184: Michael Phillips on Holistic Orcharding. Growing fruit trees by creating a healthy ecosystem. Michael is known across the country for helping people grow healthy apples and understand the healing virtues of plant medicines. The “community orchard movement” he helped institute can be found at GrowOrganicApples.com and provides a full immersion into the holistic approach to orcharding.  His farm, Lost Nation Orchard, is part of a diversified medicinal herb farm in northern New Hampshire. There, two acres of trees supply local families with many varieties of organic apples, and has a cider mill in the planning stages. Michael is the author of The Apple Grower: A Guide for the Organic Orchardist, and The Holistic Orchard and co-author with his wife Nancy for The Herbalist’s Way: The Art and Practice of Healing with Plant Medicines.  His newest book, Mycorrhizal Planet: How Symbiotic Fungi Work with Roots to Support Plant Health and Build Soil Fertility, will be available in March 2017.  Michael was honored by Slow Food USA to receive the first Betsy Lydon Ark Award for his work promoting healthy ways to grow fruit. IN THIS PODCAST: Greg has found an east coast twin when he talks to a fruit tree farmer named Michael Phillips who has been growing apple trees in New Hampshire with a care that works for the health of the trees and the ecosystem in which they live.  Michael grows and sells fruit trees and he focuses a lot of offering tree growing education as well.  He shares his main points of growing healthy fruit trees and explains why some of the steps are so beneficial to trees. Go to www.urbanfarm.org/herbsandapples to see our list of podcasts and to sign up for weekly updates.