The only problem I have with these last two videos is the length is too short for me. I get get so inspired and excited by the vast variety and beauty of all these food giving plants 😊 I could watch your videos like these last 2 for hours 😊
A nice young lady from Chicago nocked on my door the other day and asked me how I came up with all the really creative gardening idea that I've implemented, I told her to watch your channel.
mid-Missouri, USA zone 6A. Our apples and cherries are in full bloom with no killing frost and none expected. A little more rain would be nice but everything is doing great.
Thanks for the gracious reminder that one of the foundational principles of permaculture is observation. We tend to think of observing the landscape as the step preceding design and forget that one of the "yields" of the food forest is personal, spiritual, and community enrichment derived from our relationship to the plants we co-habitate with. Taking time to appreciate their less tangible benefits nourishes a part of ourselves that enables us to continue the important work of husbanding (spousanding?) regenerative landscapes. thanks for taking time to share the beauty and deep complexity of these relationships.
Our mullberries,pears and grapes have flowers/buds and tonight it's supposed to freeze! I simply don't have the bandwidth to baby them,so whatever will be will be...
Our 4 month old daughter loves to gaze close-up at the plum blossoms. It's the first year our young plums have blossomed. Not sure if that means we will get plums to eat, but it's wonderful to see the flowers.
Very exciting content for me! Lol I am in the first year of planting my own permaculture backyard orchard and so far it’s non stop woodchip shoveling. Can’t wait to see them mature and burst into fowers like yours!
Here in the coastal PNW, our American plums flower first. Unfortunately, this means the blossoms can get knocked off by our heavy rainfall, if they are tricked into blooming by a few warm sunny days early in spring. Out here, it's feast or famine, when it comes to our wild plum yields!
I grow all sorts of fruit plants here in Scotland. In fact there are about 60 different types - but Sea Buckthorn is not one of them. Three times I have tried them - but they start to die almost immediately. First time, I tried them from seed. The seedlings came up all right to begin with, some later died in their pots, the survivors were put in the ground and they dwindled in no time. Then I bought some taller ones - dead in weeks. 3 years ago, I bought a final batch of 20 good-sized plants, and the best of them lasted just about a year. There's no damage to the stem that I can see, no evident sign of disease, noting is eating the leaves. I plant them in a mixture of sites - sun and sheltered, sun and exposed. The soil is very good here, a bit rocky, but free-draining and the sort of quality loam many gardeners would kill for. I was careful to spread them out in case burrowing animals (voles) might be messing with the roots here and there. Checking afterwards, the roots were undisturbed, the plants having just dropped everything and faded away without a visible trace of a reason. So, there's some condition they don't like here in Scotland - although I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I'm not in a financial position to keep buying the things. Three attempts are quite enough. But does anyone have any idea of any condition that will cause these plants to just die?
Looks so pretty! I have Nanking and halll’s Hardy almond and when they were blooming pollinator activity wasn’t high. A couple weeks later pollinators started increasing. I think both trees probably flower very early. You are about 2-3 weeks behind me weather wise so you should start to see pollinators increase. You can increase ecosystem by getting rid of a lot of that grass. Grass is ass.
Nanking cherry!!! Mostly blossom, what a cool plant. Alas I don't think it exists down here in NZ. We are just finishing our homegrown black peaches and will eat the last of them in a crumble for breakfast. :) 3 year old seedlings trees absolutely laden.
One plant I'm really interested in, is two Carpathian walnuts squirrel planted in amongst a very old rhododendron. There seems to be two of them, and I would say both are about 15-20ft tall, so perhaps maybe 4-5 years old, double trunk on both of them, which leaves me to believe it might've been girdled by a rodent early on in its life. Some buds are beginning to peak their heads out, we've been having a chilly spring so hopefully it holds off from flowering, I've heard their flowers can be frost-tender.
You are about 0.8 degree further north than I am and I'm zone 5B and my american plum just started sending beautiful white flowers last week ( it made one single plum last year :) ). I like your tip about spreading nice plants around the microclimate zones....it's especially helpful when establishing a new food forest to distribute widely and this can be paired with other techniques to lower input costs (sourcing smaller plants like I blasted 25 at a time from the state nursery for 1 dollar and accept the death that comes after from no protection) mix with Miyawaki method and lots and lots of free-ish mulch (I burn some gas to get it :(...). This is also a rabbit defense strategy because if you're spreading around, there will be some zones the rabbits won't go near at times due to risk or patterns of their movement.
