Conrad Richter

Travis Philp of River City Farms in Canada visited Richters Herbs a few weeks ago and gave a presentation on starting an urban forest garden. For beginners especially this video is a great introduction to the subject, covering everything from planning to planting and care. The presentation is about an hour long and is posted on our Youtube channel at Forest Gardening in an Urban Setting.

Nick Kitchener wrote:Hey Conrad, does sea-buckthorn pollard well?

I noticed from the video that one way to harvest the fruit is to lop off branches and then shake them off.

As this is a nitrogen fixing tree, pruning above ground will cause a release of nitrogen into the soil as the tree prunes it's root system in response.

This could be a fantastic cold climate food forest support species if it regenerates readily.

I just did a bit of reading and sea-buckthorn apparently has strong coppicing traits. It might not only be a great support species in a food forest, but also a great source of fuel for a rocket stove.

I imagine it would be a pretty effective deer barrier too.

Because of the thorns harvesting can be painful if one is too eager to pick the tempting berries. But what is often done is to cut and freeze the branches and then the berries are easily shaken off. This is how the berries are handled before they are processed into preserves, powder, oil, etc.

I suspect that seabuckthorn will pollard well but Marlene Wynnyk does talk about taking care to prune properly. If pruning is done too aggressively yields will be set back. Pruning for the pollard effect will set back harvests by at least a year; but if you are okay with that, then I suspect that it should work.

Nick Kitchener wrote:I was just looking at this plant on the Richters site (available as seed) but it looks like I missed this season as they need 3 months cold stratification
Maybe next year...

Oh Conrad, I just made the connection LOL! Duuuh...

Glad to make the connection!

Although we have been selling seabuckthorn seeds for years, it is important to know that plants grown from seed will be inferior to the named varieties. We plan to offer several superior varieties in the coming years. These named varieties are vegetatively propagated and as such they have defined sex and defined varietal characteristics such as heavier yields, larger berries, sweeter flavour, etc. The sex part is important because only the females produce berries, but you need at least one male for every five females for pollination. With seed grown plants you will have more males than you need. We still recommend seeds for large scale shelter belt plantations and for remedial plantations, but if you want good quality berries you should get the named varieties.

Marlene Wynnyk, who gave the presentation recorded at Richters (link in my previous post above), will be providing us with limited supplies of plants from her orchard this spring. We don't yet know how many we will get, but if we get good supplies then we may add some improved varieties to our online catalogue. I suggest that you follow us on Twitter where we would make the announcement if any are put online.

Kota Dubois wrote:Hey Conrad, welcome to the forum! I've been buying seeds from you for years, always to great success. Your family's work over the years has been in many ways seminal to everything we can do now. Thank-you.

Thank you for your kind comment!

Marlene Wynnyk of The Healing Arc in Ontario, Canada, recently gave a presentation on her 12 years of work on Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamniodes) at Richters Herbs. She discusses varieties, cultivation and uses. A video recording is posted on Youtube:

Seabuckthorn: Ontario's Local Citrus on Richters Herbs Youtube Channel