Developing a deep shade polyculture
Remember the yurt circle? I've had the patch of
bare ground in the back of my mind for the last month. Planting
anything useful there butts up against some severe design restrictions:
- Full shade. I mean really full shade, not the kind you'll find under a fruit tree.
- Deer. The yurt circle isn't on a particular deer path, but anything outside our core homestead will get nibbled if it's tasty.
- Lack of attention.
I only walk that way a few times a year and we can't currently even get
a wheelbarrow out there. So anything I plant will need to mostly
fend for itself.
When B.J. brought over some ginseng
seeds, tiny ginseng roots, and goldenseal roots, a plan began to form
in my mind....
I realized that forest herbs
like ginseng, goldenseal, and ramps
need no attention except for the harvest and are adapted to heavy
shade. On the other hand, they could get eaten down to the ground by deer if I don't
fence the browsers out, but could a ring of thorny gooseberries create
an edible fence?
I'm not willing to buy
gooseberries to test out my hypothesis, but I did put the ginseng and
goldenseal into the ground and will plan to propagate some of my
gooseberries this summer. If I end up with a heaping helping of
gooseberries, it'll be worth trying some in deep shade.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Brian --- Good point! Forest herbs are presumably used to dealing with root competition, but you're right that I hacked through a lot just to open up some shallow planting trenches. Not sure how that would affect gooseberries....
Pamina --- That's outside their range, but might actually work. They like it cool and damp, so if you're in a spot like that, it might be worth a try.