The Tree field Skye

I'm new to this site-- so hope that it's okay that I comment here... But what a beautiful sanctuary you have built... These pictures bring so much peace to my heart to see!! I adore the wildflowers, the embrace of water and water-loving plants (the first page, the self-seeded willow and creeping thistle? Absolutely gorgeous), and just how beautifully green and wild it all is. This seems as close to heaven as one could hope to be Thank you for sharing this, and giving those of us watching a bit more hope for our own future projects!!! Love the passing of all this wisdom

Hi kami, welcome and thanks for your kind words! Generally it's OK to post on any thread as long as you are reasonably on topic.

It is gorgeous here at this time of year - goes from just starting to grow in April, to an explosion of green as the trees leaf out through May. The midges are here now though, so it isn't always as pleasant as it looks

It didn't happen overnight, Skye is quite inhospitable at times with shallow acidic soil and strong salt laden winds, but the trees give shelter and feed the soil, making it drier and hopefully decompacting it as their roots penetrate through. Slow though, it probably took about 6 years for the trees to become taller than the grass and look like trees!
I'm pretty sure there is a thread somewhere about how long things take - soil building, forest garden establishing, I'll link it here if I find it again. Basically it's like the saying 'it takes years to become an overnight success'! I'm still pottering and planting....

I thought I'd updated this thread earlier, so have a bit of catching up to do....

Some of the new trees have been mulched with cardboard weighted down with stones. I now have emptied all the cardboard out of my frugal pallet-yurt shed, which I am very happy about as it makes the shed much more spacious! I think I will probably not bother mulching like this in future, as I'm no longer completely comfortable using cardboard as a mulch material. I will probably want to plant more trees along the boundaries, but may be able to mulch them a bit with hay cut from the paths instead.

mulching new rowans near growing area

The cherry plum trees have been flowering for a couple of years, but this year is the first that I have had a few fruit actually set. This one is on the one tree that has burgundy foliage. There were only a couple of fruit, but hopefully a good sign for future years.



Female flowers on the walnut trees. I didn't hand pollinate and there weren't many male catkins, so I'm not really expecting them to set this year.

female walnut flowers

The elder trees started flowering earlier than usual this year and I have made a good batch of cordial, which I love as a taste of summer year round. I tend to freeze it to keep it rather than sterilising it. The raspberries are looking promising, but no sign of ripening yet. The black currants are just starting to turn colour. I am quite excited also that one of my cherry trees that has set fruit for the first time, has turned out to be a larger fruited form.. This is presumably a seedling I grew rather than a wild cherry. Let's hope that the birds leave me some to try!

cherry fruit from seed

I spent quite a bit of time last month improving the smaller path down the escarpment at the top part of the hill. I may have some visitors coming later in the year, so wanted to improve the path a bit for them. I also needed to widen it slightly so that our invalid carriage 'Grommit' will be able to navigate it safely. Luckily I have a big pile of broken rock from the new polytunnel site (still under construction ) which meant I could put a good surface and gradient where I needed to. It was hard work moving it by hand though!

improving culverts at bottom of slope

widening and grading path surface

plenty of rock

The wild orchids are fabulous this year again. Mostly still down by the pond, but several appearing in spots further up.

cluster of pink orchids

The grass is getting taller in the tree field and it is time to start making use of all that good biomass! I try and go round and scythe the paths clear and my husband goes back around with the mower to tidy up

scything long grass

In some parts of the field I have established yellow rattle. It is actually a pest species in hayfields as it is parasitic on grasses, but I thought it might reduce the mowing burden, time will tell!

yellow rattle grass parasite

I've been tidying up the shell garden - it is quite overgrown with grasses that were not buried deeply enough. I also had some more shrubs to plant out - a late fruiting blackcurrant and another Aronia 'Nero' that was going cheap at the local garden centre. Unfortunately the blackcurrant and gooseberry I bought as bareroot plants and kept over winter did not survive. I really should have 'heeled them in' somewhere rather than just leaving them in a plastic bag and hoping that would be enough to keep the roots moist.
The 'onion grass' is quite fascinating - here it is growing huge 'bulbs' like a string of pearls. At this time of year I can imagine that it could be a good food source. I dared biting into one or two again, and there was a slight potato starch flavour under the bitterness. I must have another go at seeing how they used to prepare it! I think it is mostly the timing, rather than the growing conditions, but maybe the fact the bulbs are big and juicy also make a real difference to the flavour. It is a bit of a pain as a 'weed' though as pulling it tend to leave part of the 'pearl string' to regrow again. If the soil is loose enough I can fish more of the roots out.

onion grass pearls

So I have been tearing off the bulbs and disposing of those where the soil in the field is very thin, in the hope they will improve it. The tops of the grasses get laid around the plants I want to keep as mulch and soil improver.