Always something to learn from your commentary. It's so helpful. All the fruit pits that you plant, do you graft each one later? That would be crazy amount of work, since you plant countless number of them. Thank you so much.
Ooh thank you for the tour, I think our trees are a week or two behind yours in timing. Also thank you for sharing the difference between male and female Seaberry, I have 3 plants but didn’t know what to look for... I started with more seedlings but they didn’t all make it, so I’m hoping we have one of each 😁
I planted a row of seaberries last year after the female I had the year before died. Now it looks like my male died back to the ground over the winter but my three females are thriving. Then, when they all get to maturity there is a gamble that the male isn’t on the same schedule as the rest, or if they are, that the wind blow in the direction I need it to blow to pollinate the females. In short, they are more difficult and finicky than most other options and not as care-free and hardy as many videos let on. I am in zone 6, not exactly too hot or too cold for them.
Love seeing all the beauty! We are barely getting crocus popping up here. Question- will the staggered flowering result in a staggered harvest? That would be very helpful for personal use trees if it did.
I wonder, it's a great question... I would think it would spread out the harvest. Not ideal for a commercial operation but amazing for a family and friends centered planting!
Yes, great idea to stagger same type of fruit trees in both full and partial shade so if one is in bloom and gets hit by frost hopefully the one in the shade will bloom later so you can still get a harvest
England's Orchard & Nursery in Kentucky carries a hardy almond called Javid's which they describe as having an amaretto flavor and I am so wishing to try one day!
Hello from over the Atlantic pond 😉 - love yr videos, I was able to take so much valuable info from them. Thks. - In this video you said that yr almonds are bitter tasting. I learned in the south of France that you should not eat bitter tasting almonds because they have hydrocyanic acid in them and can be deadly to humans, depending on their bodyweight… so for small children it can be very dangerous… just an info from a attentive spectator. My different plum varieties, almonds and peaches had and have a very good start as the weather has been not too warm, not too cold… so they were blooming for a very long time… one line after the other. So I am starting to looking forward to a good harvest this year. Kind rgds Claudia P.s. just ordered some nanking cherrys 🎉
If you get a chance, could you do an episode on harvest and taste of these different types of nuts and fruits. Mine aren't quite at bearing age. Thank you!
We are in 5a, and with the insane temp swings of years late, we are finding the early blooming trees and shrubs (mostly the Nankings) are blooming before the pollinators hatch out. They seem to be missing each other by 10-14 days. It tough to observe phenology in a climate in turmoil.
Thanks for sharing! I have a question regarding cuttings of currants and their flowers, mainly, what to do if a tiny currant cutting that's just rooted from dormant starts sending out flowers - prune them? Leave them be? They are small, about 1' thank you so much!
Hi Sean. Really enjoy the walking tours and seeing all of the beauty and life flourishing. A quick question… in your experiences, are ribes flowers susceptible to frost damage? Or are they fairly resilient? Thanks.
Depending on the temps you are filming, it may just be too cold for pollinators. I usually only see them in full sun over 50s. Fruit trees activity also aren't the best indicator of pollinator population since they generally stop producing nectar once pollinated and don't have the biomass of other nectar producing trees. I would look into Hawthorn or red maple if you want to support pollinators better than stone fruit in dwarf rootstock because they provide an earlier nectar source when bees really need it. I see more hoverflies on my stone fruit than my honey bees so I wouldn't read too much into it. They absolutely crush my maples and hawthorn though. You'll know by fruit set if your pollinators are struggling. That's the best indicator.
I had some nanking cherry cuttings trying to root. They started to bloom. I think it was to early or they then got to hot. They look like they gave up. Very very sad. I had plans for them in the chicken yard.
So I ordered a siberian c peach for my zone 4b canadian garden. I'm putting it on the Northside of my house which receives minimal late day son ...now it ripens at fall equinox.. I get a frost on holloween.... usually have an elongated Summer I wonder if I will get fruit ripening in time???.
Thanks Shawn for this interesting video. I am located in Germany at 500m altitude and am interested in the cold hardy almonds as well as apricots and peaches. Could you provide their full latin names so that I can find them here in Germany ? I assume it does not makes sense or is easily possible to ship from your site.
