Permaculture Tree Management - Opening light and succession direction

I recently excavated a pond here in Dallas, Texas. There were several cedar elms whos roots are now fully submerged in standing water during our rainy season. I’m anticipating total die off, but for now, am hoping to use their canopies to shield black walnuts and persimmons from the harsh summer sun while they get established. We’ll see how it works! Thanks as always for the great content Sean!

Love hearing your thought process! ❤

you could make some low renewal cuts on the peach so it could fruit at chest level and still let light to the pawpaw - might prolong the peach too if it’s trunk is ok

The timing on this is impeccable, area of our woods we’re trying to thin out and put more productive plants in that space.

I love the idea of the peach/pawpaw guild. I saw your older video on it and have since pushed some pawpaw seed to the north of my peaches

Good stuff! Many of the trees we're managing this way are Beech to release light to lower shrub layers. Also working piecemeal to remove declining white pines as time and bandwidth allow, and that gives us considerable light increases. Some of these spaces have been intentionally planted but in others it's nice to observe what volunteers itself and use that as inspiration.

Vegetable oil as a lubricant for your chainsaw? Interesting. Any issues with the chainsaw? What about veg.oil for other equipment? 😁

Very valuable insights indeed - thank you as always for sharing!

Informative video as always. My peach trees are short lived too but grow fast and start producing early. Its worth it to just buy a new one every few years.

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I'm mainly pulling out cedars in my woods and leaving select oak, walnut, hickory, honeylocust, blackcherry, mulberry, persimmon. The cedars are being used to build my house, barn, fencing.

Pollarding trees is appropriate in the right context such as what you have done here. In France where I live, there is an obsession with pollarding almost every tree in every garden, park and roadside every year. It's hideous and disfiguring - dead men's fingers rising from the earth. But the élagage business is big money here.

I like this kind of discussion alot because I don’t know anyone else who is on this same page. I have 8 acres of abandoned farm land and I have to selectively cull trees and replace them with more desirable plants.

The pawpaws are natives, and the apple, while not native to North America, will provide a lot of forage to bees and other pollinators.

I’m in Lake Elmo Minnesota growing zone five a. I always thought that we could not grow pawpaw here but you make it sound like you can. I’ve got to believe I’m in a colder climate than you are. Can I grow Paw Paws in Minnesota? 5a?

Can we see some of Juan's spoons? Does he have a youtube channel?

very clever idea to put the pawpaw in the shade of the peach

❤

I think those guilds will be happier. Interested to see how the pollard stump responds. Was the maple running sap when you cut it? I love the oysters on the willow. I have come across a large windthrown willow that had two kinds of culinary wild mushrooms fruiting (oyster and hericium) from the half decaying/half live log. I run cheap veg oils in my battery pole chainsaw. Most of the time it is fantastic. I have pollarded a ton of willow with it (mostly at 6-8' on 2-3" diameter trees). If the temperature is particularly cold, then I've found the veg oil can gum up, doesn't lubricate very well, and can seem to strain the battery electric motor. While petroleum bar oils come in a winter and summer weight, some loggers thin out the common bar oil with diesel fuel to make it flow better during Winter. I've been contemplating trying to thin the cold veg oil with some cheap alcohol in hopes to make it perform during the winter. I have one gas powered saw that I've run veg oil to lube the bar. It does alright. The hot engine does seem make the oil sticky when it sits and cools and I have had to do extra cleaning to the saw as a part of servicing it.

I have three pawpaw trees showing up in about a month. Now I’m thinking about peaches…