Gardening

[etienne]

Etienne,

This is great! My experience with cold frames/unheated greenhouses is that it gives you 3-4 weeks at the beginning of the planting season, so you can plant things directly that much earlier. And in our/your climate it makes it possible to harvest greens during the whole winter.

And clears off a lot of windowsills in the home!!!

It really grows better in a greenhouse, there is much more light and I guess the temperature change between night and day also helps to get healthy plants.

I have the problem that my greenhouse is not air tight, at night there isn't a big difference between inside and outside temperature, so freezing is an issue. I have to check every evening what the weather forecasts are for the night, and if it is below 0 (0 is still ok) I take all the frost sensitive plants inside.

[El Cid]

Yes, unheated, not very well insulated greenhouses do not protect you very well from frost. In my experience they add only 1-2-3 C to the observed (outside) minimum temperature.

But there is one other good thing about greenhouses: during spring temperatures often fall to 1-2-3C outside (measured at 2 m) but on clear nights this causes ground frost which kills frost-sensitive plants even though official  (2m)measurements show temps above zero. Inside the greenhouse you don't have ground frost. This is a big plus!

All in all, as long as the forecasts are no lower than 0C, my plants seem to be safe in the greenhouse (even if there is a ground frost outside).

In fact I have already planted melons, peppers, aubergine and okra in there - despite this being the coldest April here in 25 years.

[vox_mundi]

Ancient Indigenous Forest Gardens Promote a Healthy Ecosystem, Says Study
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-ancient-indigenous-forest-gardens-healthy.html

A new study by Simon Fraser University historical ecologists finds that Indigenous-managed forests—cared for as "forest gardens"—contain more biologically and functionally diverse species than surrounding conifer-dominated forests and create important habitat for animals and pollinators. The findings are published today in Ecology and Society.

According to researchers, ancient forests were once tended by Ts'msyen and Coast Salish peoples living along the north and south Pacific coast. These forest gardens continue to grow at remote archeological villages on Canada's northwest coast and are composed of native fruit and nut trees and shrubs such as crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherries. Important medicinal plants and root foods like wild ginger and wild rice root grow in the understory layers.

"These plants never grow together in the wild," says Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, an SFU Indigenous Studies assistant professor and the study lead researcher. "It seemed obvious that people put them there to grow all in one spot—like a garden. Elders and knowledge holders talk about perennial management all the time."

"It's no surprise these forest gardens continue to grow at archeological village sites that haven't yet been too severely disrupted by settler-colonial land-use."

Ts'msyen and Coast Salish peoples' management practices challenge the assumption that humans tend to overturn or exhaust the ecosystems they inhabit. This research highlights how Indigenous peoples not only improved the inhabited landscape, but were also keystone builders, facilitating the creation of habitat in some cases. The findings provide strong evidence that Indigenous management practices are tied to ecosystem health and resilience.

Forest gardens are a common management regime identified in Indigenous communities around the world, especially in tropical regions. Armstrong says the study is the first time forest gardens have been studied in North America—showing how important Indigenous peoples are in the maintenance and defense of some of the most functionally diverse ecosystems on the Northwest Coast.

Chelsey Geralda Armstrong et al, Historical Indigenous Land-Use Explains Plant Functional Trait Diversity, Ecology and Society (2021)
https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol26/iss2/art6/

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol26/iss2/art6/ES-2021-12322.pdf

Results:... Plant communities in forest gardens and periphery forests were found to be conspicuously distinct from one another even > 150 years after people left their villages following colonial-settler invasions. One hundred and nineteen plant taxa were recorded across the forest gardens and periphery forests at our four study sites. Fifteen plant species were strongly associated with either one type of site or the other (i.e., with no cross-over). Across all archaeological village sites, ten plant species were found to be significant indicators of forest gardens (P < 0.05), and these are all ethnobotanically important plants (Table 1; see also Turner 2014). At two village sites, Robintown and Kitselas Canyon, two indicator species—hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) and Pacific crabapple (Malus fusca)—fall outside of their natural geographic range, and both have well documented ethnographic evidence for anthropogenic influence on their distributions (McDonald 2003, Armstrong et al. 2018). It is likely that transplanting was a significant management practice in the establishment of forest gardens (Turner, Armstrong, and Lepofsky unpublished manuscript). The co-occurrence of all ten indicator species has yet to be observed outside of archaeological contexts (e.g., Klinkenberg 2020) and is therefore unlikely to be the result of natural succession. Edible fruits, including hazelnut, Pacific crabapple, highbush cranberry (Viburnum edule), red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa), Solomon’s plume (Maianthemum racemosum), nooka rose (Rosa nutkana), salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), and black hawthorn (Crataegus douglasii) represent 80% of the forest garden indicator species — all ethnobotanically salient and storable foods (Turner 2014). Five plant species, predominantly conifer trees, are significant (P < 0.05) indicators of the periphery forests, including western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) and western redcedar (Thuja plicata) (Table 1). Indicator species in periphery forests are typical dominant species in the study region (Coastal Western Hemlock and the Interior Mountain Hemlock Biogeoclimatic zones, Pojar et al. 1987). The greater richness and diversity of plant foods in forest gardens than in the periphery forests may reflect the fact that Indigenous peoples encouraged some plants close to home for specific properties like edibility and storability.

Forest gardens had significantly higher species richness than the periphery forests (P < 0.001, Fig. 3). There was no significant difference in the number of herbaceous species between village forest gardens and periphery sites (P = 0.81); forest gardens contained significantly more shrubs (P < 0.001), while periphery forests contained more tree species (P = 0.02). Site history (forest garden or periphery) influenced community functional trait patterns for all four traits we examined. Forest garden plants had larger seeds (P = 0.003), more animal-dispersed species (P < 0.002), more shade-tolerant species (P < 0.001, Fig. 4), and more insect-pollinated species (P= 0.005) than periphery forests. Forest gardens also had higher functional evenness (P < 0.001) and functional dispersion (P = 0.001) than periphery forests, but they differed only marginally in functional divergence (P = 0.07) (Fig. 5).

The Village complex of Dałk Gyilakyaw consists of three discrete villages and is the ancestral home of Gitsm’geelm (Ts’msyen) people. Note the dramatic vegetation change between the forest garden and encroaching conifers (“periphery forests”). Photograph: S. Carroll.

[El Cid]

That's very interesting vox!

Especially the fact that even 150 years after its use the forest(garden) did not revert to the native forest but retained its own species-mix.

I sort-of inherited a piece of land that used to be an orchard/flowergarden/forest mix. It was abandoned 20+ years ago, yet last year I harvested wonderful cherries and apples, chestnuts and turkish hazelnuts while tulips and other flowers keep showing up. Not exactly 150 years but it supports the notion that we could probably create ecosystems that are quite resilient and need little work on our part after setting up...

[silkman]

Etienne,
It really grows better in a greenhouse, there is much more light and I guess the temperature change between night and day also helps to get healthy plants.

Where I live in NW England a greenhouse is a game changer. Courtesy of my good lady’s green fingers (not mine!) we’re well on the way with the new season in our garden and allotment.

That said the window sills are still being put to good use as well!

[uniquorn]

The last 10 days have been perfect growing weather here.
For weeds!
We're also over run with lettuce and spinach. For some reason the slugs haven't come.

An update on the winter potatoes. I though they had all died so I planted flax in the same bed. Now I have a few potatoes coming up in the flax. Never tried them as companions so I'll see how it goes.

[Alexander555]

A question. I have put some turnip seeds in the ground. It's a small sweet turnip. That will get a size between 8 to 9 cm ( 3 to 4 inches). I just put many seeds in a line. Now i have like 10 seedlings per 10 cm. So i will have to pull most of them out. They are like a week old now. When should i pull them out ? Just a few little by little, or as fast as possible, or should i let them all grow ?

[etienne]

If they are very young, which it seems, you can try to plant the ones that are in excess in another place. For your question, I have no answer. I wouldn't remove them too fast because I have many plant eating insects in my garden.