I'm cherishing my last few plums. I only have one plum and one peach. Can they cross pollinate or does it take 2 plums or 2 peaches to cross pollinate?(to get a better/bigger crop)
I have a QUESTION about a black current bush that is over 50 years old and has multiple stems 10 ft high. It flower early and is the favorite of bees and humming birds but it produces no fruit. occasionally a fruit stem will have one black berry start to form but have no seeds and it withers. Does it need a pollinator and do you have one that might work? I would like to propagate a wall of them to the west of my Boysen and Logan berries to keep the deer and scalding evening sun from devastating them.
We are very friendly and appreciative to them if/when they come around and also ask that if its at all possible to avoid smashing our plants (and acknowledge how annoying it is to have to do that and we understand if it happens)... magically all is left carefully untouched. I like to think they like how pretty it all is :)
Thanks so much for the flower wandering - beautiful! Here (in the forest, just north of Stockholm, Sweden) we're just behind you in flowering. The gooseberries in the sun are presenting their first buds. Love your channel :-)
The only problem I have with these last two videos is the length is too short for me. I get get so inspired and excited by the vast variety and beauty of all these food giving plants 😊 I could watch your videos like these last 2 for hours 😊
A nice young lady from Chicago nocked on my door the other day and asked me how I came up with all the really creative gardening idea that I've implemented, I told her to watch your channel.
I'm just finishing harvesting apples here in Australia! Lovely to see all those beautiful trees in early Spring. Thanks so much for sharing!!
mid-Missouri, USA zone 6A. Our apples and cherries are in full bloom with no killing frost and none expected. A little more rain would be nice but everything is doing great.
Ohhhh, a lovley wander! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the gracious reminder that one of the foundational principles of permaculture is observation. We tend to think of observing the landscape as the step preceding design and forget that one of the "yields" of the food forest is personal, spiritual, and community enrichment derived from our relationship to the plants we co-habitate with. Taking time to appreciate their less tangible benefits nourishes a part of ourselves that enables us to continue the important work of husbanding (spousanding?) regenerative landscapes. thanks for taking time to share the beauty and deep complexity of these relationships.
Really thoughtful here, thank you
Thank you for showing the beautiful blossom and all the great information.
Thank you for the lovely Spring walk from Autumnal Australia!
Spring is such a wonderful time to be in the garden. ❤
I've got many of the same characters, but they've just started to bud with that warm spell. Love the Nanking cherry flowers, they are for sure a fav.
Our mullberries,pears and grapes have flowers/buds and tonight it's supposed to freeze!
I simply don't have the bandwidth to baby them,so whatever will be will be...
Our 4 month old daughter loves to gaze close-up at the plum blossoms. It's the first year our young plums have blossomed. Not sure if that means we will get plums to eat, but it's wonderful to see the flowers.
Very exciting content for me! Lol I am in the first year of planting my own permaculture backyard orchard and so far it’s non stop woodchip shoveling. Can’t wait to see them mature and burst into fowers like yours!
Yay! 💐Spring!
I absolutely love this type of motivation!
Exciting!💛🤗💛🤗💛🤗
Thanks again for taking us along on this journey. I love these wandering videos intermingled with your instructional ones!
So glad to share!
So incredible, thank you!! Always inspiring
Here in the coastal PNW, our American plums flower first. Unfortunately, this means the blossoms can get knocked off by our heavy rainfall, if they are tricked into blooming by a few warm sunny days early in spring. Out here, it's feast or famine, when it comes to our wild plum yields!
Beautiful 😍
I love your bips bloops and boppin's. Just fits perfectly!
I grow all sorts of fruit plants here in Scotland. In fact there are about 60 different types - but Sea Buckthorn is not one of them.
Three times I have tried them - but they start to die almost immediately. First time, I tried them from seed. The seedlings came up all right to begin with, some later died in their pots, the survivors were put in the ground and they dwindled in no time. Then I bought some taller ones - dead in weeks. 3 years ago, I bought a final batch of 20 good-sized plants, and the best of them lasted just about a year.
There's no damage to the stem that I can see, no evident sign of disease, noting is eating the leaves.
I plant them in a mixture of sites - sun and sheltered, sun and exposed.
