I plant wide rows of trees with the main crop in the center, then fast maturing sacrifice crops between them with mulch crops in in front and back of the main row. Here is picture looking at the mulch crops, here pigeon pea, young glyricidia and moringa. You might be able to see the small mamey on the left of the screen which is the main crop and the sugar apples behind that, which is the sacrifice crop. Eventually all but the main crop get removed.

 Moringa makes for a really good mulch plant even though it's not a legume, its biomass production is much greater than the pigeon peas. It is very tender and decomposes readily if chopped often.

Koryph - That looks amazing! I'm really excited to get some Gliricidia sepium seeds now. I haven't seen those used before. I have a bunch of moringa here too. I coppice those down as well and mulch most of it. I can only eat so much. I had a few larger trees that I eventually ripped out but the leaf cutter and carpenter bees LOVED the flowers. I had about 15 in a 4' x 8' patch but removed a few to give some space to my expanding jackfruit tree. How much room are you working with down there? That looks like the makings of a full on food forest!

We use those nitrogen fixers as well as lots of others, especially glyrcidium.  I like your ideas but personally,  I would not crowd so much stuff in.  We plant pigeon peas at least ten feet apart.  Inga is also fast growing and is used for shading cacao on organic farms in Costa Rica.  But it would be planted at about 60' spacing so that everything had lost of room.  Even though a plant is a nitrogen fixer it can still compete with your crops.
Peter

Peter - I wish I had that much room! I have done quite a bit of cover cropping with cowpeas, sunn hemp, and other stuff but I like to use the perennials and keep them cut low. If they get over crowded I just chop them down and mulch. You know you can prune them right. I am sure my whole yard is WAY over planted but I started watching Richard Campbell and the Dave Wilson fruit tube videos with Tom Spellman and got a bit obsessive. Then I found some Yonemoto pdfs that someone posted on the forum and realized I can do anything. hahaha. I have a Valencia Pride that I just rebooted to about 1' to see how low I can keep that. Is this the erythrina you were talking about?
http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/content/cockspur-coral-tree.htm

I think comfrey should be mentioned as well. It isn't a nitrogen fixer but THAT HIGH QUALITY BIOMASS!!!!!!!  Wowee!

I just saw you said you were going to raise it up 6". I would highly recommend going a lot more than that.

There is a compost pile in the middle of the circle that I put composting worms in but the thing you are talking about is probably the "poop tower". It is an IBC tote shell that I lined with welded wire fence and filled with horse manure. I am going to add some worms to that once it cools down. It is still cooking around 125 F in the middle.

Young Inga edulis in the middle of my dragon fruit trellis.


More established ice cream bean freshly pruned, about 17 months old.


Coppiced pigeon pea probably 14 months old next to established Hamlin orange.

Growing great here in central florida, i have most of them in full sun no burning so im guessing its the really dank soil i have them in that stays pretty moist but has good drainage, about 5.7-6.1 PH with every trace mineral, mushroom, microbes and their cousins. most germinated in a week or two but a few took a month to almost 3 months. The oldest is about 6 months old.

Nice! I like your style. Good to know the little guys are taking full sun close by.

You could put cardboard down and then mulch heavily on top of that. The worms LOVE it. I mulch everything very heavily and pull the mulch back just about an inch or two from the trunk. I keep mulch on my avocado about an inch thick directly on the trunk. Steve from Fruitscapes explained that the roots will grow out of the trunk and your mound will continue to grow slowly but that is for avocado. I try to mulch 6 to 8 inches deep away from the trunk though. All of my citrus have little to no mulch and I am using perennial peanut as a ground cover. Once it gets established it is pretty nice and thick with few weeds. I am now putting that over my entire yard planting area and letting it grow through my mulch. It is also a nitrogen fixer. I have also used sunshine mimosa but that takes longer to fill in. It is also a nitrogen fixer and has really neat pink puffball flowers. This works well for me because I am deed restricted and there is supposed to be a certain percentage of my lot with turf and the sunshine mimosa and perennial peanut are Florida friendly plants and by law I could replace my lawn with those. Grass in the front, ultra pruned high density fruit trees and vegetables on the side and back. No formal complaints yet.

I just planted mine out yesterday. I gave it a sort of organic royal treatment. Lots of AACT activated biochar, greensand, azomite, lava sand, extra wormy worm castings, food scraps deep down, a little fish and seaweed emulsion, and mycorrhizae on the roots. You can see I like HEAVY layers of mulch. I bought this little guy from Flying Fox about 6 weeks ago and I left it out in full sun when I got home and it got some leaf burn. It is planted in full sun zone 9B in Sarasota, FL about 8 miles inland from the bay. If it is still struggling after it settles in I will try dropping the pH a bit. I'll post some progress photos later.

Very nice! Do you recommend waiting until fruiting size to open up the trunk?

These links are fantastic. I do a ton of espalier at the moment and I am about to hack a couple of my mangoes WAY back. Everything is 20 months in ground or younger so they wont be too shocked. I am cramming way too many plants into the backyard of a residential lot. I even have a tiny ns1 jackfruit I am zone pushing against the south wall of the house. It will look so cool if it ends up fruiting. Great inspiration! Thank you.

I had a friend tell me about a seedless avocado variety he was eating when he was somewhere in Central or South America. I've heard it mentioned in somewhere else as well. Does anyone know the name or have tried to fruit it? I figured if anyone knew it would be this forum. Thanks!

I'm afraid to put them in the ground.  Read too many horror stories of difficult erradication.

I have a neighbor that grows a non fruiting variety that shoots up runners everywhere. I have never seen anything spread from my vines. They will run off and cover everything but I prune everything more than everyone I know.

YES PLEASE! I've had some excellent burns and a few with more smoke then I would like. I am building my next kiln this week. I would love your method. I am OBSESSED with biochar.