Plant The Trees

An audio-version of our written article: https://www.propagateag.com/blog/the-nuance-of-invasive-species The Threat of Invasive SpeciesThe American Chestnut (blight) and Climate AnaloguesNative to when? → Black Locust's native rangeThose who live in glass houses... Introspection without despair.What can we do? Narrative vs. Action.Agroforestry Systems as an actionable next stepIntro: Invasive species are non-native plants, animals, fungi, and pathogens that spread aggressively and disru...

Costa Rica has one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Quite a few years ago now, they dissolved their military and placed their focus on services. Not just education and public health, but ecosystem services. Water quality, flood mitigation, biodiversity, weather stability… Scott Gallant is an agroforestry practitioner based in Costa Rica, and has worked there for over a decade. Today we dove into the agriculture, agroforestry, and agrotourism of Costa Rica. We talked about ...

Darren J. Doherty, founder of Regrarians, is a pioneer in modern regenerative agriculture and agroforestry in the anglosphere and beyond. He’s planned hundreds of farms across Australia, New Zealand, The United States, Vietnam, India, The Country of Georgia, Mediterranean Europe, and beyond. Today we’ll dive into the mechanization of planting trees. Trees are permanent infrastructure, so you want to plant them in the right place, the first time, and in the most efficient way possible. O...

Jeremy Kaufman, together with our CEO Ethan Steinberg, and I, started working on Propagate in 2016. 10 years later, we have some insight into planting trees on farms, not without the standard battle scars of entrepreneurship. Today, we walk through why trees need to make money, the financial and economic bottlenecks in agroforestry, working with farmers and not replacing farmers, Jeremy’s family business in the wood products industry, and why black locust and chestnuts stand out.

Before you plant apples, blueberries, and black walnut, try these 5 species instead. I started out 15 years ago planting black walnut and apples, because apples are the go-to fruit and black walnut veneer logs can pay off a mortgage. But what other species can feed us, create economic value, and provide ecosystem benefit with a more gradual learning curve? For best-fit tree options on non-forested land that you own or manage, don't hesitate to reach out to our team: https://www.propagat...

Farmland is often considered marginal because it’s rocky, steep, or because the soils are too shallow. But in much of the northeast and midwest, farmland is “sub prime” or less productive because it’s wet or poorly drained. Not wetland, but damp farmland that’s harder to access until it’s dry in mid summer. The question here is: what tree crops work for this soil? Chestnuts don’t like clay, or wet feet. But yellowbud or bitternut hickory is a great fit, and this tree produces high quality cul...

Byron and I first encountered syntropic agroforestry in the same way. There was a stunning documentary released in 2014 called Life in Syntropy. It profiled farms in Brazil utilizing planned ecological succession to grow food and restore the vibrant, verdant Atlantic Rainforest. