(lively music) - [Announcer] "The Home-Scale Forest Garden" is brought to you by Brookfield Renewable.

A provider of renewable power supports public television, reminding the public to make safety a priority.

Know the risks, use caution in and around water.

Information available at safewaters.com.

- [Narrator] Since 1979, Adirondack Fragrance has offered artisan-made, place-based fragrance products made from our region's unique botanicals, providing aromas, inspired by the mountains, forests, and fields.

Adirondack fragrance.com.

- [Announcer] And by Richard and Deborah Macsherry, the Northern New York Community Foundation, and by these additional sponsors.

(lively music) Closed captioning, sponsored by Reed's Incorporated.

- Welcome to "The Home-Scale Forest Garden."

I'm Loraine O'Donnell with Dani Baker, creator of The Enchanted Edible Forest Garden, and author of the book, "The Home-Scale Forest Garden," on which this series is based.

In these eight episodes, we are visiting Dani's Garden in Northern New York at different times of the year.

We're also taking a peek at a subtropical garden in Florida.

Well, it's mid-April, and we're continuing our spring chores.

- First up on the agenda, it's transplanting chamomile and licorice.

- Oh, well, we're all familiar with chamomile tea and licorice candy, but what are some of the virtues of having these plants in the garden beyond just flavoring?

- Well, their flowers attract beneficial insects, and both thrive in dry ground.

Plus, these plants pull up nutrients that benefit other plants.

Most herbs accumulate many nutrients.

When they decay, those nutrients become available to surrounding plants as well as benefiting humans when we consume them.

(lively music) Today, we're gonna transplant some chamomile sets that we planted in March.

So, I have a yogurt cup, a six-ounce yogurt cup, that I cut some holes in the bottom for drainage, and I'm going to gently squeeze.

This is individual cells, so I'm gonna gently squeeze the bottom of a cell to loosen the roots a little bit, and then holding the top, pull it out.

(cup clicking) (birds chirping) So, this is a nice root mass here, not overgrown.

I'm gonna take some good potting soil, and fill the cup halfway, lay that set in, and then fill the other side with the potting soil, tap it to help it settle.

(hand tapping) (birds chirping) And that's it.

Now, I'm going to label each of these with a stick that says, a popsicle stick, that says Chamomile, just so I know what I've got.

(laughs) And we'll be transplanting.

We'll let them fill out in these cups for a month or two, and then we'll transplant them into the garden later in the summer.

(water trickles) In addition to labeling the pots, I always like to keep a record, a written record, of what I've done.

So if I lose one of these, I know I had so many pots, and I can figure out which one I lost the label for.

(display glitches and whooshes) Now, we're gonna transplant some wild licorice sets.

So this is a little different than the chamomile.

The chamomile had individual cells.

This does not.

So, we're going to need... We're going to tease apart the roots of these plants.

I'm gonna start by picking up some of the soil with, let's see how we're gonna do this.

Okay, I'm gonna pick up three.

There are three plants here.

So very gently, I'm going to hold each plant where the foliage meets the ground, and pull it apart.

So that's one.

And... (bird chirps) Two, there's a root, okay.

Now I'm going to take the cup, like we did with the chamomile, fill it halfway, change hands.

(water trickles) (birds chirping) with the roots extending downward to the extent possible.

Fill it in.

(water trickles) (birds chirping) (hand tapping) Tap it to settle.

(birds chirping) Here's one.

Do another one.

(cup rustling) (bird yells) Filling it halfway.

(water trickles) (cup clicking) Taking the plant.

It's, oops.

Its roots are very vulnerable to being dried out with air and sunlight.

So, it's important not to expose the roots to air if you can avoid it, or if you have to, as short a time as possible.

(bird yells ) (water trickles) Okay, so that's the wild licorice.

(birds chirping) (water trickles) Now, when we're done, we're gonna label everything like we did with the chamomile.

So this is licorice.

(bird yells) Licorice, licorice.

(display whooshes) Now that these plants are all potted up, it's time to water them.

Once they're saturated, I'm going to put them in a place, I'm gonna... These have been outside already, so I'm gonna put them back outdoors in a shady spot.

And I'm going to wait until the surface of the soil dries out before I rewater.

Because you need to give the roots an opportunity to search for water.

That's what makes them grow.

If you keep the soil saturated, the roots won't have to do any work, and they'll stay stunted.

So, let the surface dry out, rewater, and then, in about a month or two, when the roots have filled out these cups, it'll be time to transplant them into the edible forest.

Many plants can be propagated from seed, like chamomile and licorice, but plants that clump as they grow with a thick root like comfrey, or plants that grow close together, like chives, can be propagated by taking a chunk and transplanting it.

- What about rhubarb?

