Hugo Morvan

Hello Adunayo, welcome to the forum. To get a bit of an idea of your farm/soil/climate/water situation    a  picture of it would be greatly appreciated. How long are you there already? And do you live on the land or do you commute? My terrain is at a few minutes, but this summer i had to put up a tent to give a deer the idea not to come and eat too much apples. It gave me a chance to practice a wolfhowl before sleeping. In the end, she just ate the lower branches and the fruit was dry and small and damage was not bad. i don't know what animals roam your plains. Or are you more in an urban area develloping a university plot?
I love syntropic agroforestry and try a bit of that myself. We have summer droughts so many trees wouldn't make it, so i had to find out what is drought hardy and make a windbreak with that. Turned out peach trees were that. I could get them for cheap, because i already had a lot, made a little nursery in a shady spot with a didge behind it in which rain water collected. I didn't have to water a lot, because i do not have a lot of it at hand. I have some, but in dry summers i run out and need to get in with a trailer and an IBC to fill up some tanks. So it's a hassle. But back to the peach trees i used them to make a windblock facing east west and it works. it blocks wind and i have less evaporation therefore. In their shade i have grown prune trees that would otherwise struggle. I think that's the most important plan think of ways to get through the hard times and be prepared to help install trees after they will just grow. And in Nigeria growth can be amazing i'm sure.
Then i've created some north-south fruit tree lines intertwined with robinia pseudoacacia, which i use as a nitrogenfixer and it grows very well so then i chop and drop it in place, but it suckers too much, so i look for a way to get Italian Alder in there, but that is quite hard to propagate or i have to buy all the trees.. But i want to be able to work with plants i can propagate myself, but that takes time to crack the code of how this partical variety in this climate/soil likes to be propagated in what season. It's always the same for farmers everywhere.
I'm on very poor soils and i try to find wintergroundcover nitrogenfixing and am excited to have found one so i can let that grow together with rye or something, hopefully this winter will work out and i'm planning to crimp that, like break/bend the stems so they're all laying down. Then it settles, slowly dies, doesn't set fruit and then i want to direct seed in there.. No water, no dig.
For me it's passion/idealism. I believe we're are going in a radical wrong movement with society, i cannot stop that but work to find ways to locally create something like a good example farmers can copy in a bigger style. Some of them agree and are looking for ways to change, but i am like experimenting with stuff they bring me. Sometimes rotten down strawbales, sometimes a lot of cow manure.
I think the principles i described can be useful and replicated everywhere, although you'll have problems i cannot even imagine with crazy energetic insects and maybe even gigantic animals coming to feast on your Agroforestry project.
Hoping to hear of you.

Common teasle is known to provide seeds to finches as well. AI came up with sunflower, echinacea, milk thistle, asters goldenrod, but also nigelle , amaranth, millet and hemp agrimony trees like birch, alder and elderberry. It gave a tip plant in dense clusters which is true. We won't need Permies anymore soon!

@Christopher Weeks. First off, this is not my idea, it is being done in several places already, i am taking action and spreading this idea, because i believe knowledge is power and that the more people adopt this way of thinking the higher chances are we're finding meaningful interspecific crosses to help nature adapt to rapid changes. This topic might reveal people who've done this and reveal seed sources. Usually people are happy to share surplus seeds.
The more diversity a population contains, the higher the chances for a lucky cross that combines sought after traits. It will not hurt to include  local varieties/species in a newly planted stand of oaks to act as a pollen donor or have a local variety surrounded by more drought and heat resistant varieties/species to take acorns later off the local variety/species and know who is mommy. Or plant southern varieties/species as rows in front of existing forest containing oaks. The observation of future hybrids only functions to speed up selection, but if there are no observers nature will have it's cause.
This has happened already during the last ice-ages in Mexico a collaborator told me, the moving south and back up north of forest let to many hybridization events and therefore Mexico now contains more than 200 differing oak species and new hybrids keep getting discovered regularly.

