Forest Garden

Now that it's finally spring, here is a short tour of some of the trees in the young forest garden.

Propagation

These are cuttings of that have been rooted from an elderberry plant in the yard. They are very easy to root. But you have to get the woody part of the stem. The green part won't root.

I used a mixture of sphagnum moss and perlite as the medium. I also put a mister on a timer that comes on for ten minutes every two hours. I think that is key. The cuttings are in a fairly shaded spot for most of the day.

Another easy to root plant is goji berry. The green stems of the goji's will root. The leaves won't even drop off. They just go.

I used rooting hormone to help the roots get started on the cuttings. For comfrey, you can dig up some of the roots of a plant and make small cuttings, about an inch long and just replant them. They will come up in a few weeks. The crowns will grow in just a few days.

I have been experimenting with rooting some trees as well. I tried the same method with several trees, fig, peach, persimmon, asian pear, nectarine and apple. So far the only one that has worked is fig.
Another method of rooting tree cuttings is to wrap the cuttings in a wet paper towel and place them in a container. This method has been more of a success for the stone fruit cuttings for me. I learned this method here.

 Here is a shot of the container with the tree cuttings. The figs are doing the best. The peach are beginning to put on new growth but the persimmons aren't showing much at all, but they might.
In the bottom I put in some perlite to give the cuttings some support.

On the right is a peach cutting that is rooting from the paper towel method.

On the left is a fig cutting that is beginning to grow. Most of the trees sold in containers are at least 20$, so learning how to propagate them is a very beneficial skill to learn.

Updates

I think these are Roma tomatoes. They were sown on February 7th.  I put them outdoors a couple of weeks ago. They are doing well so far. They are about a foot tall now.

Mar 25

 I think these tomatoes were from seeds leftover from last year.

I've started all new seeds from Baker Creek this year. There is about 9 varieties in this tray. Yesterday we potted them up.

It dropped into the 40's again last night and probably will tonight as well. But it is supposed to be in the mid 80's by this weekend.

We have a 700 percent increase in peach production this year. We have seven peaches versus the one we had last year.

This peach tree was just put in the yard last fall. The Elberta peach that produced the one peach last year, got hammered by frost while it was in bloom this season.

It didn't set any fruit at all. This new tree is doing very well and has grown a lot. It even got hit by a big poplar limb and has a large scar on it's side now. It seems to be healthy though.

The strawberries are literally going crazy. Hundreds I imagine. If we can manage to get some to ripen that will be fantastic.

Blueberries are really going good this year. I have about 4 or 5 big bushes that are loaded with them. Some of the smaller ones I planted last fall bloomed but I cut them off so they would grow a bit more since it's their first year.

They bloom all summer though so it isn't a big deal to drop the blooms off of them. I had a few blueberries all the way into November last year.

Here is one single berry that is beginning to ripen. All of the others are still green. So hopefully in a week or so we can start harvesting some strawberries.

There are a few tartarian cherries and a few nectarines as well. I'm not sure the cherries will ripen. The nectarines are very, very small still, so it's hard to know what to make of them yet.

There are a few gooseberries on as well. They seem to be doing okay, but I'm not sure how long I am suppose to wait to harvest them. I've never had one before.