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This delightful plum will open to an orange-yellow fleshy innard.
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Plant of the Month: Bounty Plum
Bounty plums (Prunus nigra) are a small sized, flavorful, disease resistant plum variety. Known as a a hardy, productive, and reliable cropper with medium to large dark-red fruit, this plum is a good choice for properties with limited space availability. The Bounty hails from Manitoba, Canada and is adaptable to many micro climates in our area, growing better than Japanese or wild native plums. In springtime, the tree will be covered in white flowers, giving way to tender, sweet, and juicy late-August fruit good for both fresh eating and canning as jam and jelly.
We’re offering 30% off both the 5 and 7 gallon pots. Sale price $25 and $32 respectively. Be sure to order two plants as they need to be cross pollinated.
For more Bounty Plum info, click here.
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Apples are plentiful for eating and cooking this time of year.
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Useful Plant Recipe
There doesn't seem to be a shortage of apples around these parts. Here's a simple and lovely apple recipe that won't fail to please, especially with a dollup of ice cream on top!
Baked Apple
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
4 crisp red apples
2 TBS fresh lemon juice
2 cups water
Filling
½ cup honey or maple syrup
½ cup raisins
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp cinnamon
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Core apples using a melon baller leaving the bottom of the apple so they hold stuffing.
Combine lemon juice and water, and place apples in it as you complete coring them.
3. Mix filling ingredients together and fill cavity of apples.
4. Place apples in a baking dish with about 1 cup of the lemon water in bottom of the dish. Bake
uncovered for about 1 hour depending on size of apples, until they are tender. Drizzle juice
from bottom of pan over apples and serve hot.
Cooking Tip: Make sure you start with a crisp apple such as McIntosh, Ida Red, or Rome for the best flavor and texture.
Chef, teacher, author, and useful plants enthusiast, Mary Lane, shares recipes from her newly released book Divine Nourishment, A Woman's Sacred Journey with Food.
Click here to view Mary Lane's website.
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Witchhazel blooming in December, life, even in winter.
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The Changing of the Guardians
GOODBYE BRUCE
Bruce Johnston, UPN's faithful and dedicated manager for the past 2.5 years is departing to explore life in Boulder, CO. Bruce has been an invaluable asset to us, helping to organize and streamline our office systems, amp up our sales volume, and generate creative, ingenius ideas that have been implemented to great success. From Bruce:
"Today I bid a fond (physical) farewell to the mountains and nursery that have been my home for the past three years. There are not enough words to convey all the lessons that I have learned here, or the gratitude I feel toward all those that I have met in this job."
Bruce, we thank you for your leadership, direction, and passion. May a new year bring you not only a new home and sacred work but deep fulfillment in your spiritual quest.
HELLO DEBBIE
 We are thrilled to be welcoming Debbie Lienhart as the new manager at UPN. Debbie comes to us with an amazing array of skills in management, technical communication, videography, fiber crafts, gardening, and baking. Captivated by the concept of forest gardens in her permaculture studies, she planted fruit tree guilds in her suburban front yard. Now as a Useful Plants new manager, her passion will have an opportunity to grow stronger. In fact, she is looking forward to spending more time working with people and plants, and less time with computers.
Debbie lives at Earthaven with her husband and two cats, where she is a co-founder of the Forest Garden Learning Center, is developing a mostly apple orchard, organizes community events, and promotes non-violent communication.
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Chuck Marsh, permaculture designer, UPN founder, and all-around rascal!
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Ask the Chuckster
Useful Plant Advice from Chuck Marsh
What are the winter tasks for a useful plant enthusiast?
Here are some ideas about winter tasks. Use winter as a time to:
- Plan your landscape – Identify areas to devote to vegetable gardens, berry bushes, fruiting vines, and fruit trees. Get some graph paper and draw out your new or expanding food production plans.
- Clean up your site – In preparation for spring planting, remove exotic invasives (by the roots for best results), fruit drop, excess mulch around tree trunks, fallen limbs, etc.
- Prune – Clean up any snow damaged branches but save major fruit tree pruning for late winter or early summer.
- Soil testing - If you haven't got one yet, do so now. While the test is free in NC, it can sometimes take up to six weeks for results. Get yours in before the spring rush so you'll have the data on hand for spring planting.
- Apply fertilization – If you haven’t yet fertilized your fall berries, do so in January. Broadcast the fertilizer onto the surface of the snow and let it percolate down slowly.
- Apply mulch – Same as above. If you haven’t gotten to it, do so now.
- Create sunlight – In order to get good fruit and vegetable production, you need at least six hours of sunlight per day during the growing season. Use winter to prune limbs and fell trees that are shading your production areas. Winter is the best time for this kind of work. If you aren't knowledgeable, you might want to hire some help. Contact us for tree felling referrals.
- Build arbors or trellises – Once spring hits you’ll be too busy planting and tending to do much building. Warmish winter days are perfect for this type of construction.
- Research – Winter is the ideal time to browse our website for plant choice ideas. Call us for more info if you need to.
