Our Orchard slope
Our piece of land consists more or less in 3 sucessive hills. On the top of the middle one lays our house. And behind our house there is this slope, going from the chicken coop to the bottom of the hill, where our lake wall ends. When we moved in, on the whole slope there was just this one single cork oak tree. It is still here, and it is stunning.
This year, we progressively started to think that we could do more on this slope. A vineyard ? That could be a good idea, but what we decided instead was to create a small orchard!
Step 1 - Observe & Decide
Day after day, week after week, by going out and walking on our land, we observe. Nature patterns, sun exposure, vegetation changes, we keep noticing small and bigger things about this beautiful little piece of Earth. On this particular area, this north-east facing slope, we have 4 trees at the moment:
a fig tree that has transplanted there when we dug our pond. Since then, the tree is fighting hard to survive. Season 2024 it only grew 2 branches and had a few leaves. Definitely struggling. We pruned all the dead wood, kept a nice crown structure, and we hope that it will come back in full strentgh in spring 2025.
a young apricot tree and a young nectarine tree that we planted at the bottom of the slope during winter 2023-2024.
a beautiful and tall cork oak tree
This slope is partially protected from the scorching summer sun. It is also more exposed to the cold north winds. Soil is pretty good and there is barely any erosion. It is located pretty close to our house, and down from our chicken coop. It is also in front of our caravan door.
So by creating a small orchard there, we thought :
trees will suffer less from the hot summer sun than almost anywhere else on our land
trees will be pretty close to the house, but not too close either, in a location we see everyday
so it will be easy to take care of the trees and harvest the fruits
we could set up an irrigation system rather easily as well, in comparison to other areas of the land
a lot of wild animals will benefit from these trees : bees, butterflies, birds, etc..
we will have some more biomass created every year that we can then use for mulch or fire starters in our fireplace
we will improve the overall vegetation cover of the land
we will harvest a lot of water and help recharge the aquifer if we dug swales for the trees
it would add a lot of beauty to our daily life
we would be able to discretely watch and photograph Eurasian Golden Orioles coming to feed on our future fig trees from the caravan!
I guess that are enough reasons to convince ourselves that creating a small orchard on this slope was a great idea! :)
Step 2 - Create swales
November 2024 : let the orchard slope project begin!
Step 3 - Choose the trees
When it comes to choose fruit trees, there are so many options of course. But we want to focus on trees that are adapted to our climate. Trees we know can grow well and produce a lot of fruit here in inland Alentejo, Portugal.
Here is the list of fruit trees we decided to plant :
Fig tree
Apricot Tree
Pomegranate Tree
Mulberry Tree
Peach Tree
On top of that, we will add Lavender, Rosemary, Roses, and probably more along the way.
Step 4 - Plant!
Step 5 - Irrigate
Follow us on this nice little project as we make progress.
