posted 3 years ago
I've been reading about Christmas tree farms, "stump culture" in particular
It seems very permaculture adjacent.
The stump refers to growing an evergreen tree to about 11 feet and cutting it off at about 4 feet off the ground.
Multiple tree tops spring from the remaining branches.
The arborist picks one leader to be the next tree top, and with practice you could have more than one queued up, ready to be the next "tree" harvested.
It's not coppicing, it doesn't work if you cut the tree to the ground.
It's closer to pollarding, but you are harvesting the vertical growth over and over, not the horizontal ranches.
The best part is the compatibility with both understory and overstory planting.
I imagine locusts above, containerized ground nuts climbing the trunks and Siberian pea shrubs filling in the gaps.
That would be a lot of nitrogen fixing, and the evergreens could lap it up.
A set up like that would have a lot of protein to be harvested.
I think chickens would be good at that.
Paddocks could be established with the stumps as the fenceposts.
A chickshaw could be used to help spread out the manure or a centrally located coop used to collect it.
With permanent cover from the stumps, and an accumulation of needle duff to scratch in,I think the chickens would be quite happy.
What do y'all think?
Is anyone doing something like this?
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