{"id":418,"date":"2013-06-17T15:16:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T15:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org.cp-27.webhostbox.net\/?p=418"},"modified":"2020-07-11T09:34:08","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T09:34:08","slug":"the-best-thing-in-my-vegetable-patch-is-a-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"The best thing in my vegetable patch is – a tree\u2026!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"aspen\"<\/a>After the weighty themes of recent blogs I thought we should return to getting some dirt under our fingernails, so to speak.<\/p>\n

The title of this post is not meant to imply any inherent superiority of trees over vegetables, but rather reflects the inadequacy of my own efforts to grow vegetables. Year after year seeds fail, slugs rampage and tentative growth falters, much to my disappointment.<\/p>\n

In contrast, my efforts to grow trees generally succeed. True, there are always some failures, but a good mix ensures there is always something to plant out in due course. Sometimes success can be spectacular – sowing elm seeds straight from the tree in June and seeing them germinate the same summer, if you pick the seed at the just the right point.<\/p>\n

But as my tree nursery is by no means commercial, but literally a corner of the vegetable patch, I like to try growing trees and shrubs which are a little bit unusual. Native Scots pine from local trees, Guelder rose from a roadside bush, and this year\u2019s experiment \u2013 aspen.<\/p>\n

Aspen is a favourite of mine and a very interesting tree in all sorts of ways. Firstly, it is very beautiful, with interesting bark and attractive foliage throughout the growing season: coppery in spring, and bright yellow in autumn, with flattened leaf stalks that cause the characteristic flutter of its leaves in the slightest breeze.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, its life cycle is fascinating: aspen clones (though not individual trees) are amongst the longest lived organisms on the planet, through their ability to perpetuate themselves through vegetative reproduction.<\/p>\n

Though formerly neglected, there is now an upsurge of interest in aspen and a huge amount of information can be found on the websites of the Scottish Aspen Project<\/a> and that of Trees for Life<\/a>, which has taken a special interest in aspen. I would recommend you visit these sites for much more comprehensive information.<\/p>\n

Back to the vegetable patch\u2026\u2026.<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the challenging aspects of aspen is its reproductive habits. Trees are dioecious meaning they are either wholly male or wholly female (some species of tree can be both). So for aspen to set seed needs a male tree and a female tree in close proximity. This in itself is a challenge for a tree that is uncommon. However, worse than that, aspen in Scotland flowers only very rarely so in practice it is extremely unusual for it to manage to set seed.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, it has a vigorous suckering habit and this is the key to propagating it. There are sophisticated ways of growing large numbers of plants from root cuttings and these are described<\/a> on the Trees for Life website. However, the simplest way is to simply dig up and transplant suckers (with the landowner\u2019s permission of course).<\/p>\n

There is a slight trick to this though. The temptation is to dig up the larger, more vigorous suckers, but these are typically closer to the parent tree and sustained almost entirely by it (through growing from its larger roots). When transplanted these often struggle as their own root systems are not sufficiently developed to support themselves. Much better is to go to the limits of sucker growth and dig up smaller plants, which survive better when transplanted.<\/p>\n

To maximize your chances further still, you can line out the suckers in your nursery (or vegetable patch!) for a year to give the plants a chance to develop their root systems free from competition from other plants and the attentions of herbivores of all kinds, and then plant out the next spring. This is what I have done this year \u2013 the photo at the top of the post shows one of them.<\/p>\n

Why bother? Apart from the opportunity to restore aspen to its rightful place in the landscape and enjoy both the aesthetic and biodiversity benefits, aspen has its uses. As ever, in this country we have tended to dismiss it (and other poplars) as simply matchwood. \u00a0However, in regions where the tree is more common such as Scandinavia or North America aspen is used to make a variety of products, including medicines, paper and furniture. It can also be used as a structural timber once graded, and traditionally was an important fodder crop in some areas.<\/p>\n

All in all, then, a true multi-purpose tree: attractive, ecologically important, and useful. Every woodland croft should have one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the weighty themes of recent blogs I thought we should return to getting some dirt under our fingernails, so to speak. The title of this post is not meant to imply any inherent superiority of trees over vegetables, but rather reflects the inadequacy of my own efforts to grow vegetables. Year after year seeds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodlandcrofts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}