[etienne]

Last year I wrote that I was looking for perennial plants in order to reduce the ratio work per product. The only one that really worked fine is the rocket salad or rucola. The rest has been eaten by the vole during the winter. Nanning doesn't want me to kill it, so I hope the red kite will do its job.
Last year I let the rucola have flowers, and now I have it everywhere. It's like welcomed weeds.
Sorrel also works fine, just that nobody wants to eat it here.

[silkman]

Alexander

Great germination! Way better than mine.

I’d thin them out now to maybe a couple of centimetres apart and then thin them further as the turnips start to develop. If you’ve got plenty then eat them small.

[etienne]

Didn't know that forficula would also eat plants. But is is not sure that in this context, it really eats the plant (here sunflowers), wikipedia in French says that they usually eat the insects that made the damage, and are afterwards suspected, they are guilty.

 

[etienne]

One more picture of the sunflower eating forficula. I moved the pot with the straw so that they would eat the aphids of the roses instead of the leafs of the sunflowers.
The other picture is a cantharis pellucida, it should be an insect that would be positive in the garden.

[vox_mundi]

etienne

Edit: Those are definitely not forficula (earwigs), they appear to be some sort of isopod. (in this case, not beneficial). They will not eat aphids.  They will eat seedlings

They're immature earnings, (3-4 th molt) On my small phone screen they looked like isopods

Plants that forficula feed on typically include clover, dahlias, zinnias, butterfly bush, hollyhock, lettuce, cauliflower, strawberry, blackberry, sunflowers, celery, peaches, plums, grapes, potatoes, roses, seedling beans and beets, and tender grass shoots and roots; they have also been known to eat corn silk, damaging the corn

[El Cid]

Food forest update (sorry fo the length)

I've been working on creating a food forest for a couple of years. I had an area with some older trees (oak, maple, ash, hornbeam, pine) and lots of weeds and bushes. After clearing the bush and keeping some older trees it I planted fruit trees and berries and created some vegetable patches. Some of the non fruit trees are coppiced or pollarded (and the wood chipped down and used in the forest as mulch or for walking paths). The grass is scythed twice a year (May/June and August/September) and it often grows to 1 meter with many wildflowers everywhere.

The whole point of a food forest is trying to create a beautiful forest/savanna-like ecosystem, hoping that this leads to healthier plants that are more resilient with less pest and disease pressure while needing no outside inputs as the wood/grass grown on site is used as fertilizer (basically in the form of mulch around the fruit-trees and bushes and veggies).

This spring put the theory to test as we had the coldest April in 30 years and one of the coldest and wettest May in decades.

Stonefruits did not like it at all: apricots froze (hardly any fruit left), peaches were attacked by peach leaf curl (one tree lost all its fruits, another 80%, but one kept most of them, I will sow seeds from this one). Cherries hardly got pollinated as bees were nowhere to be seen and were attacked by moniliana due to constant cold and wetness: they have only 10-20% of the usual fruits. Same for plums. Disappointing.

BUT! Another point of a diversified food forest is that if some plants suffer some others might still do well. We had a few warm, sunny days at the end of April and the bees came out like crazy and happily pollinated the apples and pears which are now full of fruits. Also, all the berries look great and laden with flowers/fruits. Figs, mulberries also look very nice.

As for the veggies: sweet potatoes disliked the weather and many died but tomatoes, sweet corn and most melons (although some froze and died) look good although smaller than they should be. Same for aubergine and pepper. Also, we've been eating fresh salads and  onions for weeks which grew well. My asparagus beds are in their 2nd-3rd years and gave us a few kilos as well.

My conclusion is that a food forest looks fantastic (although many friends consider it a "jungle" and not a proper garden/orchard) and is usually quite resistant (there are pests and diseases but most, although not all situations self correct after a while without too much damage). However, we really need to choose resistant types of trees because most of the fruit trees sold are too weak and need lots of spraying with chemicals which I am not really willing to do (I sometimes spray with milk or baking soda as a compromise against fungi). Old, heirloom varieties are usually quite resistant though might yield less fruit than newer ones.

So if you want to create a food forest, always use resistant/heirloom varieties. In my experience berries, figs, pears and old apple varieties are mostly problem free without any intervention, stone fruits are trickier. Letting native trees and grass grow is also very important.