- Yes, rhubarb has a thick root that can be propagated much the same way.

You can take a chunk of it and just transplant it.

- Let's see how it's done.

(lively music) - This is a good time of year to propagate rhubarb.

(birds chirping) You can grow rhubarb from seed, but it's a lot more efficient to just take a chunk of an existing plant and transplant it somewhere else.

That's what I'm gonna do.

So here, you want to just go straight down, there's a... Rhubarb has a thick root, which I think you'll see in a moment.

You wanna get down under it, there we go.

And let's see what we have here.

(leaves rustling) (birds chirping) Okay, so this is a chunk of, ooh, look at that.

See the root?

So this is a chunk of the rhubarb root.

There are actually three or four different plants in this chunk.

And there, by the way, that's the chunk.

So, look at how thick the root is.

So, I think I'm gonna divide this into two.

So I'm gonna take the shovel, oops.

(lighthearted music) And hopefully, I'll be able to do this, yes.

(shovel clatters) (lighthearted music) (Dani groans) (shovel clatters) (lighthearted music) All right.

(panting) All right, so this is one, and this is two.

It's debatable whether I don't think these will, without a bud, I don't think they'll root.

Let's take these and move them to a new spot.

This is a good spot for the rhubarbs.

So I'm going to first clear away the chips.

Now, I'm just gonna dig a hole big enough for that little bit of root.

(lighthearted music) So, look at the beautiful soil here.

(lighthearted music) Put that in there, take the quack grass away, and I'm gonna... (lighthearted music) (grass rustling) Put the soil back in, pack it down a bit.

(lighthearted music) A little bit of water.

(water trickles) (bucket clattering) (water pouring) The soil's very moist, but the water helps to put the roots in better contact with the soil.

So it's good to always give some water, even when the soil is very moist.

I'm gonna pour the rest of this in there.

Beautiful.

(bucket clattering) I'm gonna put the wood chips back.

(wood chips rustling) (lighthearted music) And then, I'm gonna add some semi-composted wood chips and a donut around the outside.

That will provide additional nutrition, and also stop some weeds from growing up around the rhubarb while it's trying to get established.

- Rhubarb takes me back to my childhood.

It seemed like every family in Northern New York had a rhubarb patch in their backyard.

So we've transplanted chamomile and licorice, and propagated rhubarb, but we're not done yet.

- That's right, we still have to prune our grapes.

When you prune grapes, there are fewer bunches, but the grapes are bigger, and as you clear out excess foliage, you allow more light to come in, and you have better air circulation.

(lively music) This is a grapevine that I trained to go along this high wire.

I'm gonna explain.

So this trunk, when the grape was first growing, any side shoots that grew up the trunk, I broke off until the trunk reached this height.

And then, I let the two, these are called cordons, grow out, and I tied them to this wire until their tendrils actually grabbed it.

And now it's self-supporting on the wire.

The trunk, I trained up with this stake until it attached itself to the high wire.

So, today, I'm just gonna do a little bit of pruning.

First, I'm going to prune this.

This is a dead trunk, and I'm gonna prune this out, and I'm gonna leave this one.

So, in the north country where it gets very cold in the winter, it's a good idea to train two trunks to come up.

So if one of them gets killed by the weather, or if a rodent decides to cut through it, you still have another one that's viable.

So this one, I'm gonna let grow this year, and train it out as well.

So, what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna prune some of these canes.

So, eventually, this is dead.

So I'm cutting that out.

Eventually, we're gonna have the canes to just two buds.

So one bud is here, and one bud is here.

But because we're still having frost, I'm not gonna cut it back that far today.

If I do that, and we have a hard frost, and the leaves have started to leaf out, the leaves will be killed, and there won't be any fruit from this cane.

So I'm gonna just, I'm gonna give it maybe five buds, and just prune these around five, four or five buds out.

So even if the outer buds start to leaf out... (cane rustles) They'll still be, and we have a frost.

(scissor snips) There's still be plenty of buds left that are viable, because on the grapevine, the furthest from the cordon are the ones that leaf out first, and then they gradually move in toward the main stem.

I'm gonna trim a few more, and I'm gonna cut out any dead stuff.

Like this is dead, I'm gonna get rid of that.

This one's dead.

This is from last year.

By the way, a mature grapevine, and it takes about four years for it to start to be a mature producer, will produce, can produce up to 40 pounds of grapes.

So that's a lot of grapes for a small plant.

Alright, I'm gonna cut this and cut this.

So, the other thing to think about is you wanna space your canes about four inches apart.

So, these are really too close together.

I'm gonna cut this one out.

And so, on average, these are... This is a little more than four inches, but there isn't another cane there.

So on average, you want them to be about four inches apart along the stem.

So anything more than that, you wanna cut out.

