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2021 End of year Update

It has been quite some time since we have posted an update here. We are updating slightly more often at our facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/westcoastagroforestry if you want to take a look there 🙂 That is also usually where we are putting rarer seeds for sale that we aren’t likely to source often. These rarer seeds we currently sell via our trademe page here: https://www.trademe.co.nz/members/listings.aspx?member=7680909

Earlier in the month we sold some plants at our first local market in Carter’s Beach. This could be considered our soft launch for our plants nursery, and we enjoyed the day greatly talking to many people and seeing our plants go to good homes.

We grow our plants outside all year round in local West Coast conditions, sourced from local seed sources where possible, and without artificial fertilizers or pesticides – just the same kind of conditions they would experience planted in your garden.

Some of the plants we had for sale (most of which we still have stock of):
– Avocado (Zutano, Fuerte mostly, but also some other varieties)
– European sweet chestnut (grown from West Coast seed)
– Hybrid sweet chestnut (grown from West Coast seed)
– Macadamia (seedlings from multiple varieties)
– European oaks (Quercus robur, grown from West Coast seed)
– Silverberry (Elaeagnus x ebbingei, cutting grown)
– Lucuma (Pouteria lucuma, seedlings from multiple varieties)
– Horse chestnut (grown from West Coast seed, not edible, but apparently can make soap from the nuts)

Clockwise from top-left: Araucaria angustifolia, Quercus robur, Elaeagnus x ebbingei, Avocado, Sweet chestnuts

We have also been hard at work trialling new species in our nursery which will begin to be available in the coming seasons. Red pineapples (Ananas bracteatus), American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), Lotus persimmon (Diospyros lotus), Hybrid persimmon (Diospyros virginiana x kaki), Asian persimmon (Diospyros kaki), Yangmei / Chinese bayberry (Myrica rubra), Bunya (Araucaria bidwillii), Jaboticaba (Plinia cauliflora), Tall guava (Psidium giganteum), Tropical guava [white-flesh] (Psidium guajava), Chilean guava (Ugni molinae), Davidson plum (Davidsonia pruriens), Large-fruited hawthorns (Crataegus species), Oncoba spinosa, Mountain papaya (Vasconcellea pubescens), Hybrid mountain papaya x babaco (Vasconcellea x), White butterfly ginger (Hedychium coronarium) – just to name a few! A lot more experimental plants are also growing that we’re still evaluating as well.

In terms of our garden, we have been doing a lot of soil building the past few months, preparing the avocado terraces. They are getting nice and thick and hopefully will be planted in the next few weeks with some avocado varieties. We have some tougher named varieties (Mexicola Grande, Zutano, Hashimoto, Jan Boyce, Bacon, Duke 7, Edranol) that we will be trialling, as well as a few very promising fruiting unnamed selections (‘Tobi’, ‘Peru’, ‘Mark Mexicola’) that have yet to be trialled down here. A few mexicola seedlings with superior vigour/hardiness we have grown will be planted as well, and lastly a few seedlings from other varieties that appear vigorous too. We will be propagating these varieties as well.

I think that’s about it for now! It’s been a very busy year, and it’s taken all of our energy to work in the nursery and garden, and live life. Plenty of new articles are to be written and we look forward to sharing them 🙂

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Local Nitrogen Cycle article published and updates

I’ve just published the new article on the Local Nitrogen Cycle related to forest gardening. It’s taken me quite a while to get it right, because there is a lot of complicated information to boil down into something simple enough while still being accurate and up to date. The interactive nitrogen cycle graphic took some time, as did the simulator. I think it’s one of the better introductions out there on the nitrogen cycle for forest gardeners – others tend to overemphasize certain irrelevent details (e.g. lightning sourced nitrogen), and exclude pertinent details (denitrification, whether you sell/give away food from your forest garden or poop into the sewer system).

Other than that, we’ve been growing seeds and working on some longer term breeding projects. It looks like we’ve had excellent germination of sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) and so either next year or perhaps towards the middle of Summer – we’ll be able to put some up for sale. Avocados have germinated well, but we’re still working on grafting them.

The forest garden has not seen too much planting yet, still a lot of preparation to do regarding soil building and erosion work. We’re trialling some nitrogen fixers to see what will do best here – so far the Turkish alders have shot away quickest. We’ve also started a banana trial and will have some Misi Luki banana pups available for sale locally.

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Shop opened

We have opened the shop with a bit of a soft launch. For now we will only be selling seeds, but in the near future we will list plants as well and tools/equipment/services.

The seeds we’re selling now are intended for NZ climate. Some of them are experimental and won’t be suitable for all areas of the country (ask if unsure). Once we are more established we will offer more seeds from our own garden and sourced from the West Coast.

Your purchase helps us to continue supporting agroforestry, food forests, and related fruit/nut research with a focus on the West Coast – thank you!
Feel free send us any feedback about the shop, and what you’d like to see for sale. 🙂

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Recent updates and 3rd nitrogen fixing article

Wow. A lot has happened since the last update. We moved permanently to New Zealand in November 2019, and spent approximately 2 months visiting as many gardens, Tree Cropper events and member’s homes as possible, and learning what is growing in Auckland and Waikato. Then we moved to Charleston in late January, and began work on our forest garden. The first [and so far only] tree was planted – an Araucaria bidwillii.

I’ve finally finished the 3rd article in the modern nitrogen fixing series, which is about poplars and willows. I’m excited to share this information out there. There’s also a special mention of the disease fighting properties of willow mulch – something we’ve not even touched the tip of yet. There are many reasons to grow willows and poplars.

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Two first articles of modern nitrogen cycling series are up

The first two articles in the modern nitrogen cycling series are up.

First we talk about pines:
https://agroforestry.co.nz/nitrogen-fixation-in-pinus/

The second deals with nitrogen fixation in sugarcane:
https://agroforestry.co.nz/nitrogen-fixation-in-saccharum/

Both of these plants are occasionally used in forest gardening / permaculture / agroforestry situations, but it’s relatively unknown (outside of the fields of forest ecology and horticulture, respectively) that they both can fix significant amounts of nitrogen. The picture of nitrogen cycling has changed a lot in recent decades, and over the coming weeks I will be trying to adapt this knowledge for a forest gardener audience so that we can be more effective in our work. As a result, I won’t make sweeping generalizations until the bigger picture has emerged – but for now, know that nitrogen fixing in nature is a lot more common than previously believed and the next few articles will hopefully make that amply clear.

-Jon Colyer

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