CompuServe Thread

Hi – I'm an environmental lawyer during the week and a recently smitten gardener/landscaper on the weekends, mostly due to a beautiful spot in the Blue Ridge Mts of Virginia (elevation about 2500') at which I've restored a log cabin. I put in some dry stack rock wall terraces and have planted them with perennials, mostly natives and rockery types but also some iris and daylilies. I also planted lots of shrubs in the last couple years, mostly berrying. I'm now ready for the orchard, but I need advice on several things. It's a fairly small (150' x 50') area I want to work with, sloping towards a stream, southeast exposure. It's now covered with early succession shrubs and grasses-sort of a wildflower meadow that I like, but that is getting high and scraggly and has thorns. To prepare it for apples, pears, cherries and some berry hedges, should I turn everything under-disc it all-and plant a controllable cover crop? If so, what? I would really like to get the trees in this March, but if I need to wait a year and prepare the spot, so be it; I am patient. The soil itself doesn't need anything in particular and is pH around 6.5, a nice loamy clay. Any thoughts appreciated-also on grouping of dwarf/semi-dwarf trees, if arrangement matters much. THanks-Richard Whisnant, Charlotte, NC