@Joao Winckler I agree with what you say. We are basicly landracing oak trees to come to resistant new strains adapted to all climate can throw at them, including cold as gulf streams might change. In Europe we didn't have many similar hybridization events like Mexico because the Pyrenees mountain is blocking off Spain from trees moving North-South That cork let to many forests losing diversity. Europe only has 22 species. I'm not aware of many hybrids appearing in Italy and Croatia and Greece and Turkey/Syria but simple economic disadvantage in research could play a big part.

@Jay Angler There is more forest because the country site gets more and more abandoned and people switch to fuel stoves for comfort. They will not be pleased with coming bills though although wood prices  have doubled in twenty years i live in the French country site as well. Most new forests are indeed monocropped Douglas fir plantations or Eucalypthus or whatever fast straight growing exotic they could use. A lot of local forests gets increasingly clearcut for these kind of plantations killing of wildlife and often lowering the watertables. Douglas fir sucks up water and grows straight trunks all year whereas decideous forest loses foliage, builds up soils and acts as a sponge. Douglas just kills whatever grows under it acidifying, no sounds of birds in there. There is no old growth forest left in France and it will take hundreds of years to reappear if they do not decide to cut it down because it makes superior quality toilet paper that doesn't tear. Not joking. In Spain a squirrel used to be able to jump from tree to tree from Malaga in the south to Barcelona up north without ever hitting the ground is a thing folks say. Now it's mostly monoculture orangeries and lemon orchards on the Mediterranean site the Portugal site is somewhat wilder, but fast desertification is a fact. The king of Spain had lots cut down to make boats for the armada and the Mores who occupied Spain for centuries burned down a lot when they were beaten back.
Europe's forest fires are relatively speaking small beer in compared to sparsely populated areas elsewhere on the planet but were very frequent this year and much further up north where people were completely surprised and totally unprepared for it. I was in a pickle myself and many people responded on Permies with tips. Thank you for your idea to research resprouting trees and to not create fire ladders and use alleopathic trees that resist undergrowth as fire blocks. Great points.

@Anne Miller yes local trees play a big role in hybridization and a bummer Texas shops were too far.

@Nancy Reading Good question about hybridization. One reason i love creating topics is because people raise questions i have no answers to which pushes me to look into the matter more. And they bring up side topics which complete pictures in my head, it's so exciting! Great growing, congrats.
It seems 4% at average is a viable interspecific cross. That is enormous thinking of the amounts of acorns an adult tree produces!! But pollination times must overlap. So the more you plant the easier that becomes. It could be your tree didn't get pollinated or that the tree is not strong/old enough yet to push out viable acorns.
The Lucomb oak is an English bred interspecific cross between Cork oak (quercus suber) and English oak ( qurqus robur) and there is the famous Turner oak (Quercus × turneri) which got brought back to Spain as well and naturalized there

Let's create many Quercus (insert your name) for future generations to profit of of.

The El Nino of 2026 has brought a lot of heat and drought to Europe especially France has been hit. So this is on top of climate change moving warmth north so quick that nature has trouble adapting.. Many alarms have rung and even government seems to be reacting. The plan is to tap into the groundwater and create megabassins. Those are giant agricultural open air swimming pools with outrageous evaporation levels and anti-algae chemicals to help out big industrial farmers spray their continuous monocrops. They're known for drying up all the natural springs and lowering groundwater to levels where forests can't keep up and die off. But... Money can be made, so lucky go happy for the happy few and bad luck for communities already struggling.
Instead of being angry at the bad guys we're planning ahead and our idea is to grow Mediterranean species of oaks, have them cross with local trees and create hybrid swarms of the future to be resistant to heat and drought, but cold as well. Because as some predict, the changing gulf streams might bring cold winters back to Europe and some speak of solar activity diminishing. I guess nobody knows the future really. But we're preparing.
I hope people here reading this might chime in with whatever comments to have their say. Or just read and spread the word to who needs to hear.Or maybe you are from around the mediterranean or similar climate and we can get some communication going in private about shipping seeds. I'm all ears.

