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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Forest Garden

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  • From: Liz <liz@allslash.org>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Forest Garden
  • Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:47:16 -0400

This is a really interesting thread. I've thought ever since reading Bill Mollison's book that I wanted to work on a forest garden, but my property is thickly planted with pines, and I was concerned that I'd have to remove many of them first. As things have progressed, many of them have died anyway, and the ground is much more open than before. At the same time, I've been planting things along the borders of the pines, so I'm encroaching on them already. I'm in southwest Virginia, right on the NC border, and have pretty much the same conditions as Harvey, though probably a bit warmer, so these suggestions work well for me too. I have hazelnuts, pawpaws, aronias, raspberries, rugosa roses and elderberries, in additional to apple, pear, cherry and plum trees. I had thought about goumi, and with Harvey's recommendation, will plant those next year. These are all more or less in a block, much mixed up together because I had to stick things in the ground when I had a moment here and a moment there, and not much real layout and planning was done. There's a block of aronias with a border of elderberries, adjacent to two apples and a pear, etc. I'm hoping they will all benefit from each other, to justify my not having organized them more traditionally.

I've also set aside a circle for dye plants. I had the seed for them this year, but no time to get the area cleared. I didn't know about the mountain mints, but those will go on the list for next year.

At 11:49 AM 9/1/2008, you wrote:

Mitch, I don't know the parameters for the plants I'm using thus far in
the shrub layer--that is, I've made a start here in northern Virginia,
zone 6b, have no idea if the same plants will do well for you in TX--but
thus far I've planted: filberts (hazelnuts), gooseberries and currants
(Ribes spp), bush cherries (both the Meader breeding efforts Jan, Joy,
Joel--which fruited this year, interesting fruits I anticipate will be
very useful--and the Nanking types.

Not really a shrub, but a group of plants that are that size and are
perennial: the "mountain mints." This is a family of plants (Pycanthemum
spp) that I guess are in the mint family broadly defined, though they
are much more well-behaved (stay where you put them) than the culinary
mints (spearmint, peppermint). My wife and I have become big fans of
plants that become a virtual circus of insect activity, and these
Pycanthemums are at the top of the list. (Another is bronze fennel.)
Other tall perennials not really shrubs but that grow in that layer of
the FG: meadowsweet (contains salycilic acid--make a tea to use in lieu
of aspirin), angelica, valerian (roots used to make an effective sedative).

Hmmm, then there's Indigo bush (Amorpha fruticosa), a couple of wild
indigos (Baptisia australis and B. tinctoria), and don't forget elder
(Sambucus). Oh yeah, and autumn olive and the related goumi (Eleagnus
spp). Widely cursed because dispersive, but nitrogen fixers, so good for
the FG's soil--and us guys (with our prostate concerns) might note that
the edible berries have 100 times the lycopene content of tomatoes. I'm
using these as a nurse or "booster" crop under young nut trees: I've
read that, as the nut trees grow, they shade out the Eleagnus, having
benefited from the extra nitrogen in the early years.

Again, don't know how any of these would fare in your climes, but all
are widely adapted, and are coming along pretty good in my beginner's
forest garden, so check 'em out.

Glad to hear you're finding the Jacke tomes useful. Constantly at the
ready on the desktop here.

Best luck.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

I truly believe that as long as we have not found peace with the soil, we won't find peace above the ground. That as long as we justify the exploitation of any organism, other exploitations will follow and we will remain parasites, consuming more than participating, and spiralling into entropy until we commit mass suicide. ~Emilia Hazelip

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