This past two weeks, I've been rounding up my resources, observing, planning, and preparing for starting a food forest on the southwest corner of the house. It gets hot and dry and temperatures soar past what the weather man says it
should be for this part of the state, Central California. It is my desert microclimate even though I'm in a mediteranian climate overall. I have two pomegranates from
seed (one year old) that I plopped in the ground, and watered, and have survived. I planted a row of hackberry next to the house for shade. This was easy because I have easy access to the sprouts from the momma tree on the northeast end. But I'm a little nervous about using any of the rest that will be used next to the palms, olive, and artichoke I plan to install. The area is on a gravel driveway, so I will be digging in for tree access and rely on the run off from the gravel to wash into the tree basins. The palms will be late in coming as I'm growing them from seed, so I wanted to shade the ground until then with hackberry because they grow so darned fast. I planted seedlings last year and they are about four feet tall now. Once the palms are in, I could cut down the hackberries. What about the olive, artichoke and pomegranate?
It's really hard to find a lot of information on hackberry. In
Gaia's garden it lists them as nurse
trees, but I know they have a deadly affect on plants. Very little grows well around the momma hackberry tree except strawberries. I have strawberries and hackberries planted together in a pot and they are both doing quite nicely.
I'm putting together a theory, that hackberries do well around berries in general because they are both
indigenous to each other.
Anyone have any information or links to hackberries in food forests or guilds?
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