-drained ground.
Terrain adjustments prior to planting can improve root prospects considerably where conditions
may be less than optimum. Good air movement plays a huge role in abating disease pressure and
getting tender blossoms through tenuous times. Orientation to the sun may be helpful if you have a
choice in the matter. Direct sunshine throughout the day empowers fruit buds, so sidestepping
excessive shade from tall trees and nearby buildings will be integral to productive cropping. The soil
structure at your place may seem mostly a matter of destiny. Hold tight, however, for soil biology
has the power to turn even a heavy clay soil into receptive earth as well as bind a porous sandy soil
back toward fertile promise.

Aerobic ground

The roots of fruit trees need to be able to “breathe" throughout the active growing season. Choose
planting locations where groundwater finds its summer equilibrium point a good 3–4 feet beneath
the surface. Pear trees will tolerate wet feet to some extent, but berries, stone fruits, and apples will
develop root rot in constantly anaerobic conditions.1

Don’t worry about puddles on semi-frozen ground at the height of spring thaw. It’s the normal
depth of the water table (once it settles) that determines whether tree roots will thrive or wallow.
Impermeable ledge relatively close to the surface can create drainage issues, even on sloping
ground. Some of you will be able to improve drainage by resurfacing your land to allow a lower-lying
swale to drain such pockets. Others may be able to install drainage tile to capture a high water table
above the tree site and redirect it via the flow of gravity to lower ground. Flexible black plastic pipe
with moisture-collecting slits, placed in a gravel trench, buried at least 24 inches deep, and then
covered with landscape cloth before backfilling does the job admirably. Such steps need to be taken
before the trees are planted, of course.

Creating planting mounds for individual trees, or more extended berms for group plantings, will
work provided you achieve depth enough for roots before they encounter permanent groundwater
or that impermeable ledge. Such rising of the earth happens in one of two ways. Importing structural
soil is fine if you can indeed get decent dirt. That means asking precisely where that convenient
dump-truck-load of loam might be coming from. Chemically treated soil taken from a non-organic
farm field is so biologically impoverished that vast amounts of fertilizer are needed to get a crop.
Mixing this abused soil with a significant amount of woodsy compost and soil amendments will be
necessary to restore some oomph within the terrain being formed. Cover cropping the resulting
berms for a year must be part of the plan as well. A better source (with respect to your orchard
needs anyway) is native topsoil being scraped away for yet another development. Creating miniature
dales with the soil already on site may gain that slight bit of elevation needed. Sloped terrain lends
itself to terracing—the piled edge of the berm now having the greater depth for fruiting plants. Both
approaches are absolutely ripe for some biological riffs.

Deeper berms can be made across a mild slope by trenching the uphill side of an envisioned row of
fruit trees and placing the removed soil along the downhill side. Filling the resulting trench with
ramial wood chips (above where the trees will go) creates a biological deposit account for tree roots
and mycorrhizae alike. This particular approach will be vital to create a catch basin for moisture in
inland regions on the West Coast, where irrigation is a far bigger issue than drainage.

A permaculture technique from Germany takes this idea of burying woodsy debris for long-term
fungal fertility to new heights. So-called Hugelkultur is nothing more than creating plantin