Cut out the dead wood, and that's it.

And now, after some time in May, when I'm sure that all the frosts are done, I will cut these back to two buds.

I'll cut each of these back to two buds.

If they leave them too long, they'll be grapes growing on all from all these buds, and it'll just, they won't be as big and plump as they would be if you cut some out.

(lively music) - We are located in Northern New York, where we have a four-season climate.

However, forest gardens aren't limited to just a Northern climate.

- You're right, forest gardens can thrive in any climate.

We visited a subtropical food forest in Jupiter, Florida, where Amanda Pike shared her experience propagating bananas, and pruning fruit trees.

(lively music) I am here in Jupiter, Florida, with Amanda Pike, who has this incredible forest garden.

And today, I'd like to understand how you propagate like bananas, for example.

- So bananas are one of our top crops here in the food forest because they are a staple.

They provide pure starch, much like a potato, and when they're unripe.

So we're constantly propagating them to have more, and ensure production.

So to ensure production, you have to have a max of three plants per corn per root ball.

So a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter.

And then, you take a shovel, and you will pop off any extra pups, baby plants.

- A pup is like a sucker.

- A sucker.

- Okay.

- And you gift it, you wanna make sure it has some root hair, but this means that Floridians often have plenty of bananas to share.

- Amanda, another question I have is when and how do you prune your fruit trees?

- So we time the pruning for right after harvest.

- Ah, okay.

- So we just finished mango season.

We have 28 different mature mango trees on our property.

So it is a tsunami.

(laughs) June through August.

Now we're in September, it just finished, and we're gonna be cutting out the lead, which means the branch that goes straight up.

- Okay.

- [Amanda] My husband takes the bulk of it.

We use pole saws mainly to cut out the lead, and we chip it on-site.

So we drag the limb, and chip right onto our bananas.

So all the organic matter stays, but we have to let the light through the canopy, so that we get maximum fruit.

- Amanda, another thing I'm curious about is how and when you plant your bare-root trees.

- In Florida, we have two seasons, rainy season and dry season.

And so, when the rains start in full earnest- - And when is that?

- Typically, around our rainy season is called from June to November, but you're not gonna have torrential rain until about September, October.

- Ah, like now?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- We get a lot of heavy rains that are very predictable now.

And so, that's when I prefer to just put my seedlings, my bare-rooted trees in the ground.

That way, nothing is required of me at all.

So, it tends to be cloudy because of the rain forecast.

So the young seedlings are not gonna be scorched by the sun.

- Yep, that's important.

- And I can just put them directly in the ground, and they're gonna be established very fast because of the predictable rain.

So that way, it saves me time and effort, and it's more environmentally friendly.

- The plants are happy.

- The plants are happy.

(lively music) - I like the way Amanda times her bare-root plantings for when the rains come.

So that minimizes her labor.

So nature waters the trees instead of her.

- What about here in a Northern climate?

When do you plant bare-root trees here?

- Well, here in Northern New York, we plant our bare-root trees in the spring, so that they emerge from dormancy naturally as the season warms.

(lively music) I'm going to plant a bare-root tree today.

It's a very small tree, but it has fairly substantial roots.

I don't wanna expose the roots to the sun or the air for very long.

I have it soaking in some water.

(birds chirping) So these trees are harvested, bare-root plants are harvested after they go dormant in the fall.

They're put in a temperature-controlled environment over the winter, and then they're shipped to the buyer this time of year.

The water helps to rehydrate the bush or the tree, but you only wanna leave it in for two hours, no more than 24 hours.

(birds chirping) So these have been soaking for a couple of hours.

I think it's probably rehydrated, and it's time to plant.

(birds chirping) It's a red bud.

So a red bud is a nitrogen-fixing tree that has edible flowers and pods, and it's a very beautiful tree when it matures.

And it's covered with those beautiful pink flowers in the spring.

So, judging by the amount of root mass I have, I'm gonna have to dig a fairly sizable hole.

So that's what I'm gonna do right here.

Because we have heavy clay, when you dig a hole with a shovel in heavy clay, you might shear it on the edges, and then the roots have a hard time breaking through.

So after I dig the hole to size, I like to take a pitchfork and just puncture the sides so that there's some space for those roots to get in.

That's now.

(fork clattering) Next step is to build a mound in the middle that this tree is gonna sit on top of, and the roots are gonna spread around it.

(lighthearted music) (soil moves) (lighthearted music) Okay.

(lighthearted music) - All right, I'm gonna spread these roots out over this little bit of a mound I built.

And I'm gonna make a hole and push the taproot down a little bit.

And see how I'm spreading the roots, and then I'm gonna cover them gradually with soil, okay.

Very good.

