posted 13 years ago
Hi all,
I really like the idea of having giant trees incorporated into my food forest. I especially like the idea of encouraging an eastern analog of a western rainforest. Here in Ontario we already have a colder, dryer variety called Eastern Temperate-Boreal Transition, examples of which include parts of the Ottawa Valley, Algonquin Park, and Temagami ecoregion. Another good approach might be to mix the Redwoods, which you'd put in lower-lying area (assuming there is some variation to your terrain, the lower areas would be wetter, yes?) with other wet-loving species that grow in similar conditions from analogous ecosystems, and plant dryer climate trees of the same scale on the higher areas. Encouraging diversity of species on the same scale would mean that the spaces that would host wet-loving tree species but are too dry would still have a giant tree releasing moisture to the environment when the air becomes drier. Also, if you even had a variety of different Redwoods, the ones best suited not only to your geographic location, but to the microclimates each finds itself in would be the ones to survive, meaning less necessary inputs, and that the species have the ability to colonise unused land and keep transforming it.
I wonder how far outside the root systems the allelopathy extends in the conifers we'd be talking about? If we could plan it such that these zones wouldn't overlap, but instead be checkerboarded with, say, patches of oak savannah and non-acidic food forest, there would be a lot of edge in the plan, much more diversity, and it would be much more interesting and resilient than a system that has only one species of a particular type in each niche.
-CK
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein