Al William

If you were in the UK like me, I'd say with confidence that this last one is either Scarlet Elfcup or Ruby Elfcup, and is therefore  edible! Not particularly worthwhile harvesting though in my opinion. Leave them for the elves

Thanks for all the comments everybody. Ironically I've been so busy working on the house that I've hardly been online.

We've built one of the hempcrete walls, should be doing the other in July. After that each will be insulated with an insulating lime render (as well as the hempcrete itself of course.)

It's amazing what you find, though, taking apart an old house. Many doors and windows have been put in and taken out in 400 years, an old bread oven we didn't realise was sitting in the wall, and some disastrous choices of materials!
I could try and take some pictures if people would be interested.

That's great, thank you! Will pm you the details.

We've ordered lots from ART in the past - a very big fan of Martin Crawford, his books, and the agroforestry bulletin. Have you ever been to visit his garden? I realise it's quite a trek for you!
My interest in arnoldiana comes from reading Ken Fern's Plants for a future where he talks about how delicious its fruits are.

Nancy Reading wrote:
A thought - if you wanted to have a go at grafting yourself, I could send you some cuttings of the trees I have? - they're plenty big enough they wouldn't miss a few twigs if you have a suitable rootstock. pm me your address if you'd find that helpful.

Not a 'warning' as it's actually a positive thing, but yarrow is extremely drought-tolerant, at least by UK standards of the word 'drought'. It's not uncommon these days for us to have several months with little rain, and everything else turns brown unless watered apart from yarrow.

Also, I made beer out of it when I was 18 and it was...OK.

Oh and a warning - do not ingest whilst pregnant or breastfeeding.

Thanks Jan, that's interesting and really relevant, as we have a birch tree under which we were hoping to plant but not sure what. So far we've sheeted it, and now planted buckwheat as a temporary groundcover and green manure. Sounds like we might try a mix in there next year and will include some caucasian spinach. When it comes to a shady patch like that - which is otherwise grass - a somewhat diminished crop of spinach is definitely better than nothing!

Jan White wrote:

Al William wrote:

Jan White wrote:

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but could you update on this, or is too early to tell?

I forgot to update last year. Both my plants made it through the winter. The one in the herb garden by the Saskatoon stayed very small and is probably dead. That garden has really terrible soil in it, plus some mugwort (allelopathic) kinda crowded it out.

The plant under the birch tree in the ornamental garden did pretty well, but obviously would have liked a bit more sunlight. I forgot to check on it through the dry part of the summer. By the time I remembered it had gone without water for a couple months and looked really rough. The spot under the birch is sheltered from light rain and stays drier than other places. I'll see how it is when warm weather stuff starts growing here.

Thanks for that Steve. I think we'll give it a go - it doesn't sound like it will give us problems. It seems such a waste otherwise not to utilise our large, white, south-facing corner walls. In fact it was warm enough there - despite being only about 7C outside - for my 80 year old grandmother to sit without complaining, and she hates the cold! If it's good enough for her then it's good enough for the peach tree.

Steve Thorn wrote:I don't think you'll have an issue with the peach close to the house. I haven't noticed them as having a damaging or crazy vigorous root system. Mulberries however, can go a little crazy!

I think close to the house will also be an excellent site because peaches seem to be my earliest bloomers, and the heat from the home should hopefully help with protecting it from late frosts.

Good luck with your peaches!

Steve

How much can you tell us about peach tree roots? Ours has been in a pot for several years, thanks to moving house several times. We're now keen to plant it out and have a great south-facing wall that reflects heat just right. However, our house is old and doesn't have concrete foundations. How wide-reaching, strong and vigorous are peach tree roots? We're in the east of England, so we get less rain than many parts of the country but still plenty. We're also in a low-lying area so even in dry summers there is moisture in the soil. The soil is also pretty fertile.

Hi all,

We have just rebuilt some walls of our crumbling 17th century cottage* out of hempcrete. The next step is applying insulated lime render, and I was wondering if anyone here had experience specifically with three different brands of insulated lime render. This may or may not be very UK-centric, but any feedback from people all over the world would be welcomed!

I have the insulation values here which obviously gives us one set of criteria to judge, but wondering if anyone else has any wisdom to share. The render will be applied over the hempcrete as well as clay lump.
The three different options we have been recommended are:

- Jordaya Contracting's Diathonite Evolution (with an insulation value of 0.045 w/mk)
- Anglia Lime's Thermalime (with an insulation value of 0.137 w/mk)
- Best of Lime's Warmcote (with an insulation value of 0.140 w/mk)

Thanks in advance to anyone who is able to give advice!

*Unfortunately on our moving in we discovered that it had suffered from maybe 50+ years of mistreatment, involving lots of concrete, cement render etc. which had trapped so much moisture that the timber frame was rotting.

Nancy Reading wrote: C. Arnoldiana and C. Shraderiana.

Nancy, where were you able to source you arnoldiana from? I was keen to get some on the recommendation of Ken Fern, but it's so expensive to buy plants!

Jan White wrote:I planted some seeds from EFN in the spring. I'd read that they need cold stratification, which I'd dropped the ball on doing, so I just sprinkled a few in a four inch pot to see if any would come up without it. Well, lots came up, so I don't know if the stratification is that important.

They stayed in the 4" pot all summer and were a little tortured. I realized I had a bunch of stuff in black pots all sitting in the sun for a few days while it was 44° out. The roots were probably cooking. The hablitzia seemed the least bothered out of everything.

I just transplanted them into the garden. They're only about 8cm tall, but they seem really sturdy. I divided the clump in the pot in half and put one half in a mostly ornamental garden under a birch tree, where it will be shaded when the sun is high. The other half got planted at the back of a herb garden where it can grow up a Saskatoon tree that never produces well. This one will be in full sun almost all day. The soil in both places is very silty, low organic material. I mixed in a bit of sand and rock dust. The garden under the birch tree can get pretty waterlogged in the spring, so we'll see how it goes. Since the hablitzia seeds seem to sprout so easily, I'm happy to take a chance with them.

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but could you update on this, or is too early to tell? We've just moved into a shadier garden with established trees. Would love to grow this plant again but got to find the right space for it.

Also, to share an experience with it - in its first year we had seedlings that we put in at the some time as our courgette (zucchini) plants. Of course the former spread all over the place, quite shading out the spinach. which, in turn, was undeterred and once we harvested the last fruits, pulled up the squash plants and the spinach still had time to shine.