- Consulting – Are you stuck on what to do in that little corner of your yard? Not sure what type of soil you have? If you’re going to have some consulting done, don’t wait until the busy season. Now is a really good time to get some advice so that you can incorporate it into your planning for spring planting. Contact us for edible landscaping and design work.
- Dream up neighborhood orchards – Sit around with a cup of tea with neighbors and friends and plan your neighborhood orchard.
How do you approach site assessment from a Permaculture perspective?
When doing site assessment, on any size property from city lot to wide open spaces, it’s important to understand the Permaculture theory of zones. There are five zones which help place plants and elements in the landscape according to how often you need to visit them. Good zone planning will not only save you time, money, and valuable energy by getting everything in the best functional place the first time.
Zone 1 is a grazing zone for intensive domestic production. This area is right around your house where you want to plant things that need regular harvest such as salad vegetables and herbs as well as berries and fruits like strawberries or blueberries, which have a long production cycle. Mind the Permaculture maxim: “Start at the kitchen door and work outward from a controlled front.” Place plants that need constant harvesting along pathways and near entrances so that you’ll visit them often.
Zone 2 is also a zone of domestic sufficiency where you would plant staple crops that need less regular attention such as corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, etc. This is also the place for locating the chicken house and yard, a place you’ll visit more often but don’t want right up against the house due to noise and smell constraints. Also located in this zone are home orchards, berry patches, and vineyards.
Zone 3 is the commercial or income generating production area. In a small urban lot this area might be offsite in a nearby community garden, neighborhood orchard, or regional foraging. On a larger site, you'd be amazed at what kind of economic returns are possible from an expanded garden and orchard areas.
Zone 4 is the area of managed woodlands or forest gardens where firewood crops and nontimber forest products such as mushrooms or medicinal plants are grown. This is an area to plant nut trees that need more space or harvest acorns that grow naturally in this area. In the city this would be found in parks, edges or woodlands.
Zone 5 is the area of the wild where we leave nature alone. This is the place where we go to learn and observe. The types of human intervention here might include wild harvesting or controlling exotic invasive plants. In the city this might occur in abandoned lots, riparian zones, or even alleyways where things are growing wild.
Send your questions for the Chuckster to info@usefulplants.org.
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Solar Dehydrator
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Notes from a Plant Geek (A monthly guest column)
Preserving the Harvest
by Jonathan Swiftcreek
Once you have your own fruit producing plants, you’ll find yourself much less interested in buying fruit from the store. It's not as fresh, not as tasty, more expensive, and comes from who knows where. But during January through April when your fruit is not dripping from the branches you will likely still find yourself hungry for local, affordable, homegrown fruit. What to do?
During abundant times, it may seem like winter is an eternity away, but when you’ve got more strawberries in May and June than you know what to do with, try preserving them. Strawberries dry very well, freeze well and can even be canned for sauces, jams and jellies.
 Drying fruit is an easy way to preserve your bounty. Most fruits dry best is cut into ¼ inch or smaller slices.You can use an electric dryer or buy or make a solar dryer. Apples dry very well. Persimmons dry well whole, (varieties that are small, such as American types), or smashed with the seeds squeezed out.
Berries seem to be most flavorful if preserved frozen. First let them dry and and then freeze them one layer thick on a cookie sheet. After they are frozen, pour them into a bag for storage. This method will freeze the berries individually, instead of in a big chunk, to be removed in small amounts as needed.
Fruits that are harvested later in the year can simply be stored and eaten fresh throughout the winter. Apples and pears, particularly varieties described as “winter storage” or “keepers,” can be enjoyed juicy and crispy well into the winter. Ideal storage is a consistently cold, but not freezing location where moisture is low, animal-proof, with some air circulation.
If you have less than ideal storage conditions, work with what you have and experiment. A cool room, basement, outbuilding or north porch may do well. Sometimes adding insulation like an old wool blanket will block the wind and prevent freezing on your porch.
Finally, there are nuts, which can easily be stored for many years. One method for storage of nuts is to remove the outer husk (but not the shell) and cure them upon harvest. This is drying them in a warm, dry spot for a week or two. Attics, barns, unused rooms, porches, or even outdoors (though you have to guard them from squirrels) will work. Once cured, store them in boxes, check them periodically for the first couple of months to make sure they are not molding (a sign you didn’t get enough moisture out), and crack them when you want to eat them.
Creativity and thinking ahead will reward you with delicious, homegrown food in winter. Having your own preserved fruit in winter is like bringing the light and warmth of summer sun back into your wintry life.
Jonathan Swiftcreek is an avid food producer, preserver and forager always open to learning new forms of reverence towards food. He is currently exploring Earthaven Ecovillage (home of Useful Plants Nursery) for membership after living for three years in Asheville, NC, and apprenticing on farms throughout the southeast region for more than five years.
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Learn to design with nature.
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Study Permaculture with Chuck Marsh
Permaculture Design Course
February 8-19, 2010 at Koinonia Farm in Georgia
This unique 72-hour design course includes all of the basic concepts and fundamental elements of permaculture design as well as hands-on projects.
