William Bronson

I prefer rainwater, but if it's not available, I make due with city water.
Our city water has chloramine, which doesn't evaporate.
Ideally , one would use reuse the same rainwater over and over.

I excavated  the spot where the charcoal was path was, as a part of a front yard make over.
Much of the char had melded in with soil.
Since the path way area became part of a larger bed, I used the soil and planted it out.
The larger chunks of char that persisted were tossed into a nearby compost pile.
I will certainly do this again, next time it will probably be holes filled with char and topped with a stepping stone.

A ninja/ nurtabullet type food processor might work.
What do the berries taste like?

I've been putting nursery pots in between rows of in ground plants.
They serve as a "living" mulch,without the complications of root competition.

So far it's just been cuttings and rescued volunteers, but if you had indoor/outdoor plants like moringa , citrus or figs, the potted plants could start out every spring already  tall enough to be a trellis.

I was already intrigued with elder as a green manure, because it likes being cut back.
Turns out the leaves strip very easily.
That is also a feature of Catalpa trees.
The Catalpa hosts a particular insect Ceratomia catalpae, the catalpa sphinx.
Apparently this Catalpa worm often eats most of the foliage from a given tree, but this doesn't seem to bother the tree.

I've taken to stripping the leaves from Catalpa seedlings in my landscape.
I drop the leaves under a favored plant .
They grow back readily.
I like to think I'm standing for the Catalpa worm, a creature I've never seen on any of the Catalpa around here.

The leaves are kinda stinky, which I think could be good.
The Catalpa ha few predators, and the compounds in the leaves maybe why.
Fresh Catalpa leaf manure might provide some scent confusion protection for the plant it is feeding.

I'm getting some sochan plants soon.
They might be good as a living trellis, but I think they actually form thickets/clumps.

So I saw this plant today.
Big fat berries with a giant seed, almost no flesh.
White Fringetree  is said to be a relative of the olive, and could be treated as such.
The lack of flesh and large amount of seed  makes these disappointing, but it made me wonder, are the pits of olives edible?
Well, maybe?
It's not a traditional thing, people will swallow a few here and there.
Rather than pursuing that weak lead it occured to me to ask if olive oil was made with the whole olive.
It is, the whole fruit is mashed up.
So, maybe White Fringetree could be a perennial oil seed, hardy  down to zone 3.

The most interesting living trellis I heard of is pigeon peas for tomatoes.
They are a perennial nitrogen fixer that makes food.
They are also the reason I have a Siberian peashrub, since pigeon peas can't overwinter here.

I wish the peashrub propagated itself, by seed, but it doesn't seem to want to.
I'm plant on taking cuttings and maybe even air  layering, some branches, since I always miss the ripe beans(birds maybe?)

I have also started taking long elderberry branches, stripping them of all but one leaf, and using them as stakes.
Im hoping these long cutting take  and I'm hoping one year of root growth won't overwhelm the bed.

 The fruit is very small and the fruiting period is short.
I used to wonder how many mulberry trees and time people had to be harvesting enough for a pie or juice, and it's seems that select varieties is the answer.
The fruit of the Pakistani in particular are said to be inches long, where my wild ones are maybe 1/2" max.

I love theses mulberry trees anyway, but I'd probably love them more if they were producing enough food to be worth harvesting.

We are in the same zone, 6B but Cincinnati is very wet, which can apparently be a problem for some varieties.
There is a fungus that causes "popcorning" in some varieties in wet areas.
Do you live in a wet area as well?

Im looking at a dwarf variety Geraldi.
It starts fruiting very young, but grows slowly and tops out very low.
It seems to stay small even in other root stock.
I'm still looking into how well it roots.

I like to use sesame seed oil with baking soda, but my partner didn't like it(?) so I switched to coconut oil.
Both have antibacterial properties.

I'm looking to buy some mulberry varieties that are hardy to zone 6 and readily roots from a cutting.

I have lots of wild mulberry around, but they don't fruit well and they don't easily root from cuttings.

Any suggestions are welcome.