Trees for Beginners: 5 Perennials for Fruit, Timber, Starch, and Winter Florals

Before you plant apples, blueberries, and black walnut, try these 5 species instead. 

I started out 15 years ago planting black walnut and apples, because apples are the go-to fruit and black walnut veneer logs can pay off a mortgage. But what other species can feed us, create economic value, and provide ecosystem benefit with a more gradual learning curve?

For best-fit tree options on non-forested land that you own or manage, don't hesitate to reach out to our team: https://www.propagateag.com/contact-us

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Plant the Trees podcast. Today we're going to talk about trees and shrubs for folks that are new to planting trees. We're gonna dive into why you should plant other species before you plant apples and blueberries and what those other trees are. This episode will be centric to folks in the humid eastern United States, but if you're in Oregon, Colorado, or Bulgaria, feel free to listen along and take away what you can. Let's jump right in. Alright, you want to plant a tree because trees are good, but you're not sure what to plant. You might as well plant something that bears fruit, and the first fruit that you can think of is an apple because Adam and Eve are top of mind. However, apples are actually adapted to climates with dry air. They're a very nice fruit native to Kazakhstan. You can totally plant apples, but the disease and pest pressure in the eastern United States is pretty intense. If you're looking for a resource there, check out the book The Holistic Orchard by Michael Phillips. He also has a DVD or video version of the book which is worth watching. It's not on YouTube as far as I know, but it's really good info. If you want big fruit instead of apples, Asian pear is a much easier fruit to grow. They're even round as opposed to pear-shaped, so for that reason, they're an especially good substitute for apples. Asian pears have lower disease pressure, and my favorite variety is called Korean giant, also known as Olympic. Both Asian pears and apples will get eaten by deer, so you want deer protection either way. Alright, next substitute. Blueberries are an amazing fruit. They do great in acidic soil with high organic matter, and they also have high disease pressure. Deer also like to eat them. If you have really good airflow and you're in sandy soils and have the ability to mulch them, blueberries should do fine. And blackcurrants, ribees negrum are an excellent substitute for blueberries. They're deer resistant and their flavor is both tart and unique. I make sorbet out of them along with pies and crumbles. Blackcurrants do really well with low grass competition and some compost, so if you've grown vegetables, blackcurrants are a great next step into woody perennials. Similar to blackcurrants in that regard are elderberries. They grow quickly and love good organic fertility and you can propagate them via cuttings. Stick a stick in the ground and you get a really good shrub. American elderberry, Sambucus canadensis, grows into a shrub form, whereas European elderberry, sambucas nigra, grows into a tree form. If you're really keen on making homemade medicine, elderberry syrup is known to mitigate cold and flu contagion and thus cold and flu symptoms, not just from eating the syrup, but from going out and planting elderberries. No one really expects elderberries to taste good, but if you mix the juice with blackcurrant juice and honey, you can make some good cough syrup that isn't questionably medicated like Robotussin in 1994. Alright, moving on from shrubs to trees. The first round of trees that I planted were all black walnuts, jugons negra on my family's land in Massachusetts. Lots of folks have heard of black walnut veneer, and black walnut desks were all the rage in the 1980s. If you're looking to plant timber trees, there's a substitute for black walnut called curly poplar, which is a hybrid poplar with a heritable figured grain. It is not tulip poplar, so it's not liriodendron. The scientific name, the Latin name, is populus canissins variety grober. It's a hybrid of white poplar and Swedish aspen, which are populus alba and poplis tremula, respectively. Curly poplar grows faster than black walnut, so you get a saw log in one-third of the time. It tolerates damp soil or seasonal flooding, so definitely take a look at this tree. In the same Salicaceae family as poplar is willow. I will not tell you to plant a towering, weeping willow or a crack willow that falls over, so don't worry about that. But in terms of woody florals in late winter, willow is a gorgeous addition to a landscape for pollinators, florists, mothers-in-law, and anyone that likes nice things. There are hundreds of varieties of willow, and what they all have in common is that they hate grass competition. They're basically the vegetables of the tree world. There are lots of varieties for catkins, i.e. willow flowers. Catkins are the name for willow flowers that look like small rabbits' feet or rabbit's foot, or the end of a cat's tail. Many carry the name of pussy willow, but more specifically, some of my favorite varieties are yellow flame because the bright yellow stems look phenomenal in the winter. And then Balfury, which is a hybrid goat willow because it grows catkins and looks great in the summer. And then finally, winter glory, has really dependable catkins, and florists love any variety with the nice catkins. The last plant that I recommend for those that are new to perennial crops is Helianthus tuberosis, known as sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke. The word Jerusalem there doesn't come from Israel, but rather from the Italian word for sunflower, girasole, which migrated into English. It's not a tree, but it's really satisfying for kids and schools and anyone that likes to see results on a shorter timeline. In prepped soil, Jerusalem artichoke grows into five to eight foot tall sunflowers in one growing season. So it's really exciting and generally has a low risk of failure, even though it doesn't like drought or too much water. The roots are edible like potatoes, but only in the spring, and you have to parboil them before baking them. Parboiling them until fork tender is key here because if you don't do that, they'll cause uncomfortable digestive gas and no one needs that. Hence, they aren't a full substitute for potatoes, but they add some great flavor in the winter, in the spring. The downside of the plant is that it spreads like mint. So if you do not want it to spread, you want to plant it in a confined area, whether that's uh confined by a sidewalk, a road, or just confined by a mower. You can also plant it where you want it to spread and makes a really good seasonal visual barrier. Alright, just to recap, trees for beginners, we have Asian pear for large fruits, blackcurrants for berries, curly poplar as a timber tree, willow florals for aesthetics, and Jerusalem artichoke. If you'd like to learn more about planting satisfying trees on farmland, you can learn more at propagateag.com, P R O P A G A T E A G dot com. Here at Propagate, our farm services team works folks through the best fit trees for their farm or their land. What are your financial, cultural, and ecological goals for the land, and how do different tree species fit those objectives? Is the soil wet or dry? What's the depth to the water table? What's the depth to bedrock? What's the pH of the soil? All of these factors indicate which trees will do well and which tree species will not do well. If you'd like to work with us, just head over to our contact us page and we're really easy to find across the different social media platforms as well. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it with a friend, a coworker, someone you communicate with via text message or Instagram DMs, posted on LinkedIn, wherever you think other folks would benefit from information about agroforestry, tree planting, and here specifically trees for folks that are new to this sphere. This has been Harry Green, Chief Research Officer and Co founder of Propagate on the Plant the Trees podcast. Until next time, plant the trees and make it count.