Good luck to all gardeners out there!

[idunno]

Hi all, especially El Cid,

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-10-08/the-lost-forest-gardens-of-europe/

Great essay above on ancient food forests that stiill partially survive in Europe today - a challenge to the idea that there has been much in the way of European "wilderness" since the end of the last glaciation. Everything in the evolving landscape, as it gradually warmed, was at least partially curated by our human ancestors.

I am just starting work on a patch of land, partially inspired by the above, inter alia. But it sounds like you are a few years ahead of me.

cheers

idunno

[etienne]

Hello El Cid,

It sounds great. I have similar problems with the weather. Even if my pepper looks great, it isn't very big. Tomatoes in the greenhouse only start to have flowers, just like green peas outside of it.

I was lucky with the carrots this year, I guess they need regular rain to start. The last years were very dry, so it was not possible to keep the earth humid all the time.

Can we have some pictures ?

Etienne

[Alexander555]

A question. I started to plant some seeds a couple weeks ago. And most of it i think is doing well so far. But i only have one sweet corn. I digged up a few of the corn seeds. And they looked like some kind of pulp, very soft and wet. I give everything water every day. Because we had sun almost every day. So the soil was dry at the end of the day. Is that maybe a problem for sweet corn, to give it water every day ?

[El Cid]

Alexander,

(sweet) corn likes warm weather...i planted some a good week ago and they are already out...so unless you planted them too early, maybe your seeds were too old?

etienne,

3 pictures from me. I try to create a forest/savanna ecosystem, fortunately I have some good, old trees.

First pic: young apricot tree with various wild flowers and mulched with hay
Second pic: young apple tree with 40-50 apples and nurse logs (I put big pieces of wood from previously cut trees around the fruit trees to supress weeds and fertilize the fruit trees)
Third pic: Old medlar tree in the center, young plum tree lower left corner, small golden chain tree in front of medlar, some colourful lupine and old oak/ash/etc in the background (I scythed the grass not long ago that is why it is so small, in 2 months time it will be 50-100 cm high)

[etienne]

Looks beautiful. Congratulations. My wife would scared to death because of the ticks, but dreams of such a place. She would place a yurt in the middle and would organize activities for kids.

[Alexander555]

How old is the young apple tree ? I planted a few a couple months ago. I had some flowers. But it started to freeze after that, a couple times. So for the moment there is nothing that looks like there are going to be some fruits.

[etienne]

Trees is something that can take a long time to produce fruits if you don't optimize the conditions (watering, insects...), be which I don't do. I have trees between 3 and 5 years old TV and still don't get more than a few apples each year. Most fall during the summer.

Added: I have boskoop, elstar, triumph and the last one must be jonagold but I'm not sure. Each time one tree.

I just googled my apple trees, looks like I didn't choose the right ones. Elstar and Jonagold would require a lot of treatments.

[El Cid]

- apple trees: they are 3-5 yrs old, the one I showed is 4. This one had about 20 very nice apples last year, this year we (hopefully) will have more. It is a very old variety called Edelborsdorfer in Germany

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelborsdorfer

I tried to choose varieties that had been grown at least in the 19th century (they didn't spray anything back then, they just couldn't, at most sulphur and copper but even that was rare for apple trees) in the Carpathian Basin, so they should be accustomed to our climate and be quite resistant against disease. I also have some Golden and Red delicious left behind by the previous owner of the area, those trees are 40-50 year old and even after 20 years of total neglect (no pruning, no nothing) they still had fruits on them every year. Not the big shiny ones you find on supermarket shelves but they taste good.

In the past decades researchers have developed some new, resistant varieties which reputedly taste very good, eg. Topaz, Pinova, Rubinola (I have the latter two but they have not fruited before, this year I will be able to taste them by the look of it and need hardly any spraying

This is a good site to look up apple varieties (descriptions and readers' reviews):

https://www.orangepippin.com/

- Ticks: the area was visited by wild boar before so had lots of ticks. We fenced it 3 years ago and now (ticks need large animals to live on) we have much less. I take a look at my body every evening before going to bed and pick them. I usually find one tick a month. They do not have the time to cause much harm and are very easy to pull out if found within a few hours. I am also vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis which is a very dangerous disease.