mulching shell garden

I've also been bringing in more hay from the pathways to thicken the layer in the hope that might deter some of the grass from regrowing (probably just feed it!). Still it is starting to look a bit better, I'm thinking of sowing more seeds, but it is now getting a bit late in the season, still I can always harvest more and spread those in Autumn. The comfrey that I planted at the edge is establishing nicely. That should provide easy biomass and habitat in a year or two.

shell garden in sunshine

I just had to share this photo of the blueberry patch - the flowers all seem to be magenta - the melancholy thistle and foxgloves look so pretty (and the bees love them!) Lots of green blueberries coming on, some of the bushes are quite weighed down. I'm hoping to beat the birds .... I'm actually considering repurposing one of my obsolete polytunnel frames to a fruit cage, if the birds win again this year! Then again, I think the mice had just as many! I have had a few nice alpine strawberries that the mice seem to not be able to reach!

flowers and fruit

New Nancycam video :



A rubbish video looking around the blueberry patch and the shell garden mainly. Since then I have covered three of my blueberry bushes in net curtains in the hope I may be able to harvest more of the berries this year.

Interesting to see the video! It seems like a lot of our weeds are the same here. I have seen onion grass too but not very many places.

Have you looked into hemp nettle? I did see some in the video. They grow all over here and they have seeds that taste just like hemp seeds, very fatty and rich. But they’re prickly too.

Hi Maieshe, The hempnettle is amazing! There were none that I saw in the tree field before I started planting trees, but everywhere I planted a tree the hempnettle immediately popped up, and it was easy to see where the tree seedlings were in the grass by the patch of hempnettle flowers around them. I dread to think how long the seeds are viable for, since the field was just grazed for decades before we evicted the sheep, As an annual, the hempnettle hadn't a chance of setting seeds for years. It grows as an opportunist plant wherever I disturb the soil now, and made a good groundcover in the blueberry patch when that was new (now taken over by creeping buttercups). I have plants with both pink and white flowers - the bees love them. As you say, the plants are quite prickly to handle.
I did read that the seeds have a useful oil.  Ken Fern says

A drying oil is obtained from the seed. It is used as a polish for leather
A fibre is obtained from the stems, it is used for making cord

So maybe the 'hemp' in the name comes from the fibre usage? The plants can grow quite tall (perhaps 3 foot?) where they are happy, although typically quite branched and about 2 foot tall or less.
Ken and the pfaf site say that the plant is poisonous (although also medicinal...) so I haven't experimented with eating the seeds. They are a fair size and produced quite profusely. If the oil is good to eat that would be useful as I have few plants that produce good oil here. Although other oil uses (burning, wood/leather treatment) could also be interesting to explore.

They do like their shade. I think that when perennial grasses are established they have difficulty making their way in, but they love the spots that are a little damp and too shady for grass to predominate. I see them all over moist rocky ledges, at the edges of clearings, and lots of different places.

Sam Thayer wrote: This plant is not a nettle, nor a hemp. Its greens have often been eaten by confused foragers and are apparently safe but not particularly good. The seeds of hemp-nettle have been found in ancient European archaeological sites where they were apparently stored in large quantities as food.
They are oily and have a delicious, nutty taste-in both form and flavor reminiscent of hemp seed.
The similarity of the seeds appears to be the most likely explanation for the name, and hints at more widespread use in the past.
There are some dubious reports of the toxicity of these seeds.

Another plant that they kind of remind me of—that is the weedy plants that maybe used to be cultivated—is rye brome, Bromus secalinus. I noticed them growing in a garden as a weed and thought maybe they were teff, because they were big and grainy and non shattering but I didn’t recognize them. I tasted them and they were like rye in flavor. Then I brought some home and planted them and this year they came up in a few places. Grain doesn’t do well here so I am cautious about trying to spread them further in case of disappointment, but they haven’t yet been chomped.

So, given the slightly divergent reports on the edibility of "hempnettle", I was intrigued ..

Galeopsis tetrahit "an amphidiploid formed by a complicated cross between two diploids, G. pubescens and G. speciosa, to produce a new tetraploid species" and
'Hemp-nettle' "is a name first given by Gerard (1597)".
(https://fermanagh.bsbi.org/galeopsis-tetrahit-l)

As Nancy says, PFAF say "The plant is poisonous, causing paralysis [74]"
(https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Galeopsis+tetrahit)
[74] Komarov. V. L. Flora of the USSR.  1968 (https://lccn.loc.gov/63061623) but also:

"Edible parts: oil .. A drying oil is obtained from the seed. It is used as a polish for leather[74, 100].
[100] Polunin. O. Flowers of Europe - A Field Guide. Oxford University Press 1969 ISBN 0192176218

But "seed oil is toxic"
(Lipids, Lipophilic Components and Essential Oils from Plant Sources, Glushenkova, A.I. 2012
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279363971_Lipids_Lipophilic_Components_and_Essential_Oils_from_Plant_Sources
cited by
https://eflora.info/Galeopsistetrahit.php).

So I'd avoid eating it myself ..