As landscape plants, willows are low maintenance, grow quickly, and require only moderate watering and no fertilizer. Many willows have dramatic stem color, especially on the new growth. You can cut the willows to ground level in late winter, when the plants are still dormant, and the willows will grow new rods from 3 to 10’ depending on the variety and availability of water. Plant willows away from foundations and leach lines.

 

We grow 13 varieties of willow that are especially good for basketry or living sculptures. Chuck has been giving talks and workshops this year about willows. He is available for future talks, workshops, design and construction advice on building living willow structures and furniture for schools, public projects, and private projects.

 

Most instructions for building a living willow dome use willow rods (branches) that are 8 to 9’ long, planted when they are dormant (in the early spring). UPN has rooted willow cuttings that can be used to build a dome any time of year.

Suggested varieties: S. hagensis, S. petiolaris, S. triandra ‘Black Maul’, S. triandra ‘Noir de Villane’

 

 

 

 

 

 

This month the Chuckster addresses maintenance of our plants once the insect and disease pressure is on. We experience these things at the nursery and also get lots of questions from plant-lovers.

 

There’s much disease pressure on useful plants as the heat and moisture build this time of year. As usual, the early the better for treatment, ideally around the time the plant is leafing out and beginning to flower.

 

Early signs of fire blight, most likely on apples or pears, are seen when the tips of the plant begin to curl like a shepherds crook and turn black.

 

The first order of business is to prune to 6” below any sign of infestation.

 

Next, treat with neem oil or horticultural spray at about weekly intervals until no more signs appear.

 

If the fire blight is advanced a more powerful biological bactericide is in order. At the nursery we use Streptomycin sulfate which is OMRI certified and non toxic to people or the environment.  Another option is a sulpher-based fungicide such as copper sulfate or lime sulpher.

 

Another common disease this time of year is a foliar disease called downy mildew which looks like little white powdery blotches on the upper side of the leaves.

 

In our nursery this is the most common on our serviceberries.

 

Over the years we’ve tried many things but have settled on a combination of Organicide, which is a sesame oil based product and Serenade, an organic fungicide. The oil coats the leaves and provides some protection while the fungicide works on the fungus.

 

In general, as long as there are high humidity conditions we will continue to see plant diseases. If they are too far advanced treatment won’t undo the damage that’s been done but further damage can be stopped.

 

Inadequate air circulation puts plants at the greatest risk. Hillsides are ideal for orchards and be sure to prune so that more air and light can circulate through the center of the plant.

 

 

This time of year the aphids are out in full force. They tend to inhabit the young tender growth on plants, and while rarely fatal, can distort or deform the new leaves.

 

The first line of defense is a healthy ladybug population. Ladybugs can easily be ordered online from a beneficial insect company. Neem oil is also an option as is Spinosad, an organic spray that addresses soft-bodied insects like aphids.

 

Slugs are another trying insect, particularly for strawberry growers. For a permaculture solution, incorporate chickens and ducks into the strawberry patch, as they’ll happily clean up the slugs. Short of that, you can use Slug-O which is iron phosphate. While it gets rid of the slugs it also adds nutrients to the plants themselves.

 

Our 1.3-acre homestead farm is divided into paddocks. Animals, vegetables, and cover crop get rotated among the pasture, based on need and seasonality, and the rest of the farm is in perennial plantings.

 

Chickens have been a big part of our farm and in fact were the first animal we experimented with. Over the past 7 years, we’ve had anywhere from 20 to 200 chickens and have decided that the ideal number for us is about 80. They lay enough for our needs and we have extra to sell to help cover our food costs.

 

During the warm weather, our chickens go on the road in their portable coop to take advantage of the grass growing in an adjacent pasture. During the winter though, they are housed in a spacious and quite luxurious timber frame chicken coop, which was built with the wood from our land. They have roosts aplenty and lovely nest boxes in which to lay.

 

The chicken coop opens into a 100’ x 50’ yard that, with 80 chickens, is a “sacrifice yard,” meaning we expect them to devastate the place during their stay and we will let it regrow during their absence. Because the yard is slightly sloped and was populated with only a couple of scraggly rhododendron grow-backs, the yard was in danger of erosion.

 

Around the time that erosion became a concern, we put in leach lines for a septic system directly uphill from the chicken yard. Not only was the chicken yard already full of nutrients from chicken droppings, but additional nutrients would likely flow underground from the leach lines. There had to be a way to access these resources.

 

During a class with Chuck Marsh, I learned that the Siberian pea and elderberry bushes were good shrubs to put into chicken yards because when the seeds and fruit drop, the chickens will happily oblige in clean up. And on top of that, fresh elderberries are full of antioxidants and phytochemicals that help keep the chickens healthy. Thus the idea of an orchard in the chicken yard was born, with useful plants doing quadruple duty: feeding humans and animals, recycling valuable resources, controlling erosion, and creating lasting beauty.

 

In spring 2009, I rerouted the chickens to another paddock. I rooted 10 or so elderberries directly into the ground, planted a 5-gallon pea shrub and serviceberry, two autumn olives, and in the fall, three more serviceberries. All were planted in a cross grid pattern for access to adequate light. I decided to wait a year for the plants to get established before letting the chickens back in.

 

2009 proved to be an excellent growing year—lots of rain, moderate temperatures during the growing season, and a very cold winter. This and the abundant soil nutrients served to establish the plants so fully that by this spring they look like they’ve been there for years. The autumn olives are heavy with fruit, elderberries are in the early flowering stage, and the pea shrub has pods aplenty. I picked off the serviceberry fruit to give them another year to establish themselves.

 

This year we have a small group of 15 chickens in the yard, the rest having gone off on their summer pasture adventure. The trees provide much needed shade and easy-access hiding places (from hawks), which add another two benefits not initially considered. The chickens scratch around the base of the trees but these varieties all seem to be able to handle the slight disturbance. Although the chickens might eat fruit that is close to their height reach, so far this has not been a significant concern. The beauty created by this mosaic of useful plants adds to the already vast satisfaction.