concerns about conifers (pine, fir, spruce, cedars, etc.)

http://www.permies.com

Just to be clear: I do NOT advocate elimination of conifers. I advocate diversity. I advocate replacing conifer monocultures with a diversity of trees that include conifers.

Discussion of this video is at http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/4770_0/permaculture/should-a-dougl...

There are four parts to this video.

The first part is where Brad Knight (Sage Mountain Homestead, Corvallis, Montana) and I are investigating the understory of a large pine. Nothing growing there. Conifers are allelopathic - they sorta poison the competition.

The second part is with Ernie Wisner (http://www.ernieanderica.info) who conveys the days that he worked at measuring the biodiversity under douglas fir monocultures.

The third part shows the mighty, the glorious, the amazing Sepp Holzer (http://www.richsoil.com/sepp-holzer/sepp-holzer-permaculture.jsp) expressing his opinion on "conifer desert" referring to how conifers, when left unchecked, tend to take over a landscape and greatly reduce horticultural diversity which leads to a broad variety of problems.

And finally, Rick Valley, horticulturalist and permaculture instructor at the Lost Valley Educational Center in Dexter, Oregon (http://www.lostvalley.org/), sums it all up especially well. He points out how a douglas fir tree easily outcompetes oak trees. And relates how the native people burned back the douglas fir trees so their food is given a better chance.

Music by Jimmy Pardo

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• conifer
• fir
• spruce
• cedar
• pine
• invasive
• weed
• eco
• permaculture
• sustainability
• green
• organic
• garden
• gardening
• native

[HotSauceJohnny]

During the first part of the video, you comment on the "nice organic matter".  Would that be usable in a garden, or would it be too acidic?

[paulwheaton12]

@HotSauceJohnny There is the acidic factor and there is the natural-herbicide thing that you wouldn't want in your garden.

[trimalta]

If a site is planted with firs.. Can it recover once its harvested for Timber? Will greens grow on that soil? and after how long if not after a year or two.

[paulwheaton12]

@trimalta It will take a while to come back.

[JohnnySoprano87]

Interesting, but despite having properties that we may not like, these conifer-only forests are a natural thing, right? Despite how we may want to look to what native people did as good, still sounds to me like the burning practices is still just classic tendency to interfere and fight nature rather than working with it as permaculture teaches.

[paulwheaton12]

@JohnnySoprano87 True.  Of course, how much of the food you eat comes from an all conifer environment.

[pearlzenith]

@HotSauceJohnny Unless you're growing huckleberries or blackberries, you're going to have a lot of difficulties. I tried, before I knew what was going on, and was exceedingly frustrated.

[rephaim23]

Douglas fir are my favorite tree. But they are absolute monsters that dominate the pacific forests. Of course, most of the Douglas fir forests today are younger trees, so they lack the diversity of the real old growth lowland forests which existed a hundred years ago.

They can reach 315 feet tall in just 253 years in the lowlands. - The Washington Forest Reserve by Horace Beemer Ayres, Geological Survey (U.S.) 1899. pg 295

[gelflingfaysuzanne]

Pines in themselves are a great food source. You get great of mulch and compost as well. You can put livestock houses such as a chicken house or a goat shed under the pines to help keep them warm in the winter an cool in the summer. The roots can be used as cordage in emergencies! Pines around my home have loads of plant growth underneath like American Beauty Berry which is another edible(berries)/insect repellent(leaves). And more uses as well. Do not underestimate the great pine!

[tanyageyer1]

Or how about:

pH 5.0 to 6.5 and above

Maples, Serviceberry, Fringetree, Franklinia, Hollies, Larch, Sweetgum, Magnolias, Crabapples, White and red oak, Weeping willow, Sassafras, Mountain ash, Japanese stewartia, Canadian hemlock, Mountain stewartia, Drooping leucothoe, Carolina allspice, Gardenia, Witch hazel

pH 5.0 and below

azaleas, Blueberries, huckberries, heather, juniper

[tanyageyer1]

So if the main issue is acidification, what about growing some food crops that require acidification, like blueberries?

[EKWisner]

Conifer-dominated forests are normal. Monocrop plantations sprayed to death until the thistles give up and the doug fir toothpicks prick their way into a cloudless sky, are not.

Patchy mixed-conifer with clearings supports biodiversity, edible and medicinal. Not as starch-productive as a wapato swamp or oak/camas savannah. But in season, it's where to go for fiddleheads, berries, and year-round shelter, clean air and water, firewood, and those shade-loving salmon and trout.

Patchy is good.

[grippingconch]

Great video

[antifoundational]

@tmgibs34 It's the opposite in the coastal southeast. If looking at it through the lens of linear progression, you would say here that long leaf pine is typically the climax species with hardwood (mainly oak) more common where burning has been prevented.

[antifoundational]

@lunarrn It sounds like you are referring to slash pine, which is typically managed in dense stands for pulp and timber. There is not much sun so not much life below.

Mature stands of native pines are not allelopathic. When allowed to regularly burn they have an open canopy with a diverse community of species. Conifers in the pacific northwest are not the same in the coastal southeast.

[novruz4017]

There are very MANY conifers with edible seeds (nuts) - Pinus cembra and Pinus corean in Eurasia and many species of "edible" pines with large nuts in America. If anybody wants to grow them, he need those "bad" acid soils and the mykorisa of conifer forest.