I have a still with a friend. Make oil with it that mostly i use in the washing machine, same for the 'waste' the hydrolat water. Sometimes i make a lavender sock for next to the pillow.

I always try to find a sublime healthy and radiant tree of what i planted and move soil from around the base. Then i mix it in water and watercan it around my trunk.
I believe us humans do a rather unique thing moving trees hundreds of miles from where they originate (if not continents or in Nancy's case isolate it on a salty cold and wet Island). Nature has not evolved too much around that and the whole spectre microbiome and diversity will stabilize the young tree. If it is not for the endo mycorrhizal fungi networks it gets offered that helped make the sublime specimen into what it is then it can profit of the the whole spectrum the microbiome has to offer in an end stage  (microbes, fungi, flagellates and all tiny insect life supporting that stable system).
I believe it cannot hurt, what doesn't fit will disappear and get eaten by the current microbiome, or hide in small numbers to return when it's time has come, like wolves growing their numbers when food is available. We can't see the microbiome with our naked eyes and are sublime masters in destroying it, but modern science has taught us it's there. It's surprising to me permie people haven't protocolized this method but prefer to wait 20 years for the microbiome to appear through the air. We moved the trees/seeds, why not move what made the tree flourish? Logic dictates and magic awaits.

Love Sierra Ferrell! Trying to love you is the name of thi song.

Somebody gave me a book about scything when he found out i swung one regularly. The intro mentions an oldtimer exclaiming "What, you're going to write a book about scything? Just swing the damned thing!".
I own a bush whacker, but it's a hassle, always fiddling with plastic threads, noise, petrol smell, not starting.
Scything gives me an old time feeling. Just make sure you sharpen with a 2 dollar little stone which always sits at the same spot. It's easy to work, adjust height, leave the clover, but cut the grass above, take down the nettles that flower, they'll rebounce, get another soup out of them, it's sharp enough to whack some brambles or even sloe because i usually get out the shorter stouter version.

My friend who is a long time smoker and orders tobacco leafs online that are sold as cushion filler, he says that it took him a few month to switch to pure tobacco leafs. He first mixed in a quarter then half half then a quarter then pure. He says because the commercial stuff is laced by a whole range of addictive substances. Most folk that are poor that try pure tobacco miss 'something' and return to their usual dealings.
Anji, wow your plants are beautiful! You dwarf mine that got stunted during a two month drought. how long was your drought if i may ask?  

I'm a big believer in microbiomic providing and i see this as copying the local microbiome surrounding the grassroots onto the corn roots at minimum. But also i've heard things like soak the seed in your mouth so the seed gets to know your microbial footprint and adapts to that somehow and then provides the planter with what it needs. To me the mouth method comes across as very human centered thinking without dismissing completely the notion that in some cases it could work somehow. Placebo is a powerful medicine.
I just like to think that the corn is a biological entity  in itself and if we give it what it needs it will come to full fruition. But how will we know what it needs if we do not provide is with the full spectrum of locally available microbiomes? Dr Bryant Redhawk came up with this method of taking a walk in nature and when you spot a beautiful healthy looking tree dig up some soil to collect this microbial family. I've been doing this for quite some years now and try to add differing tree groups microbiome. I believe finally it is the plant/shrub/tree deciding with who it wants to create these specific rootrelations. And i believe i'm stabllising the soillife by maximizing biodiversity on a micro level. Bringing in all these differing soiltype microbiomes can recreate a place where everything available to the soil is present in the garden i work and will depart to friends/family i give a plant. I like that idea too.
So i read this topic and think it's a kind of limited view from the corn's perspective. being brought in from elsewhere it might benefit from  some different soil dweller not present in the grass endophytes.
And combining this thought train with Joseph Lofthouse adaptation gardening's, could it be most beneficial to grow a variety of differing corn strains as they all carry their prefered endophytes from differing places who will have taken differing evolutionairy routes to become what they are and crossbreed amongst to turbocharge this evolution and recombine into the best it could offer to the corn plant?