Revo Smith

For bread and pudding use i will crack grind the acorns into flour and cold soak them in large buckets of water for several days with daily changes. For roasting, I'll just crack and boil them in several water changes. I've never processed them but have read a few things. I guess running water like a river or some equivalent might be better for leaching, but I don't have any close by to utilize.

    Last winter I purchased 2 acres adjacent to my back yard that has a dozen or so mature black walnut trees (among many others). While I was doing morning walks to collect the newly fallen walnuts, I kept hearing what I thought was a large animal moving in the woods up the hill from my property. After some investigation, I found that it was no animal, but a MASSIVE red oak tree and a few of it's offspring dropping hundreds of nuts at every gust of wind. I excitedly started collecting the acorns from these couple trees along side the chipmunk.
    As it appears to be a bumper year, It seems there is plenty for all of us (turkeys, deers, and jays included).
I bought a table top nutcracker and a bigger basalt mocajete to celebrate this bounty and am looking forward towards making breads, puddings and roasted/seasoned nuts.
    I have also filled my small hot house with acorns and will hopefully be planting a hundred or so more red oaks next year. I've walked the small mountain uphill of me and believe that the couple oaks I've found are the only ones left in a sea of maple. I have told the tree thanks and promised the big one (now called big papa) as well as the concerned chipmunks that I will do my best to ensure a nutty future for us all.

I've heard of a fruit orchard doing something similar with broken glass. More of a long term solution and might be easy to get piles of glass for free. I like your more natural alternative better to be honest. Id feel weird putting loads of broken glass in my soil.
I use little cylindrical cages made from 1/4" hardware cloth around all my trees buried so they are about 1" in the ground and as much above ground for winter protection when they tunnel the snow on the surface. I've got lots of voles and all of my cages trees have been fine for years.

Im glad you shared this. I started logs last year that just started to fruit and have made another batch this year. I haven't gotten slugs yet, but I know once I start getting fruit in spring/ summer this info will save some mushrooms. I currently have logs Lincoln style and a lot in the low lean until they fruit next year. Hope you get piles of shrooms! Thanks again!

I started with red and white chokes, but have mostly been spreading the white ones (they are larger and more vigorous in my area).
I plant mine in the sunniest areas available (I get late afternoon shade everywhere). Every fall after they all have made flowers (mine start to flower in September), I pull up everything by the stalks and collect roots to eat and replant somewhere else. The area that was pulled gets the stalks for mulch and will regrow again the next season (since I don't dig them and surely miss a lot of roots). I have noticed that if I don't pull the big roots out at the end of a season, the following years patch will be less vigorous and won't produce many new large roots.
I consider them a perennial cover crop and will use them as a chip and drop around young trees. After a few seasons of chopping, the chopped plants will eventually die. By then, they've served their purpose and the tree is well established.

After a winter of collecting seeds from apples and mixing them into my hot house cold frame thing, I've transplanted them into small fabric pots and will plant and repot some later.  Out of 100s of seeds, only 80 made it out of the bark mulch. Probably would have gotten twice as many if I had started with a mulch free seedbed.
I planted some of last year's trees that over wintered in the hot house and brought inside for early spring. They went into this year's fruit hedges.

That looks like a coyote to me. I grew up in Colorado where the coyotes look Wiley and wirey like the cartoon, but now reside in Massachusetts where they look like this. The eastern coyote has been crossed with the red wolf in the 90s and is much larger than their western cousins. I've seen several in person and they do seem like wolves, but the picture you have looks like the eastern yotes I've spotted here. Either way, it's a great pic and a beautiful animal!

I use an inline hose filter for the garden. It was about $20 and I replaced it every year. I spend so much effort trying to build my soil and don't want to stunt it's life with unnecessary chemicals.

In 2023 I directly sowed apple seeds into cages and still have 2 nice trees. I don't do much weeding, so I decided the trees should be at least 6" before they are placed in cages and left on their own.

I make the cages out of 1/4" hardware cloth and use them for any perennials that voles and woodchucks like to kill.
In the beginning of 2024 I made a hot house for safe seed starting and season extension. It is vole proof and easy to work in (the roof is hinged on both sides). I grew mostly apples from seed in the hot house and transplanted into pots at about 3-6". The apples stayed in pots until late summer/ fall, then some were planted in cages, given to friends, or kept in pots to overwinter in the hot house.

As of right now, I have planted 17 apples in my small yard (out of 50+ trees and over 70+ edible annual/perennial varieties). I plant everything extremely close and maintain year round living mulch by cover cropping. Most of what I grow is chop and drop soil building with plenty to bring meals into the kitchen.

I've acquired 2 acres that extends from my back yard and have already started clearing space for more planting. I've built and buried about 50 more cages and have them spaced about 3-4' apart. I will alternate planting with seedlings, cuttings, mature trees and bushes, and cover crop/ annual crop in between these rows.

I work at a restaurant and have been added hundreds of apples seeds to my hot house this winter and expect to have another 100+ seedlings to plant this coming summer.

I don't have any particular goals for what I'm doing, it's more of a compulsive curiosity. I don't mind pruning or even lethaly chopping any of my plants. I do what I need to to maintain paths and maximum photothinsasis. I will come back next winter to show this year's apples and report on their growth and habit.