[Alexander555]

I have some deers crossing my land a couple times a week. And i keep most of the grasses and flowers long. So that's probably a good place for ticks. Would it help to keep the grass near the trails short ?

[El Cid]

I have some deers crossing my land a couple times a week. And i keep most of the grasses and flowers long. So that's probably a good place for ticks. Would it help to keep the grass near the trails short ?

I don't think it would help much. As long as there are big animals around, you will most likely have ticks - at least that is my experience

[sidd]

Chickens for ticks. They go round and round and round the houses and the barns and the pastures and eat a whole bunch of them. In twenty years i got ticks twice, deer and bear and coyote country (not to speak of all the sheep and cows and horses and ...) in nowhere PA. But i have seen similar results in OH and IN and IL and MN and such.

Got to wear the right clothes too, long sleeves, helps if you can tuck pants inside hi top boots and such. Not so nice in summer, but comes with the turf, so to speak. Much easier in winter,  but i must say that one of the two occasions i got a tick on me was in winter ...

[unnecessary detail]

and the fucker was latched on to the crease of my crotch by the thigh, had got past jeans and long underwear ... i had stopped to take a pee tho ...

[end unnecessary detail]

sidd

[Tor Bejnar]

I'll vouch for what sidd shared.  I mean, about chickens loving to eat ticks, not about the other.  (I had chickens in southwest Ohio.)

[El Cid]

I'll vouch for what sidd shared.  I mean, about chickens loving to eat ticks, not about the other.  (I had chickens in southwest Ohio.)

I believe what you two say. Also, chicken are quite goot at weeding various areas and useful under fruit trees to get the bad bugs. Alas, as I am a vegetarian and don't intend to keep pet chicken this road is not for me

[etienne]

The vole is already active this year. Eating onions.

But the chamomile is doing fine. It is quite invasive, like the rocket salad.

[Florifulgurator]

But the chamomile is doing fine. It is quite invasive,

This is no chamomile. I bet it is Tanacetum parthenium, "feverfew", sometimes called "Roman chamomile" in Germany. Intensely aromatic. It is indeed spreading easily, but not yet a nuisance in my garden. It is said to be an insect repellant - and it seems to work this year,  with much less flies and stink bugs around my kitchen window.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanacetum_parthenium

Two nights ago my flower power garden got almost completely erased by a freak hail storm. Next night came the big flush... The Tanacetum plants survived best, while the real chamomile is gone.

[etienne]

Hi Florifulgator,

In French, you have 3 plants called Chamomile with medicinal effect, the
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanacetum_parthenium
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamaemelum_nobile
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matricaria_chamomilla

Which one do you describe as real one ?

My seed suppliers only has the first and the last one, and I selected the first because it is a perennial, but it seems that the most common in herbal tea is the 2nd or the 3rd. The first one wouldn't be efficient against stomach problems.

The second one would also be a perennial.

Since the first one multiplies itself so well, maybe I could try the 3rd one also, it would probably be present every year without any specific work on my side. Or I would have to look on Internet.

Regards,

Etienne

[etienne]

I also have a question regarding sage. i have been reading different books with Native Americans , and one thing  that always comes back is the sage. When linking sage with Native Americans, it is always the salvia apiana that comes out, which is a plant from south California, but the stories in the books I read (for example written by Louise Erdrich) are playing in north Dakota, so I wonder which sage is could be.

[El Cid]

I dunno the answer to the sage question. BUT! Sage is one of my favourites. I make tea out of it (pour boiling water over a few leaves and leave it for half an hour). I like it very much. Basically, I make drinks/teas (depending on the season) from all the things around the house. During spring it's mostly nettle tea. Then in June it's elderberry lemonade (sugar+fresh lemon juice...then add elderberry flowers for a night, keep it in the fridge, delicious!), now that elderberry is gone, it's mint lemonade (made the same way as elderberry), or simply mint tea then during autumn it's sage tea. BTW, bees seem to love all purple/blue flowers so sage is one of their favourites too!

