Each grower approaches mowing with an idea of when there's time to do it and capacity of the equipment at hand. The scythe serves me well in laying down a "dripline mulch" right after petal fall with all the inherent advantages tied to the spring feeder root flush at that time. I go with the Bellon brush mower attachment for my BCS walking tractor after that . . . so the following ideas are very much tied to terrain and hand-scale equipment options.
The places where I mow in midsummer -- principally, aisle ways and access swaths beneath the canopies of early varieties -- are now in full vigor, including red clover just starting to bloom for bumbles. This actually ties to
mycorrhizal advantage in the early part of fall, as the plants in a neighboring understory engaged in actively renewing growth do not compete for fungal nutrients as readily. Grasses and such are using carbon sugars in-house rather than trading with the fungal networks thereby giving the fruit tree an early edge. Similarly, overgrown sections that have successfully seeded are also withdrawing from active trade in the underground economy by late summer, and this in turn grants
nutrient priority to orchard trees just initiating the fall feeder root flush. Repeating the dripline mulch plan could make sense, Ethan, if you indeed have an understory at the seed-initiation stage once again. Read
Mycorrhizal Planet to get these pulsing notions down!
Come fall in all its glory,
lessening vole cover is high on the list. (Are there really places without some sort of rodent issue?) I couple this with
enhanced leaf decomposition . . . and thereby do the majority of mowing after harvest once a third or so of the orchard leaf canopy has fallen. In truth, I have started mowing already, principally widening aisles and cleaning up under picked trees, just because there's so much mowing to be done later. But there will be less of this now for a while as picking and marketing takes up all the hours in the day these next 4 to 6 weeks. I will note my friend Ike's observation about "delayed aisle cover" being a good way to direct vole populations away from the tree zone after harvest, into the as-yet-unmowed center strips, then coming through at full speed a few days later to mow more than just grass.
Many variations on these themes!
Lost Nation OrchardZone 4b in New Hampshire
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2017 06:15PM by Michael Phillips.