The soil is very good here, a bit rocky, but free-draining and the sort of quality loam many gardeners would kill for.
I was careful to spread them out in case burrowing animals (voles) might be messing with the roots here and there. Checking afterwards, the roots were undisturbed, the plants having just dropped everything and faded away without a visible trace of a reason.
So, there's some condition they don't like here in Scotland - although I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.
I'm not in a financial position to keep buying the things. Three attempts are quite enough.
But does anyone have any idea of any condition that will cause these plants to just die?
Thank you!
I love it! Thanks for sharing!
I was so happy to see that my peach tree produces flowers for the 1st them ever! But they seem to have fallen off!
Looks so pretty! I have Nanking and halll’s Hardy almond and when they were blooming pollinator activity wasn’t high. A couple weeks later pollinators started increasing. I think both trees probably flower very early. You are about 2-3 weeks behind me weather wise so you should start to see pollinators increase.
You can increase ecosystem by getting rid of a lot of that grass. Grass is ass.
Nanking cherry!!! Mostly blossom, what a cool plant. Alas I don't think it exists down here in NZ. We are just finishing our homegrown black peaches and will eat the last of them in a crumble for breakfast. :) 3 year old seedlings trees absolutely laden.
One plant I'm really interested in, is two Carpathian walnuts squirrel planted in amongst a very old rhododendron. There seems to be two of them, and I would say both are about 15-20ft tall, so perhaps maybe 4-5 years old, double trunk on both of them, which leaves me to believe it might've been girdled by a rodent early on in its life. Some buds are beginning to peak their heads out, we've been having a chilly spring so hopefully it holds off from flowering, I've heard their flowers can be frost-tender.
Oh , that’s exciting! Best of luck to you all this year! 🌞🌻🐝
Hope they thrive with you over there! They tend to flower pretty late around here and most years they avoid a killing frost on the flowers here.
You are about 0.8 degree further north than I am and I'm zone 5B and my american plum just started sending beautiful white flowers last week ( it made one single plum last year :) ). I like your tip about spreading nice plants around the microclimate zones....it's especially helpful when establishing a new food forest to distribute widely and this can be paired with other techniques to lower input costs (sourcing smaller plants like I blasted 25 at a time from the state nursery for 1 dollar and accept the death that comes after from no protection) mix with Miyawaki method and lots and lots of free-ish mulch (I burn some gas to get it :(...). This is also a rabbit defense strategy because if you're spreading around, there will be some zones the rabbits won't go near at times due to risk or patterns of their movement.
Always something to learn from your commentary. It's so helpful. All the fruit pits that you plant, do you graft each one later? That would be crazy amount of work, since you plant countless number of them. Thank you so much.
We do almost no grafting, just planting!
Ooh thank you for the tour, I think our trees are a week or two behind yours in timing. Also thank you for sharing the difference between male and female Seaberry, I have 3 plants but didn’t know what to look for... I started with more seedlings but they didn’t all make it, so I’m hoping we have one of each 😁
I planted a row of seaberries last year after the female I had the year before died. Now it looks like my male died back to the ground over the winter but my three females are thriving. Then, when they all get to maturity there is a gamble that the male isn’t on the same schedule as the rest, or if they are, that the wind blow in the direction I need it to blow to pollinate the females.
In short, they are more difficult and finicky than most other options and not as care-free and hardy as many videos let on. I am in zone 6, not exactly too hot or too cold for them.
Love seeing all the beauty! We are barely getting crocus popping up here. Question- will the staggered flowering result in a staggered harvest? That would be very helpful for personal use trees if it did.
I wonder, it's a great question... I would think it would spread out the harvest. Not ideal for a commercial operation but amazing for a family and friends centered planting!
Yes, great idea to stagger same type of fruit trees in both full and partial shade so if one is in bloom and gets hit by frost hopefully the one in the shade will bloom later so you can still get a harvest
England's Orchard & Nursery in Kentucky carries a hardy almond called Javid's which they describe as having an amaretto flavor and I am so wishing to try one day!
i too have been seeing very few pollinators this spring...I hope that changes
The mason bee homes we make help immensely, but I have to make more!
