Nicolas Derome

Andre Wiederkehr wrote:Just starting. So far it's been good.

I'm looking for more places to visit, though.

One focus is learning more about how a functioning food forest fits into a person's diet and annual work rhythms. I've heard lots of talk about food forests, but never seen one up and running as a major contributor to someone's diet. If anyone out there has such a system going and is kind of near my route, please get in touch!

I have about 1/4 acre suburban lot in Wellington County, part of which is ornamental, part is fruit/vegetable. Just from 1000-5000 sf you can produce all your fruit/veg needs if you preserve, depending on the size of your family. I'm getting about 600 lbs from 2000sf, which should increase as my fruit trees/shrubs mature (most are not producing yet, or barely). It's the grain, meat and dairy that take up a lot of space, but if you can cover most of your fruit/veg needs that's still fun and good culinary and health value and saving you a few $1000s. A major focus for me now will be on time saving approaches, drip irrigation to save on watering time, more efficient trellises to save on time spent tying up plants, etc.

They're manageable here, I'm in a small town. They need large (20ft+) trees nearby to feel like they have a safe escape plan - that's why you don't get them in the middle of farm fields. They tend to hang out more towards the back of my backyard where there's more trees and neighbours without dogs (we have two, even if they're not the best hunters). It seems they have other things to eat because they aren't too aggressive with eating my vegetables, although I do notice they occasionally take apples and cherries from my neighbour. I sometimes have to net or bag certain fruit like grapes, figs or peaches, but they usually leave my raspberries alone. They don't seem to go after my vegetables much, although I think they occasionally bite into my butternut squash or watermelon - they can't really eat them because they're too big/thick skinned, just damage them which they often heal over. Chipmunks eat my cherry tomatoes, but I have enough to go around that it's only like a 2-5% loss.

Maria Charitou wrote:Hi Joel,

A bit of a late post, but I'm also interested in permaculture. My husband and I have managed to do a few things on our property (just outside Acton). At the moment I'm focusing on growing things like hazelnuts (which grow really well here), and growing more native berries, to attract more birds. if you'd like to reach out and share knowledge, let me know.

Do the squirrels leave you with any hazelnuts? I'm in Elora and have been focusing mostly on fruits and vegetables so far. Some exotic fruits for fun too.

J Fortin wrote:There was a large patch of native PawPaws on Pelee Island when I was staying there, on private property that all seemed to have spread from suckers off a single tree as it didn't produce fruit despite an abundance of flowers in the spring.  I also planted a half dozen  cultivated varieties fro. Whiffletree grown on rootstock on another property but who knows if any survived.  There's also a couple around Guelph/Puslinch on private property that I know of, they're beautiful trees although I've yet to see any fruiting.

I found a small patch in Essex, so that's up to 5 now. 4/5 of the ones I'm familiar with have fruited. The Point Pelee one is the one without fruit. 3 of the patches have fairly large trees, up to about 35ft for the tallest one, and 6-7" diameter for the thickest.

In my backyard, I have 5 trees in 4 spots (2 smallest ones are close to each other and might need to get thinned eventually). Two from Whiffletree (Overleese + NC1), 3 seedlings. I keep all the seeds from fruits I gather in the wild and sell the seedlings. The NC1 already has its first 2 fruit this year, despite only having been in-ground since spring 2024. I think the Overleese (transplanted spring 2025) might have fruits in 2027 since I see the buds. The largest seedling was germinated in 2023, and transplanted in spring 2025 after being raised in a large tall pot, and it has grown very rapidly this year (by 2.5-3ft), so it's already about 4ft tall after just 4 seasons of growth since germinating, so at this rate it should start producing soon. I also had a damaged seedling I planted in fall 2024 as a "guinea pig" before planting my stronger one to see how it would fare in the winter, and it survived. So winters 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 haven't done any damage to my trees in Zone 5 (Wellington County). Those winters both had lots of snowpack though for insulation, this winter might have less.

I've been getting flower buds on mine for the first time since I started growing them in 2022, which I didn't expect all the way up in southern Ontario. I overwintered a big chunk of crown with about 15 buds on it and woke it from dormancy early enough that it filled out my 3 gal pot and got about 18" tall by the time I transplanted it in late May. Now, it's 7-8ft tall, and a couple of the tallest stems have the buds. The plant got burned by a light frost on the night of Oct 5-6 though, so it's not clear if the buds survived. Upper leaves got damaged but much of the foliage is still intact. Hopefully the harvest will be quite large in any case. Might not get a killing frost until late October.

Photos taken before the light frost.

Joao Winckler wrote:Volunteer tomatoes are one of those things that either happens or it doesn't, and when it does you wonder why you ever bothered starting seeds indoors. I get a handful every year from cherry types that dropped over winter. They always come up later than my started ones but once the soil is warm they grow fast and seem tougher somehow, probably because they germinated on their own terms rather than being coddled under lights. The only downside is not knowing exactly what you'll get if you grew multiple varieties nearby the year before.

Also transplant shock. It's not just about adjusting to root damage, but also to new soil conditions with different levels of compaction/aeration, different nutrient levels, different pH... My peppers often need 1-2 weeks to adjust to transplanting, tomatoes maybe 3-7 days.

Niko Lourotos wrote:

John Weiland wrote:Our garden is fenced against deer, but rabbits occasionally get in .... and that's the effect they would show on our beans.  As others have noted, if these are on a low deck, try moveing them to a higher point like a deck railing or table.  If the new location is away from deer and rabbits and *still* occurring, I would suspect squirrels or similar.

Really?? Squirrels? There are many of then around. I thought the ate nuts etc.
Hm... if it is squirrels, what do I do???

Sometimes squirrels bite off plants, especially flowers and vegetable seedlings, but are less likely to actually eat what they bite off compared to rabbits. You bean looks on the bigger side so I'd lean more towards deer or rabbit than squirrels but who knows.

Michael Qulek wrote:I think what you could do is to fill in the pots an inch or two deeper, and allow the curvy sections to produce roots.  Eventually, with roots forming above the curves, the curving will become irrelevent.

So pawpaws are okay with the stems being covered in soils? I know some plants don't like that and it causes their stems to rot (happened once when I played peppers a little deeper than the cotyledons).

Do the leaves have a lot of holes in them, or was it just the stem that was cut? It kind of looks like rabbits even though they might typically shy away from climbing onto elevated decks.

I'm somewhat reluctant to allow volunteer tomatoes to grow, because my season is short and they need the indoor head start to produce a solid harvest window. Chipmunks seem to spread the seeds all over my yard, so I often have to remove them from vegetable beds where they'd smother smaller plants like peppers or carrots. Occasionally I let one or two of them grow though. The chipmunks spread a lot of other small fruit that I planted too (ground cherries, solanum alatum, retroflexum and villosum).