Imbolc blessings! As promised, here are a few more photos of the black walnut grove I started in the fall of 2018. These photos bring us up to date with the emergence of my black walnut grove. Over the past four and a half years, in addition to the original black walnut saplings I have planted many other trees (both canopy and understory), bushes, herbaceous plants (for food and medicine), and flora that occupy the rhizome layer. I have strived to encourage fungal partnerships through woody debris decomposition, as well as fostering mycorrhizae-friendly soil conditions. I continuously marvel at the ever changing beauty of this forest garden, and am inspired to keep planting, keep tending, keep observing. Needless to say, I am always learning.
August 2020. As my walnut trees continued to grow, and the stick nests decomposed into the soil surrounding the trees, I began to notice new plants appearing. They were the wild-cousins (weeds!!!) to the perennials that often occupy the herbaceous niche in a conventional forest garden design. Here we see: yellow dock, evening primrose, golden rod and asters). Into this floral bouquet I have been adding botanicals of my own choosing - comfrey, elecampane, Jerusalem artichoke.
October 2020. Late autumn flora. Seeds are forming.
July 2021. Mid-summer. We are experiencing another droughty summer — this seems to be becoming the new normal. The wiry field grasses are mostly spent, but right around the black walnut (within the perimeter of the ever-expanding and ever-decomposing stick nests), you can see that the flora is green. The soil has been enlivened!
One of the herbaceous perennials I have been incorporating into my tree grove designs - Elecampane (Inula helenium).
Elecampane is a delight! First there is the architectural qualities that plants such as elecampane add to your forest garden. So that even in the very early years of a tree guild’s emergence, you can enjoy a sense of height and botanical girth that your young trees will eventually take on. Also, elecampane is an important medicine plant for my family. This fall (2022) I was able to harvest some of the roots - as they were three years old.
Height and beauty! Throughout the growing season elecampane is pleasing to behold. The seed heads of elecampane also entice the American goldfinch (Spinus tristis) into my garden.
Mid-summer 2022. One of the squash beds that I built around my black walnut nests. Despite being planted late in the season (because the slugs devoured all my early plantings), this bed of buttercup squash produced a lot of food for my family. Each growing season I expand the vegetable gardens around my black walnut trees. Squash are one annual food-plant that can accompany black walnut. Whereas, many other vegetables (such as tomatoes) cannot tolerate the phytotoxin released by roots of the juglan tree clan.
Early winter 2022. At this point we have had an ‘open’ and relatively mild winter. I have worried a bit that the leaf buds will start to swell, but we seem to be having just enough cold temperatures to keep the buds tightly closed. This young walnut is now five years old, and taller than I am. I look forward to standing under the shade of my little walnut tree this coming summer.
With these last few pictures I want to pay homage to the beautiful mother tree of my black walnut grove. These photos were taken in the late summer of 2018 in Lake St. Peter, Ontario. I gathered some of the walnuts from this tree before I moved back to Nova Scotia. With these seeds I continued to expand my walnut groves on our Cape Breton homestead, and have started offering black walnut trees to other dendrophiles through my small business Grandmother Birch Forest Garden Designs.
Along the Mink Lake Rd there is a black walnut tree that grows next to the driveway of the Dragonfly Intentional community Co-op. While the co-op is no longer functioning as it once did, the trees that were planted have continued to thrive. Here we can see the mother tree standing in a convivial pose with Eastern White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis).
When you get closer to the mother tree and look up, you can see she is loaded with seeds. Since most of these were way over my head and likely not fully mature, I tended to gather my seeds from the ground. This year was a mast year for the tree so that there was plenty for me and the other creatures who look to this tree as nutrient dense food.
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There are actually quite a few plants that exhibit varying degrees of tolerance to juglone. Of course there are other considerations to take into account as well --- such as shade - as your canopy grows, available light will also become a limiting factor for most annuals. My addition of the squash beds (this past fall I planted garlic in this same bed) is more in keeping with the horticultural design systems of many Indigenous people, rather than our contemporary forest garden schemes we have come to accept as the standard. In the more traditional 'forest gardens' or shifting cultivation, annual plantings were included at early stages of a woodland gardens development. Sometimes this is called milpa agriculture. This makes a lot of sense to me! You can grow a lot of food in the early years of a forest garden's development, while waiting for your trees and shrubbery to mature. There are many good sources of info. on the internet to let you know what annuals (and perennials) grow companionably with walnuts. Here is a really interesting (albeit lengthy) article on forest gardens and the cultural landscapes of the Haudenosaunne and other Indigenous people.
There are actually quite a few plants that exhibit varying degrees of tolerance to juglone. Of course there are other considerations to take into account as well --- such as shade - as your canopy grows, available light will also become a limiting factor for most annuals. My addition of the squash beds (this past fall I planted garlic in this same bed) is more in keeping with the horticultural design systems of many Indigenous people, rather than our contemporary forest garden schemes we have come to accept as the standard. In the more traditional 'forest gardens' or shifting cultivation, annual plantings were included at early stages of a woodland gardens development. Sometimes this is called milpa agriculture. This makes a lot of sense to me! You can grow a lot of food in the early years of a forest garden's development, while waiting for your trees and shrubbery to mature. There are many good sources of info. on the internet to let you know what annuals (and perennials) grow companionably with walnuts. Here is a really interesting (albeit lengthy) article on forest gardens and the cultural landscapes of the Haudenosaunne and other Indigenous people.
https://www.nomadseed.com/2020/11/owasco-agroforestry/
Thanks for sharing! Your progress is amazing, and I love the addition of the squash plants. I didn't realize they aren't juglone-sensitive.