Tom Worley

My buddies on forestry crews eat a clove of garlic a day, and swear it keeps ticks and bugs away.  

Just yesterday I was out picking chanterelles and blackberries, and came across a thicket of hazelnuts that'll be ready later this season.  

Lots of mushrooms- oysters, morels, pheasant's back, lion's mane, chanterelles, hen of the woods.
Gooseberries, blackberries, wild plum, elderberry flowers and berries.  
Lamb's quarter, dandelions, purslane.  
Pecans when I remember to go look for them, hazelnuts when I remember to go look for them, persimmons.  

Hey folks- I'm planning out my garden plot for the new year, and looking to dive deeper into the concept of companion planting.  One of the highly recommended species is culinary mint, which got me thinking...there's a number of native species in the mint family such as wild bergamont, Ohio horsemint, calamint...has anyone tried incorporating these species into companion plantings, to ward off insects while increasing plant diversity?

What you plant depends a lot on what your goals-
-  are you trying to create a riparian buffer, to prevent erosion, shade the stream, cool the water, and benefit water quality?
-  Are you trying to maximize biodiversity along the stream channel?
- Are you trying to develop a food forest or foraging opportunities?
- Are you trying to improve aesthetics?

Depending on your local site conditions (is the soil rocky or sandy?) and what you're wanting to do, I'd recommend looking at overstory/canopy trees such as:
- red maple
- tulip poplar
- sweetgum
- Pecan
- Catalpa
- Cucumber magnolia
- Sourwood
- River birch
- Northern red oak
- American Beech
- you might also look into disease-resistant American chestnut.  They were historically found throughout Appalachia, and may be an interesting option.

I'd look at mid-story trees like:
- pawpaw
- American hornbeam
- Flowering Dogwood
- American Holly
- Flowering magnolia

For understory trees and shrubs, I'd look at:
- Mountain laurel (kalmia)
- Rhododendron
- Ninebark
- Hazelnut
- Elderberry


University agricultural extension offices often have a horticultural component, and can be great resources on what to plant where.  Many universities also have arboretums that can be a wealth of knowledge on what plants grow well in your area.  Good luck!
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It's a damn nice day- mid fifties and sunny, compared to the frigid weather we were having a week ago.  Nice night for a bowl of hoppin' john,  beer and a bonfire in the backyard with some close friends.  

Enjoy your 2023, y'all.  Take care!

Good to hear!  I was talking with a rowcrop farmer this autumn who'd implemented cover cropping the past decade or more- it's been a long-term investment for him, his neighbors all thought he was crazy...but it was paying off this season, with the drought that torched many other fields.

He said the biggest hurdle was working with crop insurance- there's institutional inertia towards doing things the way they always have.   Hopefully as more outfits demonstrate it's a safe bet, there won't be so many obstacles.  

Melissa- mine are part of foundation plantings on the north and east side of my house in partial shade.  They're American Hazelnut, and they started producing at 4-5 years.  I haven't tried cultivating European varieties; they may need more sun.  

There's a lot of quantifiable benefits already described, carbon and water storage are at the top of my personal list.  Deep-rooted native plants (compass plant, lead plant, prairie clovers, etc) are able to pull nutrients from deeper in the soil profile, increase water retention, and provide more diverse nectar sources across a broader flowering season.  

I think one of the big values of small plots is as a teaching tool.  There's a local non-profit that's big on the "farm your yard" ethic- they develop community gardens, put in demonstration plots, offer classes on gardening and processing (Canning, pickling), bees, backyard chickens, troubleshooting pests organically.  They've demonstrated to the public you can grow produce as good, or better, than what you can get in the store, without trucking it in from southern California, or using a ton of herbicides and pesticides.  They've put small plots to use in terms of production as well as an educational resource, and it's really paid off around the community.  

Nice!  I bought a dozen hazelnut seedlings and have basically ignored them the past five years, they're now about five feet tall and began producing nuts this autumn.  

They're nice enough to be incorporated into urban landscapes- manageable shrubs, pretty bangles of catkins in early spring, subtle red female flowers, orang-ey fall color.  

The thing about corn is the seed is selectively bred to remain fixed to the cob.  Makes harvest easier for humans, but tougher for birds.  A lot of the corn birds wind up eating in agricultural landscapes is the result of machinery (corn shattering in the combine, spilling from the grain truck, etc) and not birds plucking seeds from the ear.  

You might consider broomcorn- it's a sorghum, the seeds come free easier than a lot of corn or sorghum varieties, and birds like it.  As much as I hate it, birds also *love* ragweed- 40+ species of songbirds will glean the seed.  Sunflowers, and safflower, are two other options for annual seed-producing plants that get big and are attractive to birds.