permaculture

[rrandall1 <rrandall1@houston.rr.com>]

Blackberry muscadine stacks are a stacking technique I use to get the  
most food production out of my 1/3 Acre urban "farm". Essentially it  
is based on the idea that domestic blackberries like Kiowa produce  
very well here in May even if somewhat shaded in late summer, that  
Southern improved muscadines like Darlene or Fry or Ison are very  
late to leaf out and fruit in August, and that sweet potato spinach  
is planted/emerges in May and covers the ground. Probably any  
blackberry and grape combination would work for this.

I trellis the muscadines about 7-10 feet off the ground by stringing  
a wire between two tall durable posts spaced about 10 ft. The trunk  
of the muscadine is trained initially on a string or wire about 5 ft  
from either post and then T-ed at the top. The blackberries are grown  
at the posts and tied loosely to the posts with cord or wire so they  
won't fall all over the place with their thorns. They are topped at  
4-5 ft. The ground is then planted with sweet potato spinach or any  
other soil suitable edible leaf  or green manure crop. My posts are  
steel U stakes pounded into the ground and bolted together to get  
height. In this humid tropical climate, they last decades. However,  
there are obviously more self-sufficient timbers potentially feasible  
especially in colder drier places with ample room to grow things.

Bob Randall


On Nov 5, 2006, at 8:18 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

> rrandall1 wrote:
>
> > Actually, sweet potato spinach is a distinct variety of sweet
> > potato.  The tuber is white starchy, is small, root like, and looks
> > inedible.  The leaves though taste like and look like the tuber
> > varieties. What makes this variety standout is that it does very well
> > here in clay soils as an understory plant below persimmons, or
> > blackberry muscadine stacks.
>
> Could you explain "blackberry muscadine stacks"?
>
> > Conventional sweet potatoes have trouble with tight soils and
> > certainly don't produce tubers easily in such conditions.  I need to
> > put them in a foot of good soil. Additionally, conventional ones lose
> > tuber production if you grow them for leaves.
> >
> > We got our start from the Chinese Organic Gardening Club here in
> > Houston. See page 550 in Cornucopia II.
> >
> > Our sweet potato spinach comes back easily in the spring here in zone
> > 9 or (Global Warming 10).
>
> --
> Lawrence F. London, Jr.
> Venaura Farm
> lfl@intrex.net
> info@market-farming.com
> IM: lawrence.london@pandion.be & lfl@amber.org.uk
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