[be cause]

I always dry enough elder flowers that it's never gone .. today is harvest . Turns my kombucha into chambucha ..

[vox_mundi]

... I wonder which sage is could be?

American Indians had an extensive trading network. If they needed white sage, there was always something laying around they could trade with.

https://www.history.nd.gov/historicsites/cfq/index.html

... For 11,000 years American Indians dug into gravel deposits in western North Dakota seeking Knife River flint, a coffee-colored, translucent stone. Knife River flint was easily made into tools for hunting game, preparing food, and many other purposes. Several of these ancient quarry pits are preserved at Crowley Flint Quarry State Historic Site, located near Golden Valley, Mercer County.

Knife River flint is one of the most important lithic (stone) materials used by prehistoric people in North America. Its attractive color, ability to hold a sharp edge, and easy procurement made it popular. Although the only major source of this stone is in North Dakota along Knife River and Spring Creek, artifacts made from Knife River flint have been found in archeological sites as far away as Pennsylvania. The flint reached these distant locations through trade. American Indians exchanged flint for other exotic goods, such as marine shells from the Gulf of Mexico, copper from the Great Lakes, or obsidian from the Yellowstone Park area. ...

I bet you could have gotten a lot of sage for a good piece of flint. Dried sage travels well.

[Florifulgurator]

Hi Florifulgator,

In French, you have 3 plants called Chamomile with medicinal effect, the
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanacetum_parthenium
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamaemelum_nobile
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matricaria_chamomilla

Which one do you describe as real one ?

The chamomile business seems almost as confused as the Native American sage thing (but nothing is more confused than pansy literature :-) ).

Chamaemelum nobile is also called "Roman Chamomile" in German (Schönfelder: Kosmos Heilpflanzenführer, a very definitive book). It is different and not as medicinally effective as the "real Chamomile". German: "Echte Kamille", Latin: Matricaria recutita alias Chamomilla recutia alias Matricaria chamomilla. Here is how to discern her: The inside is hollow.


(Pic from German Wikipedia. Knackpoint not mentioned in the English version.)

Chamaemelum nobile should perhaps be better called Anthemis nobilis. A 4th Chamomile is the "wrong Chamomille", Anthemis arvensis, German: Acker-Hundskamille which translates as "dog's Chamomille from the field'".

[vox_mundi]

And then there is pineapple weed ...

Matricaria discoidea, commonly known as pineappleweed, wild chamomile, and disc mayweed, is an annual plant native to northeast Asia where it grows as a common herb of fields, gardens, and roadsides. It is in the family Asteraceae. The flowers exude a chamomile/pineapple aroma when crushed.

-----------------------

We grow the annual German chamomile at the community garden.  It readily reseeds.

[etienne]

Thanks for all the information.
Étienne

[Alexander555]

If i understand it well, to make your own carot seeds. You just leave the carot in the ground, and cut of the green stuff. You cover it a little so that he can not freeze. And next season it becomes a flower with seeds that you can use. Is that correct.

[Bruce Steele]

Alexander, Yes carrots take two seasons to form seeds. Some carrots will seed the first year but then you get carrots with a very tough core, not much good to eat. You don’t need to cut the green parts away, it will die back on its own during the winter.
 Onions ,leeks or shallots also take two years to seed.

[etienne]

With leeks, I often have flowers the first year. I heard that it could be because it is still freezing at night when I plant it outside.

[Bruce Steele]

I carted some compost out to an area of garden I haven’t plowed or cultivated in a couple years.
It is my experiment in zero input farming. The spelt that I had in last season seeded itself and the few inches of rain we had produced a crop. So no till, no irrigation, and no effort except carting the compost out to the garden and building the compost pile. So to take it one step further I  picked ripe seed heads by hand and scuffed them with my boots on a flat surface . After winnowing out the chaff I made some farrow. 
 About half the no till area planted last year succeeded and the area with poor soil reverted to foxtails. So starting over is still part of gardening. I composted across the whole area but only half produced.
 I think the spelt is able to outcompete other grasses if seeded heavily but some minimum soil fertility is required. And compost.
 The Blenheim apricot is heavy with ripe fruit but apricots too seem some sort of gift of nature rather than the result of any effort exerted by me. Canning the fruit on a full sized apricot tree is a pile of
work however but totally worth the effort.

