I've studied the sun and water a good deal. It is wet, and not much sun through the closed canopy. I figured that out several years ago - and doing anything got tabled, clearing the lot was too big of an idea, and probably too difficult/expensive to do - where to start, right?
Well, I've had a few years to sort of mull over the idea and come back to it here and there, and several trees recently blew over in an area and the canopy there has opened up; so, that has me feeling opportunistic. This probably will only get a couple small garden/areas 3 or 4 hours of direct sun, if that - and I sort of stood in some spots and eyed up 10 or 15 smaller trees that would block some sunlight to this area that I took out relatively easy; relatively.
I'd like to do guilds and put in fruit trees and go down the line, but I don't think unless I invest in major timber clearing fruit trees don't seem realistic. Still may not be possible.
I have a couple small 4 foot circles I raked the leaves off and raked in some cover crop seeds to see what would happen and they are sprouting happily. I think I may just take out a couple more trees in this starting area, and introduce some plantings to see if anything will take. Probably will try things like mountain spinach, sorrel, herbs - thyme and sage, see if I can get some asparagus growing. probably some other experiments just to see if anything will take a particular liking to the area.
With this sort of medium effort, if I can get some activity and see the area start to change - may keep me motivated to extend the work in future years.
The real trick I get stuck on is sunlight - my lot is long and narrow; only 175 feet wide. To get full sun on any of that ground, basically I think I would have to clear a strip the full width of the lot (175 feet) - and be a minimum of 50 feet deep. The sun angle in summer is 70 degrees mid day (at the highest it goes), but at around 10AM and 2:30PM it is only approx. 45 degrees - looked this stuff up years ago.
So if on each side of the property, East/West sides, if there are 100+ foot trees (and there are) , any earth within 100 feet will be in the shade when that sun angle is around 45 degrees. So, the West edge would get AM and Mid Day sun, and the East edge would get Mid Day and Early afternoon sun. The area in the middle of this theoretical strip would get more sun that on either of the edges. Exactly, how many hours that would be, I think there would be a small 25 or 50 foot wide area in the middle that would get 5 or 6 hours of direct sunlight. The edges still only get around 4 hours. It seems like with that size of an opening there would be more light in there, but when I started to try to figure it out - 6 hours in the middle and 4 on the sides is what I came up with.
Don't think I could grow fruit with that light. Can 1? Maybe I'm figuring out the sun calculations wrong, but if that's what I have to work with - and there is already a large canopy layer, I think I'll skip right past several layers of the food forest and see if I can get some perennial herbs and ground covers to start taking over the forest floor - and plant some other stuff just to see what happens.
Long post I know - I've put a lot of thought into what I could do with this property since we got here 5 years ago - have some trails and that is about it so far.