Hello from over the Atlantic pond 😉 - love yr videos, I was able to take so much valuable info from them. Thks. - In this video you said that yr almonds are bitter tasting. I learned in the south of France that you should not eat bitter tasting almonds because they have hydrocyanic acid in them and can be deadly to humans, depending on their bodyweight… so for small children it can be very dangerous… just an info from a attentive spectator.
My different plum varieties, almonds and peaches had and have a very good start as the weather has been not too warm, not too cold… so they were blooming for a very long time… one line after the other. So I am starting to looking forward to a good harvest this year.
Kind rgds Claudia
P.s. just ordered some nanking cherrys 🎉
I noticed a limited number of pollinators too this year. Hopefully it's something of an illusion.
If you get a chance, could you do an episode on harvest and taste of these different types of nuts and fruits. Mine aren't quite at bearing age. Thank you!
We are in 5a, and with the insane temp swings of years late, we are finding the early blooming trees and shrubs (mostly the Nankings) are blooming before the pollinators hatch out. They seem to be missing each other by 10-14 days. It tough to observe phenology in a climate in turmoil.
Wow so much incredible content. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU YAY!!!
Thanks for sharing! I have a question regarding cuttings of currants and their flowers, mainly, what to do if a tiny currant cutting that's just rooted from dormant starts sending out flowers - prune them? Leave them be? They are small, about 1' thank you so much!
Hi Sean. Really enjoy the walking tours and seeing all of the beauty and life flourishing. A quick question… in your experiences, are ribes flowers susceptible to frost damage? Or are they fairly resilient? Thanks.
Depending on the temps you are filming, it may just be too cold for pollinators. I usually only see them in full sun over 50s. Fruit trees activity also aren't the best indicator of pollinator population since they generally stop producing nectar once pollinated and don't have the biomass of other nectar producing trees. I would look into Hawthorn or red maple if you want to support pollinators better than stone fruit in dwarf rootstock because they provide an earlier nectar source when bees really need it. I see more hoverflies on my stone fruit than my honey bees so I wouldn't read too much into it. They absolutely crush my maples and hawthorn though. You'll know by fruit set if your pollinators are struggling. That's the best indicator.
I had some nanking cherry cuttings trying to root. They started to bloom. I think it was to early or they then got to hot. They look like they gave up. Very very sad. I had plans for them in the chicken yard.
I'm going to be worried about frost for the next couple weeks
Have you provided for humble bumble bee nesting habitat? Do you have any tips?
So I ordered a siberian c peach for my zone 4b canadian garden. I'm putting it on the Northside of my house which receives minimal late day son ...now it ripens at fall equinox.. I get a frost on holloween.... usually have an elongated Summer I wonder if I will get fruit ripening in time???.
Thanks Shawn for this interesting video. I am located in Germany at 500m altitude and am interested in the cold hardy almonds as well as apricots and peaches. Could you provide their full latin names so that I can find them here in Germany ? I assume it does not makes sense or is easily possible to ship from your site.
Why do you think you are seeing a reduction in pollinators?
I'm cherishing my last few plums. I only have one plum and one peach. Can they cross pollinate or does it take 2 plums or 2 peaches to cross pollinate?(to get a better/bigger crop)
I have a QUESTION about a black current bush that is over 50 years old and has multiple stems 10 ft high. It flower early and is the favorite of bees and humming birds but it produces no fruit. occasionally a fruit stem will have one black berry start to form but have no seeds and it withers. Does it need a pollinator and do you have one that might work? I would like to propagate a wall of them to the west of my Boysen and Logan berries to keep the deer and scalding evening sun from devastating them.
Doesn't sound like a black currant I have ever heard of... Not sure about that one, but sounds really amazing!
Since the peach seed doesn’t produce the same fruit as the parent plant. How do you know what fruit you will get? Do you graft.
Peaches are quite true to their parents
Do you have any issues with the utility company? I noticed you have some growing next to the pole or under lines.
We are very friendly and appreciative to them if/when they come around and also ask that if its at all possible to avoid smashing our plants (and acknowledge how annoying it is to have to do that and we understand if it happens)... magically all is left carefully untouched. I like to think they like how pretty it all is :)
Bip
Thanks so much for the flower wandering - beautiful! Here (in the forest, just north of Stockholm, Sweden) we're just behind you in flowering. The gooseberries in the sun are presenting their first buds. Love your channel :-)
Bop!