Is the title of my current literary obsession. I all but gave up on fruit and apple trees as I lacked confidence that they could be grown without petroleum based “-ides”: insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. The last doesn’t fit cleverly into the “ide” group in name but does in function.

The Holistic Orchard, Tree Fruit and Berries the Biological Way. It is so incredibly packed with knowledge, that I have to limit myself to anywhere from 2 paragraphs to 2 pages at a time so I can digest everything. Contrarily, this book is surprisingly easy to read despite its exploration of complex microbiology. The pace what necessitates the self-limiting!

In The Holistic Orchard, the author bases his biological approach to growing fruit on a concept I am very familiar with from my forestry classes in college that I never thought I would use: Plant Succession. Simply, he approaches fruit plants in the manner they would grow in the wild following land disturbance.

It really is a fantastic book for anyone who cultivates plants of any kind. As it is so thought provoking, many of my future posts will be ideas either directly gained or expanded from those presented in the book and will be cited accordingly!