Nathan Nickel

Hey

I'm looking for a place to purchase (pre-order) zone 3 garlic and walking onion bulbs. I've been hitting a few brick walls re: sourcing this. Any recommendations for pre-orders would be greatly appreciated because we would like to plant in the fall.

Thanks everyone for the fantastic information!

Hi All

I have a question about growing a fruit tree guild. I see folks talking about growing asparagus and strawberries as part of a fruit tree guild. We recently did this and now I'm getting worried and second guessing this. Here's why:

I read you need to let asparagus go to fern for the first three or so years. Doing this - I anticipate - will block out the sun for the strawberries that we planted near the asparagus.

How do you grow asparagus and strawberries together then so that you don't shade out the strawberries? Suggestions and advice are welcome!

I am continuing this thread if only because there may be others out there - like me - who want to grow a food forest in zone 3. I have been thinking of using strawberries as a ground cover for the food forest. Question - should we pinch the blossoms this year (we're planting them today) to encourage spreading? Or should we let the strawberries go to fruit?

Thanks all! We're going to be taking it slowly. This year will be focused on the woody plants - trees and berry bushes. Do folks tend to trellis the raspberries in this type of set up? It seems it would make it easier to get fruit. But at the same time detract from the natural look we'd like to have.

We are converting the acre of grass into a food forest. Right now nothing is there other than grass. We took a class on edible landscaping - https://www.ecosystemu.com/course/edible-property-design

We're adapting the patterning that he suggested. Finding which plants will make good companions with one another has been a bit tricky though we have read some do not go well together:
Asparagus does not grow well with garlic and onions but does grow well with strawberries.

We've not read much about the ability of European vs North American plants to do well together. Just focusing on zone 3 though. Have you had bad experiences with mixing European with North American plants?

Nick,

Great info - thanks so much! We've been planning for the deer. We moved here in July and haven't seen a single deer nor any evidence of deer over the past 10 months. But that's not to mean they won't come. And by adding tasty treats, it may draw them from miles around...  So the metal fencing is a great suggestion! THANKS!

We read that garlic and onions deter deer, rabbits, and voles - but it sounds like your experience hasn't supported that. We've been looking for good sources for both of those (along with the other herbs) around here. Was considering T&T Seeds.  

Thanks for this suggestion!

Nick Neufeld wrote:Hi Mary,
pfaf.org has an awesome database that can be filtered by hardiness zone. It can also be filtered by many other useful fields like edibility and nitrogen fixing.
Good luck with your project!
Nick

Hey Heather! How is your property coming along?

Heather Kay wrote:Late to the party but I figured I'd add myself to the list :) I currently raise rabbits and am constructing my hugel beds in a rural area NE of Steinbach, and just got about 1/2 of my orchard planted this year. Within the next 10 years I'll hopefully expand to getting bees, poultry, some sheep, and finishing off another few hugel beds as well as getting my last 13 trees for my orchard. Once my beds and trees are all in place then I'm going to get a permanent fence set up, then turn it into more of a food forest - all the bone sauce and deterrents in the world won't keep the deer, bears, or wild rabbits away sadly.  I'm always looking to learn from other people - I'm especially interested in learning more about micro barns/multi-purpose animal housing, wild foraging, and food preservation. I'm also happy to teach people about raising rabbits for meat if they're interested! If anyone wants to contact me, shoot me a PM on here and we can exchange emails.

Hey Nick!

We have trees along our property line but everything inside is grass. It is clay soil. We ordered trees from Boughen Nurseries this year. Not a lot but we ordered the following:
Apple: Goodland
Raspberry: Red River 5 Pack
Crabapple: Rescue
Raspberry: Heritage 5 Pack
Apple: Fall Red
Raspberry: Boyne 5 Pack
Crabapple: Dolgo
Raspberry: Heritage 5 Pack
Tecumseh Plum
3x 25 pack for all-star strawberry
3x 25 pack for seascape strawberry
3x 25 pack for kent strawberry
5x 10 pack for asparagus

Would love to take strategy. We took a class on constructing edible guilds but it wasn't as informative as I had hoped it would be. Some ideas were helpful. For example the gentleman suggested creating a pattern that goes something like:
5 feet for a tree
5 feet for herbs
5 feet for a shrub
5 feet for herbs
5 feet for a tree
and then repeat
(if a line. but you can expand it in two dimensions too. It is just a patterning to try to make sure you have space and light etc...)

His thought was that doing this would make sure the trees are far enough apart to not scrape against one another when mature which can lead to disease. That made sense to us. But now what to put in the herb sections and what to put around the trees and bushes just gets me confused a bit.

What have you found that works? I tried to get haksup but that was REALLY hard to find. I'd be super curious about your experiences with nuts. I wanted to get some nut trees but wasn't sure what would be good for zone 3. And are they more shrubs? Or trees? But ALL of this is so new to us.

I've been following this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfz0O9f_Ysivwz1CzEn4Wdw
But he's not zone 3.

Nick Neufeld wrote:Congratulations on your new property Nathan! What's it like? Open lawn or wooded? Sandy soil?

I'm working on my tree nursery skills in Winnipeg, so that I can plant out my rural property. I'd be happy to share some seeds or cuttings for you to propagate or at least talk strategy.

Last year I had good success with
Apple seeds
Seaberry seeds
Grape hardwood cuttings

This year I'm trying
Pear seeds
Hazelnut seeds
Walnut seeds
Haskap hardwood cuttings
Plum hardwood cuttings
Cherry softwood cuttings

I'll try saskatoons by seed next year.