How would you plan a fruit tree collection on a blank canvas?

[joehewitt]

My head is spinning and I don't know how to get started. I just purchased land in Hawaii for the purpose of growing a fruit tree collection. Not a farm (no plans for market), just a place to indulge my addiction to collecting tropical fruits from around the world.

It's 42 acres in Hilo at 350 feet elevation with deep soil - old sugarcane land that is now cow pasture. Some flat and some east facing slope. Around 150" of rain per year.

How would you design a property like this? It's unreasonable to plan the whole 42 acres at once, but I don't want it to evolve to become messy and inefficient over time. The plants will trickle in slowly over many years and I want a good strategy for keeping them organized and maintainable in the long term.

I am leaning towards pig fencing just one or two acres and filling it up randomly as a learning experience. Part of me wants a neat grid with orchard spacing, but part of me wants meandering permaculture. Some land will be reserved for nursery propagation and some for selection and hybridizing.

I could use some ideas from all the experienced collectors in this community. What would you do?

[Chupa King]

Utilize the 42 acres. Most things will grow well in Hilo. Getting a good fence up in small zones may be your best bet to start with. We use some plants here for "living" fence posts... so you could try that approach. We are doing it on our small homestead.

Oh... and plant lots of coconuts.

[joehewitt]

Sounds cool, is your living fence effective against pigs?

[bsbullie]

Reach out to Oscar, aka Fruitlovers on this forum, for best advice.

[spaugh]

I would plant trees on 2 acres on a nice neat grid.  Then start a motocross trail or maybe a nudist colony on the other 40 acres. 

[raimeiken]

you could try Kei apple as a living fence/hedge. Lots of big thorns.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fencing-nature-reserves-kei-apple-jean-db

[SoCal2warm]

Plan out a curvy network of paths. Not that you have to build any path but just mark out where you want the walking areas to be. Then imagine walking along those paths and what trees you want to be where. You can make individualized areas. Perhaps brush up on landscape architecture, or if that's really not your thing you might consider the possibility of hiring a consultant to help give you some ideas of how to lay it out.

Having some contrast between denser forest and more open flat areas can also make it more ergonomical and visually appealing. Consider some permaculture ideas too, like swales on a slope.
What you are building is sometimes called a "food forest". That's something else you can research.

[Chupa King]

Sounds cool, is your living fence effective against pigs?

As long as your trees are solid in the ground and you've attached the fencing nice and secure you shouldn't have problems.

You definitely want to go with a food forest approach. I offer edible landscaping and can also help consult. It's good to see people are planting more and more food. Keep up the good thoughts!

[pineislander]

Spend some time living on the land planning. Think about short, intermediate and long term goals. Get good local knowledge from experienced successful people, wise and old ones. Permaculture is a design science and there is a lot to learn from that approach, but it doesn't have to be meandering unless the lay of land determines it. There's lots of room for mechanization, check out Fazenda da Toca in Brazil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kujJUso6m1w

42 acres is big, it could support 8 families with a livelihood, or break a man's back and the bank account. Find some good families without too many social problems and work with them. Sounds like plenty of water and plenty of grass. Being in sugar cane and pasture the land has been to some extent degraded. Those are the resources you have to work with, you can use them wisely to help you or let them control your destiny. The land untouched wants to return to a succession from grass towards forest in the usual way, so find a way to let that happen according to your will and benefit. An agroforestry approach would be my choice, because it increases resources over time, rather than increasing inputs. Have fun!

[boxturtle]

keep us posted on your progress I'm curious too

[greenman62]

agree with pineislander
observation is key.

go at different parts of the day
watch the sun, the rain
see what areas are damp, dry, shadow, full-sun etc...

generally, you would want to put larger trees on the North side
but take into account species and growth.

personally, i would start out with planting hundreds of fast growing nitrogen fixers.
maybe creates some swales, especially if you have dry areas.
and i would pick half a dozen income plants, and plan to inter-plant them.
(nut trees, cacao, litchi?)
fast growing species like papaya can offer food and income. seeds are cheap.
and will provide biomass when they die or get shaded out by larger species.

and yeah, i would build 2 houses ASAP and get some people in there to help.

talk to the locals, you just might find a guy who knows the best species to grow
how to do it, and maybe he needs a place to live...

and if you need someone to give you a hand for a *good 2 hours* a day
(for free fruit) i would be happy to help

Actually
there is a guy named Jagannath
who has been in several countries learning Permaculture, by renovating large sections of land.
He also teaches permaculture. ive learned a lot just from watching dozens of his videos.
He is intelligent, and obviously learned a lot, but is also very hands-on.

The Natural Farmer
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdOS7iS-fzVJ2nPJHNlfFQ

[Tropheus76]

Ponds. Have fun with it. If I had that sized area I would have several ponds connected by some smaller canals with large overhanging trees providing shade on them with stone foot bridge crossings. Use the dirt to fill in low areas elsewhere or large mounds for trees that don't like as much water and make a small waterfall elsewhere using a water pump. Then work out from there. The whole trail idea sounds like a winner but again, you will need to decide whether you want an orchard or a food park as the undergrowth is going to drive you nuts even on a couple acres if you cant mow it.  Then again, with that amount of sized land you can easily do both. There are some fruit trees that like being near river edges. My neighbor across the street has only 10 acres and he has 4 different small ponds, two surrounded by different water loving fruit trees.

You definitely have room for both a fun area and a more serious orchard area that is designed for easier upkeep and you want easy upkeep for the majority of it. Thankfully irrigation is a non issue. My neighbor has a hard time taking care of just his ten acres and has had to hire someone to help a few times a week. Unless this is going to be a full time job for you, you need to consider this as well. Invest in a good mower. Don't be in a rush to fill the area up at once. For pollination reasons you might consider certain areas for certain tree types. Mangoes I imagine get pretty tall there. Maybe make one corner your mango corner and start with one at the edge of the property and start planting inward.

Another thing I personally always wanted to do was to walk through a mature allspice orchard. I have heard the smell when surrounded and under the canopies of dozens of allspice trees is amazing. Cant do that on my dinky 2 acres. 

[FrankDrebinOfFruits]

There is lots of wisdom above. I can second many of these ideas from experience.

[Mr. Clean]

A lot of good advice; probably a few envious members.   I suggest studying the layout of the Fruit & Spice Park and other botanical gardens.  Hurricane Andrew leveled the F&S park, so they were able to correct certain "sins" and add things like water features, etc. after Andrew.  If you have the resources, you might contact a landscape architect to develop a "master plan" for the property to help develop your vision.

Perhaps contacting Ken Love and Oscar (Fruit Lovers), may be useful in determining what will fruit well at your location. 

[ScottR]

Congrats Joe, on getting some land on big Island, for sure spend time on land no hurry and figure out what you would want on your land. If you've got a sloop to the land a pond up at high end could be coll with possible stream to bottom pond. Just some California boys thoughts have fun lay it out 8)One think for sure no more worries about frost

[mangomike]

As Tropheus78 mentioned, I would plan for ponds, and swales/runoff control in general. That part of the Big Island can get some amazing rainstorms and you don't want that nice deep soil to wash away. Plus ponds open up the possibility for aquaculture and some nice edible aquatic plants (taro, water chestnut, lotus, Trapa etc.) I would suggest that you start from your homesite and plant outwards. I would also suggest that you plant your windbreak plantings ASAP to give them a headstart over your fruit trees. Bamboos are the fastest; get in touch with the folks at Quindembo Bamboo Nursery near Waimea. They can advise you on species selection, best edible species etc. You've got lots of room, have fun and go nuts. Oh, and post lots of pictures!

[HIfarm]

I would make fencing my first priority, otherwise, the pigs can wipe out a lot of trees fast.  I assume you are probably along Hamakua, so you probably have plenty of pigs to deal with, especially if there are any active mac farms near you.  You would be amazed at the amount of damage a few pigs can do in a night -- you'd swear someone was out there with a tractor & plow.  If the land is undisturbed, the pigs do not tend to bother it that much.  However, if you cut or clear some land or start a compost pile or mulch plants, pigs love to root around there.

I would suggest hogwiring whatever you plan on planting (you don't need to do it all now).  Standard practice here is to also run a strand of barb wire along the bottom to discourage the pigs from digging under.  If you run the standard hogwire, you will find that baby pigs go through it readily and can still cause some damage.  As some added advice, if you plan on fencing along a pali, put your fence line a good distance back from it.  The pigs will put in a pig highway along your fenceline &, if you are too close to the pali, the soil will erode & you will have to be replacing that section of fence.

Get quotes & references for the fencing.  Prices vary ENORMOUSLY here & it is not an indication of quality of the job or materials.  If you are interested, shoot me an email & I can give you the contact info for the guy I used.  He does a lot of ranches here.  I got a tighter hog wire (no piglets getting through) with an aluminum / zinc coating that is superior to conventional galvanizing for less than most other bids (using conventional materials).

John

[fruitlovers]

I do consultations. So if you want, next time you are in Hawaii can go out to your place and give you specific recommendations.
I am going through the same thing right now as i recently got an adjoining parcel. This is the third orchard i'm designing for myself. First thing i did was to get a surveyor to locate and mark all property pins, then fence the whole thing out with good durable hog wire fencing. Get somebody that knows what they are doing. I can give you recommendations. Next you want to scout your land and see where best soil is, and where you want to plant trees. I then dozed the part i wanted to plant so that it will be easy to mow with a rider mower/tractor. Next brought in an excavator to make all the planting holes. Excavator may not be necessary in your soil. A tractor with a big auger might be sufficient. Get yourself some graph paper and play around with how you want to space the rows and what you want to plant where? You're probably going to need to set up a nursery area for young plants. A shadhouse is usually sufficient.