In 2015, Jess Tsoukalas was living in Wellfleet at a rental property that the tenant before her had planted with an abundance of fruit trees.
"I was looking at all our fruit trees. And she had a there was a really great peach tree. And everybody says, you know, you can't really grow good peaches on the Cape because of the leaf curl and etc. and so on."
Peaches are notorious out here for succumbing to various molds and diseases. But Jess noticed that THIS peach tree was thriving. So she started paying attention. And the first thing she noticed was that the understory of the peach had some really unusual plants in it.
"It was like all walking onions. Not all, but it was like a huge patch of walking onions underneath."
Walking onions are not your average understory meadow grass — they’re perennial alliums with tall stalks and a strong onion smell. And the more she looked, the more Jess realized the ground under the peach tree was covered with other unusual understory species all clearly planted there on purpose.
"She made guilds with all the fruit trees."
Jess further explains.
"It’s just planting other plants underneath a fruit tree, to support them, to support their health, like nitrogen fixers and pollinator plants and pest confusers, you know really fragrant oily plants, you know all those, so it’s almost like they have this team underneath them, you know?"
This is why the peach tree was doing so well, Jess realized. It had this whole support network underneath it. The walking onions were pest confusers and next to them were beneficial flowers.
"So plants that attract, beneficial insects. So, like, two really, really good plants are, fennel and dill. And Queen Anne's Lace, actually, most people pull that, but it's really if you look at Queen Anne's lace and you look at the insects on it, it's pretty unbelievable what it brings."
All three flowering plants are known to attract small bees, wasps, flies, and beetles, many of which are not only beneficial pollinators but also predators that eat common peach pests like aphids.
"I've also heard of people doing daffodils."
"Yeah, I do daffodils too. And, when you have a new tree, it's really good to do daffodils around the trunk. Just do like a big circle. And that supposedly deters, you know, animals from digging at the roots of the tree."
This practice comes from the fact that all bulbs in the Narcissus family, which includes daffodils, contain lycorine, a highly toxic alkaloid that can kill both animals humans if the bulbs are eaten. So as opposed to attracting beneficial species, daffodils repel the ones growers don’t want. And last but not least, Jess noticed a whole other category of species beneath the peach tree that permaculture growers call dynamic accumulators.
"So a dynamic accumulator actually like they're often like tap-rooted, plants that like mine into the soil and bring up the nutrients to make them more available to the tree."
Picture the tap root of species like burdock and dandelion, which if you’ve ever found them in your yard go down forever and ever — but there are lots of other examples, too like stinging nettles which are especially good at capturing calcium and form a whole rhizomal network underground — the key is a deep, active root system.
Jess says around fruit trees, she’s become a big fan of putting in comfry which is known to accumulate potassium and silicon in its tissues, and yarrow, which is not only believed to be a dynamic accumulator but also works with soil bacteria to pull nitrogen from the air and get it into a form plants can use. Jess says over the years she’s become fascinated with thinking about all the different guilds we can create and experiment with by playing to different species strengths.
"You know, having the same guild under each trade would be kind of boring. And there's so many different plants. Like, if you looked online and looked up like, nitrogen fixers, or you know, or dynamic accumulators or, you know, whatever. There's so many different plants and herbs and it’s just beautiful, like this all encompassing orchestra, you know, and diversity is key."
It is, indeed.
