On Woodlots, Mushrooms, Medicinals and More
Sharon February 19th, 2009
What can I do with my shade? That is the question for a lot of us – we know that the trees on our property – or our neighbor’s – improve our lives and provide necessary habitat, carbon sequestration, shade. And yet – there’s also that question – what can I grow there?
Well, trees for one. If you heat or cook with wood, whether inside the house or if you can build an earth oven or a rocket stove for cooking, you can make some use of fallen wood, or careful and wise coppicing (assuming they are your trees) and pruning. You can plant more trees at the edge of your woodlands that grow fruit, nuts or produce syrups (sugar maple or birch). You can grow high quality wood for carving or making furniture.
You can have the satisfaction of a yard that produces copious food for wildlife, even if it doesn’t produce a lot of food for you. You can accept that tiny wooded oases are sometimes the best we can do in a world where forests are increasingly lost.
Still, you don’t have to give up on all food production, or even the hope of a little income from your land, just because you’ve got shade.
Now it really depends on what kind of shade you’ve got. Dappled shade, or shade part of the day offers more options than deep shade. In light shade, you can often grow fruiting plants, especially currants and gooseberries and strawberries. They may not produce quite as well as in sun, but if the shade is light enough, they’ll do fine.
You can also make use of seasonal shade – spring bulbs, or early harvested crops can be grown under trees that leaf out late. Many greens can handle intermittent light shade, particularly if they get 3-4 hours of morning sun. They may even do better with it in warm climates, where hot afternoon sun can be a killer. Perennial greens like sorrel and Good King Henry seem to do ok in light shade.
Wild leeks (ramps) and chickweed are two incredibly nutrious and delicious plants that like fairly deep shade. So do many medicinals – goldenseal and ginseng are perhaps the most obvious woodland herbs, but many herbs tolerate at least some shade, the exceptions of course being the mediterraneans – basil, oregano, thyme, etc… which like sun. But meadowsweet, marshmallow, mints and a host of other medicinal herbs do extremely well in light to medium shade.
And then there are mushrooms – if you want to produce maximum nutrition and taste in shady spots, the place to go is to fungi. In many cases, growing mushrooms will also improve your soil, nurturing the complex web of fungi and bacteria that keep soil healthy. My favorite resource for fungus is www.fungiperfecti.com.
There’s a chronic balancing act in our exercise of growing food – it is urgently important that we take places where humans live, and use them wisely, to preserve wild places. At the same time, sometimes the only wild places for miles are the ones we create in our yards and on our farms. Our shade should never been seen simply as “the place where I can’t grow food.”
Sharon
- garden design
- Comments(10)
I would add that there are a few livestock options that thrive in light shaded conditions -think animals and birds that prefer brush conditions.
Forests can produce an incredible amount of food, four footed, on the wing, finned, crawling, as well as nuts, berries, greens, and medicines. And of course if you are lucky enough to have wetlands in your forest you could have it made as far as food goes
My pecans leaf out really late – I could probably do more under them. I think I’ve read that kiwis do OK in dappled shade as well. Kiwis can be grown in more places than we might think, and hardy kiwi (little grape like kiwis) even more than that. I plan to plant some this year.
do you worry about wild mushrooms mixing in with the cultivated ones, if you grow them outdoors.
The only two mushrooms I am sure I recognize are puffballs and morels, so I am always leery of setting out an inoculated log where other spores could get to it. But we have a *lot* of shade, and we eat a *lot* of mushrooms.
In my old house, we had LOTS of chickweed. I ate lots and lots of it. Here, one block away, we have little – maybe because there is less shade in midsummer.
But one shady corner of my curent garden, under my neighbor’s lovely crepe laurel, allows lettuce to thrive well into the hot summer.
Fern
Among the shade trees in my back yard are butternut and black walnut trees. Black cherry and red oak provide much food for wildlife. Along the edges I’ve got some American hazelnut. Dappled shade can be good for persimmon and paw paw.
In the densest shade I’m growing shitake mushrooms on oak logs. Haven’t had any problems with contamination from wild mushrooms. The various local species and the shitake are easily distinguished, anyway.
In our household, the rabbits, pheasants, sqruirrels and deer that live in or on the edge of the woodlot are food.
You can also make syrup out of walnuts, box elder and birch. It’s tastes a little different from maple syrup but is just as sweet.
My husband uses the wood that’s not good for burning or building with to turn bowls. I have all beautiful handturned serving bowls, popcorn bowls and salad and decorative bowls I use to hold things with. I have hand turned knitting needles with cases and a nostepinne to wind my wool on. These arent things to eat but you could turn them into barter items to trade for things to eat.
Woodlots also have blackcaps, at least around here. I usually whack paths thru the patch to make it easier to pick and we eat them every day for 3 weeks in summer and as jelly all winter.
What is a blackcap?
-Robin
Blackcap = black raspberry, wild version.
Mr. Lodgson just wrote up a nice treatise on the subject:
http://organictobe.org/index.php/2009/02/17/grazing-the-trees-on-your-garden-farm/
I’m also told that poultry love wooded areas. Of course, keeping the predators at bay is the trouble there…