Permacultur-ISH: How close can we put fruit bushes?

[Sylvan]

We're planning apple trees with 20ft between the rows. We were going to put in 2 rows of 4ft wide beds (for rhubarb, comfrey etc) with three 4ft paths between them, but I've just watched a video that told me we should put small trees at the 10ft mark and fruit bushes at the 5ft ones...
so I thought perhaps one 4ft wide row of rhubarb beds in the middle and 2 rows of single fruit bushes halfway between the rhubarb and the apple trees - but that would mean the bushes would only be 4ft from the trees. Is that enough?

Alternatively we could go with the 2 rows of 4ft beds we've already marked out (or had, before the gales - probably just a pile of canes and tangled string now ) and put fruit bushes in one of them.

If we did that how far apart would the fruit bushes have to be?

The bottom row will have three 12ft beds, one 10ft and one 8ft (or possibly two 9ft ones instead if it's easier for the spacing).

Or would it work better with a single row of rhubarb?

[veggiechicken]

Have you take the height of the fruit trees into account? I assume they'll be on the north side?

[Sylvan]

They'll be on the east and west (ish - 'cos we ended up following the ridge line at the top). I was worried about how close is too close for the poor trees to bear - and how far apart fruit bushes have to be from each other

[veggiechicken]

I don't have any of my reference books with me but from memory in Forest gardening the aim is not to grow something in the shade of a taller plant. So a standard fruit tree would be on the shadiest side (north or east) and could have a dwarfing one next to it, then a fruit bush next to that, then say rhubarb, then strawberries. So you grow in stepped down tiers towards the sun. That way, the 20'. 10'. and 5' spacings make sense.

[Sylvan]

So I'd put the bushes up-slope from the trees and the rhubarb up-slope from the bushes and then leave a big gap before the higher row of trees? (Or lots of wild garlic and foxgloves )

I'd heard that blackcurrants, gooseberries and rhubarb don't mind a bit of shade. Have I got hold of the wrong end of the stick?

Since the trees are either 12ft or 16ft apart and they're only babies at the moment we should have several years before they cast an appreciable amount of shade so it may be worth doing for a while. I know rhubarb should be lifted and divided every 5 years or so. Do you know the productive lifespan of a fruit bush?

[yummersetter]

I can't quite grasp this layout. Can you do a diagram with north marked showing where the slope is and where your apples are planted? And I was wondering who gave the advice on the video?

[veggiechicken]

I'd been thinking the same, yummersetter! I can't get my head around which way the slope runs
If the trees are on top of the ridge, then the other plants should be downslope.

[boundtothesoil]

I'd heard that blackcurrants, gooseberries and rhubarb don't mind a bit of shade. Have I got hold of the wrong end of the stick?

Many commercial orchards, certainly in the Fens, used to grow acres of gooseberries under mature standard and half-standard apple trees, mainly desert varieties rather than cookers. This arrangement was common until the 1970s. My grandfather farmed this way in Wisbech, and there were only a few feet between the rows of gooseberries. The bushes lasted for at least ten years before being replaced and the crop, mainly the variety 'careless', provided an important supplementary income on the farm, being ready to harvest a few weeks before the earliest plums and apples. I can also recall gooseberries grown under Victoria plum trees, but the drooping, often very densely leaved near the ground, nature of these trees, seemed less suitable to this arrangement in terms of shading.

[Sylvan]

Thanks boundtothesoil. How close to the trees were the gooseberries planted?

VC and yummersetter, I shall try to attach a screen print of my plan (since it won't let me attach an excel file).

We're facing west (up-slope). The thick orange line on the right of the picture is as far north as I'm allowed to plant trees. The field does slope to the south as well but it's nothing like the ski-slope down to the east.

[yummersetter]

A couple more questions - what's the overall size and will the field 'background' be grassed? If so, are you going to graze or mow it?

[boundtothesoil]

How close to the trees were the gooseberries planted?

I can't give you an exact figure as I was a kid at the time. However, I remember that they would extend under the canopy of the adjacent trees - I guess the nearest bushes would be 6 feet away from the trunks. The apple trees were pruned so that the lowest branches were several feet above the ground in the main, but I can remember sometimes picking down the end of apple branches and being scratched by the gooseberry bushes - so they were pretty close. The bushes were pruned most winters and were not generally over 3 ft high.

[Sylvan]

It depends yummersetter. The bit that's shown on the plan is about 80ft x 80ft but we can go a bit lower down the slope before we hit solid rock and quite a bit higher provided the plants don't mind growing in sand and gravel (I thought maybe rosemary and lavender at the top). The rows are closer together higher up. 12ft above the top row of apples there's going to be a row of crabs, 12ft higher still will be a row of cherry plums, then there are rowans and lilacs and above those will be a row of rosa rugosa... and that's about as close as we can go to the veg beds without casting shade on them.

Basically the fruit bushes get to choose between the sand at the top of the hill, the bog on the other side (which the blueberries are loving ) or the halfway decent soil in the new orchard.

The field is predominantly grass (and buttercups ). I don't think I ought to graze - it'll play merry h*ll with my diet - so it'll be mown

[Sylvan]

Sounds as though 5ft might be a bit too close then boundtothesoil, since the poor trees are very young. Should really give them a chance.

[Two_Sheds]

I'd heard that blackcurrants, gooseberries and rhubarb don't mind a bit of shade.

They may not mind a bit, but they definitely do better in full sun. All fruiting plants do.

We have an oak tree in the middle of our veg plot at school. I'm not allowed to remove it, but it definitely affects how things grow in its shade: we didn't harvest anything at all on its shady side, nothing.

(it's not taking all the nutrition & moisture out of the soil, because the beds growing next to it in full sun are doing fine)

[Sylvan]

Might be better to have just one row of 4' wide beds along the middle then. That would put the edges of the beds 8' from the trees and since very few of the trees are likely to exceed 8' (and those that might are at the north end anyway) they shouldn't get shaded at all.

Shame. Seems like such a waste of space.

How far apart do fruit bushes need to be?