Konstantinos Karoubas

It sounds great Hugo, and I will contribute whatever I can. Let me know what I can do.

Yeah the Palestinian oak, is definitely hybridized..no two trees are exactly alike.

Very very strong trees...I was watching some YouTube vids of a tribe in the mountains of Iran. They survive mainly from these Palestine oak trees. Interesting story.

Kostas

Absolutely Hugo,

I agree 100%...give the land as many choices as possible and let nature pick and choose.

We can do wonders by letting nature recover and providing some assistance in the form of seeds - stop the destruction of land by plowing and chemicals and all other destructive practices.

I hopeful that soon enough we will divert resources from wars and destruction and promoting and nurturing nature and all of its inhabitants...if we don't...

(I am not really an oak specialist...just trying to learn, and do what I can)

Kostas

Greetings

We are preparing for Our Oak Planting Project !!!

I am beginning to prepare for this year’s project of growing trees directly from seed, especially oak trees from acorns.

Today I visited one of my favorite oak trees nearby. It is an evergreen oak, Quercus calliprinos, sometimes referred to as the Palestine oak. It is a beautiful old tree near the center of the village, close to our farm. It grows beside an old stone house, and we are fortunate that somehow, over all these years, it escaped the axe.

In the past, many trees in these villages were cut for firewood, for cooking, or to make charcoal that could be sold. I also suspect that at one time the people living here may have collected and eaten the acorns. This particular tree produces very large acorns. Acorns are edible if they are properly processed to remove the bitterness and tannins, and they can be ground into flour. They are also an important source of food for animals such as goats, sheep and pigs.

Many of the young evergreen oaks that we now have growing around Thessaloniki came from acorns collected from this particular tree.

The acorns are not ready yet. I think they probably need another month or so, but I will continue checking them periodically.

One of the simplest ways to know when an acorn is mature is to see how easily it separates from its cup. When the acorns are ready, they will begin falling naturally, and those still on the tree should come away from the cup very easily when touched. If you have to pull or pry an acorn out of its cup, it is probably too early to collect it.

From there, I traveled to another nearby village. Outside the village church there is another old evergreen oak. This tree is somewhat different. It produces smaller acorns, and its leaves have more pronounced spines along their edges.

I plan to collect some acorns from this tree as well. I don't want all of our future oak trees to originate from a single parent tree. We want diversity, so I am looking for healthy, mature trees in different locations and collecting acorns from several of them.

I then continued to another village. In the village square, the municipality planted what I believe are about ten holm oaks, Quercus ilex. Their acorns mature considerably later. I normally begin collecting them around the middle of December, and they can continue maturing well into January.

This is actually useful for our project because it extends the acorn-collecting season.

Something important we have learned is that acorns do not all mature at the same time. The timing depends on the species, the individual tree, the location, the elevation and the local climate.

In southern Greece, particularly at lower elevations, some acorns may already be mature at a time when the same species farther north or at a higher elevation may still need several more weeks. Even within the same general area, moving to a higher elevation can change the time when the acorns are ready.

So we shouldn't collect acorns simply because the calendar tells us it is time. We need to observe the trees themselves.

And finally, we try to collect our acorns from healthy, strong, mature trees. These acorns will become the next generation of oaks, and we want to give those young trees the best possible opportunity to survive, adapt and eventually thrive on their own.

Our objective is simple: collect good acorns from a diverse group of healthy trees, plant them directly in suitable places, learn from the results, and gradually develop a practical and economical way of restoring oak trees to the landscape.

Kostas

Thanks,
Much appreciated!!!
Kostas

Thank you, Chance, for your thoughtful response.

Just one comment, if I may.

It’s not “nationalistic permaculture.”

I’m hoping that what we’re learning is applicable everywhere. If anything, we need to heal the whole Earth and protect all of its species.

We’re all in the same boat, after all.

(Well, that’s my take on it.)

Kostas

Greetings,

Today we’re visiting an area that burned about a month ago. This land was mostly covered with oak shrubs, and fortunately the fire was limited and did not burn completely out of control.

Today we scattered arugula seeds. Around here, arugula is usually one of the first seeds to germinate after the autumn rains. We’re hoping it will come up quickly and provide some ground cover, helping hold the soil in place so we don’t lose valuable topsoil when the heavier rains arrive, usually around November and early December.