The course will take place at Koinonia Farm, a 67 year old intentional community and working farm, whose mission includes “embodying peacemaking, sustainability, and radical sharing.” Koinonia community members are active in Peace and Justice work, and many permaculture systems on the farm are in place or being designed, such as rotational grazing, organic pecan trials, village living, organic gardens, swaling and other water harvesting, and more.
The course will include include classroom learning, field trips, skill building, and an opportunity to practice and develop permaculture design skills.
Instructors: Chuck Marsh, Patricia Allison, Bob Burns, and guests.
Tuition is $900 which includes instruction, materials, dorm-style rooms, and meals. Discounts of $50 when you bring a 2nd person, and $50 for camping.
This PDC filled in 2009 and is expected to fill again.
For more information contact: Isabel Crabtree, 828.252.4930, georgiapermaculture@gmail.com
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Chuck at Organic Growers School
Don't miss the Organic Growers School's annual Spring Conference on March 6 & 7, 2010 at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Chuck will be teaching the following class:
SCULPTING AND WEAVING PLANTS: THE FINE ART OF BIOTECHTURE
This workshop will be an exploration of useful plants and how we can grow them in little known ways. Learn to grow fruit trees as shrubs, grow your own garden furniture, make a willow "igloo", create a living fence, grow fruit trees on their own roots, and create living garden sculptures. Learn to cultivate the adventurous gardener in yourself as we grow ourselves back home.
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Useful Plant Gift Ideas
Birthday Presents Tired of all those useless gifts that sit in the closet all year? Try something creative like a fruit tree, landscaping or consulting services.
New Home?? Has a loved one purchased a new home? Or are you having a housewarming party? Imagine the yard bursting with food and medicine! Give the gift of an edible landscape consultation to start the homeowners off right.
New baby in your life? Plant a tree in honor of the new life. It's a strong cultural tradition in Africa and elsewhere. The tree will grow with the child and they will get to know each other all through life, offering wisdom, nourishment, and friendship to each other. What a way to celebrate life!
Upcoming Wedding? Looking for something new and unique? Consider a gift that will mark this commitment and give back to the couple for years. Trees have long been given as gifts to mark special occasions. Just as the color of a rose, they symbolize many things. Here's some fruit trees and their folkloric meanings:
- Apple Tree symbolizes beauty, youth, and happiness
- Elder symbolizes wisdom, magic, and love
- Plum Tree symbolizes fidelity
- Cornelian Cherry Tree symbolizes durability
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Buy plants and consulting with UPN Gift Certificates
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Gift Certificates
With a UPN gift certificate, the recipient can get just what they want when they are ready to plant it.
Or, let your friends and family know that you'd like a UPN gift certificate for a special tree, bush, or other useful plant.
Gift certificates are available in any denomination of $5.00 or more. We will send a paper certificate in the US mail. If you prefer, we can send a PDF file that you or your recipient can print.
You can now pay for gift certificates with a credit card through our secure website, or contact us at info@usefulplants.org or (828) 669-6517 for other options.
You can also use gift certificates for design and consulting services. We're partnered with Living Systems Design, Chuck Marsh's consulting and design services business for creating regenerative human habitats. Services include:
- Permaculture/ecological design and consulting
- Edible landscaping design
- Installation services
- Site mapping and drawings
- Energy and water conserving design
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Come on, let's be friends!
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UPN on Facebook
Useful Plants Nursery is now on Facebook!
Be a friend and/or fan, hook up with other Useful Plants people, and share your stories.
The photos are fabulous.
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Deliveries to Greenlife in January
A reminder that if you purchase something from us by phone or email, our trusty staff will deliver the plants to Greenlife for a pickup if that's more convenient for you. We come into Asheville on a weekly basis and can arrange a time for pickup with you. If you want a delivery to your site or delivery to town on a day we're not already coming, we'll be happy to that for an additional fee.
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Fruit School
4th annual Barkslip's Fruit school
Fruit tree care and pruning: February 13th
Plant rooting and propagation: February 20th
Bench grafting and cloning around: March 13th
Top working trees and advanced grafting: April 17th
All classes will be taught in Asheville but can be brought to your community as well. For details go to WWW.Barkslip.com
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Who are we?
Useful Plants Nursery is a small, permaculture-based nursery specializing in useful, phytonutritional, food, and medicine plants well-adapted to our Southern Appalachian mountains and surrounding bioregions. Our plants are grown without the use of synthetic pesticides at our nursery located at Earthaven Ecovillage. I believe that growing your own food and medicine plants is a vitally important strategy and practice for regaining control over our collective and personal lives, our health, and our individual and bioregional economic well being. Our nursery is dedicated to putting those beliefs into practice and truly creating "Liberation through Abundance" as we serve your needs for healthy, useful landscape plants, and work together to reweave the web of life.
-- Chuck Marsh, nurseryperson, permaculture designer, bioregional inhabitant
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