just listened to the last two podcasts myself (sepp holtzer / star trekkies and sepp holtzer/bone salve, pruning) quite interesting. Can't remember the Spock incident but sounds like something he would have done.
I found the last one the most interesting where they were talking about the russian olive and the not pruning the bottom branches off of the
trees so that gives something for the browsers to eat.
I have Russian olive, Autumn olive and goumi growing here and basicallly love them, although they do tend to pop up where I don't really want them to. I have had some come up on their own and it seems that the ones that have crossed among each other flower wise and popped up on their own have much tastier berries on them. I have even given cuttings from them away. They are better "people" food than the boughten strains.
they have the most amazing fragrance in the spring and the pollinators love them. The ones here only grow maybe 12' tall or so, but they make excellent windbreaks (as Paul mentioned) and also privacy screens, but they do use up quite a bit of space per plant, really wouldn't plant them in the same hole as a
fruit tree as was suggested elsewhere, as they are too aggressive for that.
Also Paul mentioned the chainsaw, one thing that does happen ..when you cut them down, they come back from the
roots. My husband cut one down one year (head injuury, doesn't understand) and he apologized profusely for killing my tree, but now ..several years later, it is growing back nicely from the roots and stumps.
As for the rodents eating the trunks of trees, we have that problem here with boughten grafted trees and I have had a problem with trunk protectors damaging the bark, this year I am going to try to use something we bought for our house and never got to using, pet proof screen replacement (on the roll from Menards). I am going to cut the screen to loosely fit around the trunk of the tree, not tight ..and staple the ends together with a paper stapler..to fasten it. being petproof it is supposed to stand up to pets, so I'm hoping it will stand up to the rodents and also allow air and sunlight through.
I also agree with Paul about non pruned trees, I have some wild
apple trees that grew from cores, and they were never damaged by rodents, they always had
water sprouts or shoots coming out at the trunk, i have tended to "prune" those off but I think I'll stop doing that to see if the rodents do munch on those.
I also was in agreement with where he said that if you plant
enough food for the wildlife they will generally leave your gardens alone..and that is fairly true here as I plant gobs and gobs of things specifically for the wildlife here, and the only trees or plants I ever have lost to the wildlife are grafted fruit trees (to
rabbits and some hard pruned by
deer) and sweet corn to racoons. We plant a very aggressive miniature hollyhock around here (yes we will share
seed) that the deer totally love..they will eat that over anything else in the garden..I plant it pretty much all around the property including along the road and in the beds and woods edges..as well as many berry bearing bushes and shrubs and trees to satisfy the needs of the wildlife.
Other than the damage mentioned above I really don't lose a crop to wildlife, an occasional nibble, but they don't kill the plants.