[Général de GuerreLasse]

I always dry enough elder flowers that it's never gone .. today is harvest . Turns my kombucha into chambucha ..

Hi be cause, can you please give us your recipe? I personally, after fermentation of kombucha with tea,  mix 50 cl of kombucha with 50 cl of apple juice . I pour the mixture into an empty bottle of sparkling water, and when the bottle seems to be about to explode I put it in the fridge and enjoy it.

[Général de GuerreLasse]

Here is the result of an apple pip sowing. In the top tray (21 lifts out of 24 seeds sown) the seeds come from Monty's Surprise, the red colour of the leaves comes from the father who is a Redlove. I have high hopes for this happy marriage. In the bottom tray the 3 small apple trees on the left are from a Malus siversii (3 out of 3) and the 7 on the right are from a Remarkable (7 out of 8 ) .

[kassy]

How much time does it take before you get to taste the result of the marriage?

[Général de GuerreLasse]

How much time does it take before you get to taste the result of the marriage?

Normally to expect an apple from a seedling it takes 8 years if all goes well, the tree should not be planted too tightly. It needs light to capture C02 and convert it to make good sap and develop properly.
But as 8 years is a long time, I'll cut a graft as soon as possible, in the second year for example, and I'll graft it onto a dwarfing rootstock and 3 years later I'll be able to taste it and know if I've wasted my time or if I've made a great discovery.

[El Cid]

How much time does it take before you get to taste the result of the marriage?

I read an old study, and they say that seedling apples usually first fruit 4-8 years after sowing (but some might take 10!). I also have some apple seedlings but they have not fruited yet. This guy has a few videos about home-breeding apples, lots of good info, he has many seedlings:



Apples are extremely heterozygous (and almost always crosspollinated) so the qualities of the offspring are very hard to predict, even harder than with humans.

OTOH, the fruits of peach (and apricots to a somewhat lesser extent) seedlings resemble the fruit they were taken from, most of the time. Peaches are selfpollinating and quite homozyguous, hence the offsprings are usually quite similar to the parent. In my country a hundred years ago peaches were often grown from seed (they are hard to graft and budding was not popular back then) but apples were always grafted (apples are the easiest to graft).

[KiwiGriff]

El Cid and others
You might find this guy inspirational on food forestry.
 

[uniquorn]

Plenty of plums, loads of figs and some blackberries already but the birds are voracious this year, or I am getting slower. Cucurbits and green beans are good, tomatoes seem late. Spinach has been and gone, new blette is coming. Potatoes are done but still in the ground for now, the wood chip ones were a bit strange though they are not fenced and the hens dug many of them up looking for bugs. Had a nice broad bean crop and put some in the field as well, mostly for the soil. Might be a bumper year for apples.
Weather has been wetter than usual so less watering but lots more weeds. Had to cut and prune a lot more trees too. Some of them are also like weeds. Ah, very good accidental purslane crop

[El Cid]

kiwi,

Thanks for this video, i have seen another about his garden but that film is shorter:



uniquorn,

you write "Had to cut and prune a lot more trees too. Some of them are also like weeds"...

In my book "weedy" trees are not a problem but an asset. I have a number of "support trees" in my garden/forest and I coppice or pollard them heavily in February (there is not much else to do then anyway). This opens up the canopy and gives more light to the "useful species", mainly fruit trees/shrubs but also I chip down the wood and use it as fertilizer around the trees and for footpaths. I think this is the best way to naturally fertilize the forest-garden.

Good luck with keeping the birds away...I had to resort to netting my grapes or they wouldn't leave anything for me

[uniquorn]

Don't worry  El Cid, none of our 'assets' go to waste, though sometimes they can be overwhelming. Today I caught our cockerel teaching the hens how to jump for grapes. They're not even ripe yet. Also a neighbour was throwing out some dusty old coir underlay last year so I've been using that for covering the no dig beds. It's amazingly hardy, looks almost the same after a year outside.