We’re also going to scatter barley and vetch. Hopefully, between the arugula, barley and vetch, we can establish some vegetation and protect the soil through the winter.

Later, we plan to plant acorns—probably two or three different species of oak—along with almonds, plums, perhaps some sour cherries, and whatever other suitable seeds we have available.

Our main objective here is to observe how this land responds after the fire. We already have a pretty good idea of what happens after a fire in a pine forest, because we’ve worked in those areas before. But I don’t have the same experience with burned oak shrubland, so this is an opportunity to learn.

If things go well, what we learn here may also help us understand how these extensive areas of oak shrubland in Greece could gradually be transformed into more diverse woodland.
Oak shrubs are often remarkably persistent. After fires and other disturbances have eliminated much of the taller forest, these shrubs can remain as one of nature’s last lines of defense against complete degradation of the land.
But I would much rather see these areas develop into diverse forests—with different species of oak growing into trees, mixed with almonds and many other trees and plants.

That is what we are trying to understand here: what nature will do on its own after the fire, what we can do to help it, and whether over time we can encourage this burned shrubland to develop into a healthy, diverse forest.

Kostas

Greetings,

Today we visited a site near Thessaloniki where we planted evergreen oak acorns. These are not holm oaks. They are another evergreen oak, sometimes referred to as the Palestine oak.

We planted these acorns because our common oak trees did not produce acorns that year, so we used what was available to us.

The results have been very good. I’m very pleased with what we saw today. We’ve come a long way with this work, and every year we learn a little more about how to successfully establish oak trees directly from acorns.

One of the most important things we’ve learned is that we need to be able to store acorns.
Sometimes we collect the acorns but cannot plant them immediately because there has not been enough rain and the ground is still dry. If we put them into very dry soil, there is a good chance they will simply dry out and die.

So we need to be able to keep the acorns alive for one, two or sometimes three months until conditions are right for planting. We have been storing them in the refrigerator in damp vermiculite, and so far this seems to work quite well. We’re still learning, and hopefully we’ll improve the method as we go along.

The second thing we have been doing is putting some damp vermiculite into the planting hole with the acorn. We have another video showing exactly how we do this. The idea is that the vermiculite can retain some moisture around the acorn and the young roots when we have an extended period without rain, even during the winter or spring.

The third thing that probably helped was our choice of oak.

I suspect that every location has certain oak species that are particularly well adapted to it. This evergreen oak seems to have done very well at this particular site.

By this time of year, some of the young deciduous oaks we have planted elsewhere have already dropped their leaves. Sometimes the upper growth dies back, and often the entire young tree doesn't survive its first summer. That is something we see quite often.
But these evergreen oaks have made a very good start.

Of course, one successful year doesn't tell us everything. We need to come back and observe these trees for another two, three, four and five years. That is the only way we will really know how successfully they establish themselves and how they respond to drought and the conditions at this particular site.

There is another important part of our method: we don't plan on watering these trees.
If you're planting close to a road, you can carry water and help a few young trees through the summer. But once you're 100 or 200 meters away from the road, that becomes increasingly impractical. And if your objective is eventually to plant 1,000, 2,000 or even 10,000 acorns, there is simply no realistic way to spend the entire summer carrying water to them.

So our objective is different. We want to find the species, locations and planting methods that allow these trees to establish themselves using only natural rainfall.

The trees that make it through that first difficult summer without irrigation are showing us that they are suited to those conditions.

So the results so far are very encouraging.

We have many more sites where we've planted acorns. We'll visit those sites as well and report on what worked, what didn't work, and what we continue to learn.

Kostas

Things are looking up !!!



Very glad to see these trees

Kostas

Hello Oliver,
Cork oak is not native in Greece but there are a few of these tree a a research center near Thessaloniki.

I visited them last year with the intention of collecting some and planting them, but unfortunately, it was a bad year and there were no acorns.

I may try again this year

Kostas

Hello Trav,

Good points on the sea buckthorn. I am aware of but have not used in reforestation or on my farm. I should.

It could become very helpful.

Where are you and what is your experience with it?

Kostas