(lighthearted music) (bag rustling) (lighthearted music) Okay, again, I'm not packing it down very much because it is very moist clay soil.

And now, I'm gonna, it's not completely filled, but I'm gonna make sure the tree's straight, like I want it.

And I also, I was paying attention to where it grew before, so that's about where the soil ended up before.

So I'm gonna try to hit that mark when I fill in with soil this time.

But first, I'm gonna give it a little water to settle what I already put in.

(water splashes) (lighthearted music) Alright, that's good.

You can see how the soil got washed down a little bit.

So, that's good, it means it's settling.

(plastic rustling) (lighthearted music) Okay, now I'm gonna build a saucer around it like I did for the other plant that we planted.

(lighthearted music) Okay, I need to go get more water.

It's really good to build in some water features in your garden if you can.

When we planted this garden, there was standing water in this area all year round.

So I knew that the water table was very high, and I probably couldn't grow anything, so I dug ponds.

And it's great to attract all kinds of wildlife, like frogs and turtles, and dragonflies, and also great to have a source of water to water your bare-root plants when you're planting them in April.

(water trickles) Oops.

And a frog just jumped in.

so I'll just scoop up some water and bring it up.

Yeah, so this is pond water, which has gotta be more nutritious than tap water anyway.

(water pouring) (Dani panting) All right, and when it starts to have a little difficulty seeping down, it's probably enough.

Besides, we know the soil was very wet.

So I'm gonna fill in just a little more soil around the stem, and then I'm gonna cover it with wood chips, and put a trunk guard over it, and a stake, in this case, to hold the trunk guard up, and we'll call it a planted tree.

(wood chips rustling) (lighthearted music) And this.

(panting) (soil scuffing) When you plant a tree, it's good to put the more nutritious soil close to the roots, and the clay, or the less-nutrition soil on the outskirts.

That's what I'm doing.

(soil scuffing) And I'm just about done.

(lighthearted music) I am bending in the tynes of this hardware cloth, so I can make a stable cylinder.

And then, I'm going to just slide it over the top.

(lighthearted music) There we go.

Not too deep.

You don't wanna press it too deep in the ground because then the roots will go through the metal, and then you'll be stuck.

(laughs) You want this to be removable.

And I'm gonna put a stake in just because this is so tall that the wind might blow it over if I don't put in a stake.

So, just a stake to hold that vertical.

And now for the wood chips.

So, circle.

(wood chips clatter) (lighthearted music) Okay, so these wood chips are gonna serve several functions.

There's semi-composted, so they're gonna provide additional nutrition to the tree.

I don't put any nutrition in the hole.

I want the tree to adapt to its environment right away.

It might grow slower than a tree that has some compost thrown in the hole, but that doesn't bother me.

I'd rather it just adapt to the native environment.

The wood chips, as I mentioned, not too thick, right around the base here, but thicker around the outside.

And then, just a few to cover the dirt that's surrounding the tree.

(lighthearted music) There we go.

And that's good.

The other function that these wood chips serve is they're a great insulator.

So they're gonna hold in the moisture for, actually, many months.

I have planted bare-root trees this time of year, had a drought in the summer, and I never had to water them because these chips were so insulating.

What I'll do once the season warms up a little, I'll come around and check all my newly planted trees.

Stick my finger in about that far.

If the soil is still cool and moist, I don't have to water.

With heavy clay, there's the risk of over-saturating the soil if you water too much.

Now, if you have loam or sand, you may have to water a lot more frequently.

But here, with the wood chips, I rarely have to rewater a seedling the first season.

(lively music) Another function that the woodchips have is they deter weeds from competing with the tree's roots, which are just establishing themselves.

- Early spring is such a busy time.

In our next episode, we'll visit the garden in late spring, where it will be popping with life.

I'm Loraine O'Donnell with Dani Baker.

Join us next time on "The Home-Scale Forest Garden."

Thanks for watching - [Announcer] "The Home-Scale Forest Garden" is brought to you by Brookfield Renewable.

A provider of renewable power supports public television, reminding the public to make safety a priority.

Know the risks, use caution in and around water.

Information available at safewaters.com.

- [Narrator] Since 1979, Adirondack Fragrance has offered artisan-made, place-based fragrance products made from our region's unique botanicals, providing aromas inspired by the mountains, forests, and fields.

Adirondackfragrance.com.

(birds chirping) - And by Richard and Deborah Macsherry, the Northern New York Community Foundation, and by these additional sponsors.

(lively music) closed captioning, sponsored by Reed's Incorporated.

- [Presenter] Dani Baker's award-winning book, "The Home-Scale Forest Garden, How to Plan, Plant, and Tend a Resilient Edible Landscape," is available from Chelsea Green Publishing at chelseagreen.com, and wherever books are sold.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (bright music)