permaculture

["Jerome Osentowski" <jerome@crmpi.org>]

Miekal,
I'm assisting Jerome in responding to your inquiry - he's busy with a
permaculture class of which I am a student.  His N-fixing plants include:
siberian pea shrub (6 varieties)
buffalo berry
mt. mahogany (3 varieties)
indigo bush
spanish bush
new mexican privet
aunt de wisteria
Russian amer
broom alder
autumn olive
lead plant
bitter brush
goumi (an elaeagnus)

Sorry this is brief - time and internet access is very limited this week.
Jerome recommends caution when deciding what to introduce - as example
russian olive (not recommended here) can be invasive.

I am from Minnesota (zone 4/3 edge) and have begun experiments with N fixers
but have very sandy soil.  Siberian pea, lead plant, buffalo berry do very
well.

New FOrest Farms (near LaCrosse) has heavy soil - and N fixers - especially
siberian pea.  Perhaps that could be an informatin resource.

Bruce


--
Jerome Osentowski, Director
Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute
PO Box 631
Basalt, CO 81621   U.S.A.

Tel/fax (970) 927-4158    E mail: jerome@crmpi.org

For more information, please visit our web site at <<www.crmpi.org>>


----------
>From: Ute Bohnsack <sustag@eircom.net>
>To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Subject: Re: [permaculture] nitrogen fixing trees intercropped with fruit
andnut trees
>Date: Thu, Aug 28, 2003, 2:07 PM
>

>
> mIEKAL aND wrote:
>
>> Jerome:
>>
>> Can you tell us what the other 10 species are? Here in WI the siberian
> pea shrub is really slow going, 5 year old plants are less than 6ft high &
> just now starting to take off. I can't imagine coppicing them until they
> attain some kind of precocious vigor. It would also be great to find a few
> species of forbs to keep in the annual gardens. Ive been using IL
> bundleflower (desmanthus illinoisensis) & pigeon pea but they take a lot of
> nursing to keep going in a zone 4 heavy clay loam landscape.
>>
>> mIEKAL
>>
>
> Hi there,
> interesting topic.
> I am in Ireland which is kind of a Zone 8/9 equivalent. I've planted Sea
> buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) near my first apples for wind shelter
> and fruit and goat fodder (branches/leaves) as much as for NF. They grew
> extremely fast for me on a well-drained loamy soil. No luck with
> Gleditsia and Caragana (got eaten by slugs, both bark and new leaves),
> or Desmanthes (too tender). Planted Eleagnus angustifolium into mixed
> hedges which also contain a number of fruit species and hazelnuts. So
> far everything is doing fine. As its an 'unstructured experiment without
> controls' I can't say whether the trees would have done better or worse
> without the NFT but species diversity can't be a bad thing as Jerome's
> forest garden aptly demonstrates. In European forestry the NFT alder
> (Alnus glutinosa) is an often used nurse species for timber trees. So it
> does work. I have also planted comfrey under the apple trees which I cut
> for mulch (sort of a potassium pump), again with no apparent
> ill-effects.
> As to sam bucus' question (nice name!) about orcharding techniques - the
> Swiss Institute for Organic Farming have done interesting research on
> organic fruit cultivation, some of which is also available in English on
> their website www.fibl.ch . Sam, you might also be interested in Michael
> Philipps wonderful book "The Apple Grower" which is worth every penny.
>
> Cheers,
> Ute
>
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