permiculture esque ideas using trees

[reed]

May 3, 2019 5:46:34 GMT -5 khoomeizhi said:

my experience with cutting down black locusts is that, yes, they'll come back as (very spiny) bushes, but they'll also send up suckers from the roots at some distance from the trunk - they won't stay in the rows they're planted in.

Yep they sure do that and they will keep it up for a long time. I find if I cut them down and leave a tall trunk as a post then the shoots mostly come off it and are easy to remove and use as bean poles, wearing leather gloves. If cut to the ground there are shoots around the stump but also far away as you describe. 

I think it may be true that they fix nitrogen. Five or six years ago my back garden was a thick black locust thicket. Soil is typical clay like the rest of my place but stuff grows there really well. I had to plant around stumps for a long time, finally the roots rotted and softened enough I was able to dig out the last of them last fall. Other live roots are still in there though and keep popping shoots here and there.

I guess I could call this my black locust garden. Outside perimeter is mostly tall living stumps serving as fence posts and providing shoots for poles as well as soft fresh growth for compost and mulch. Yes there still are plenty of thorns, I don't go barefooted this garden. The area is on a bit of a slope so larger logs serve as downhill edges of a slightly terraced effect to the planting lanes. Smaller logs became fire wood. North of the fenced garden is still a somewhat managed locust thicket getting smothered in grape vines. 

I loves my black locust trees, and the flower clusters are a treat prepared similarly to  morel mushrooms. 

[nkline]

Another tree that may be interesting to work with would be the Kentucky coffee tree. They have large leaves that are late to emerge, and are early to drop. The tree without its leaves is not a very branchy or full tree. It also fixes nitrogen, and in addition to that the females drop big pods with large beans, that can be used to make “coffee”. I haven’t tried it, but I don’t like normal coffee, and generally stay away from food I have to cook the toxins out of first.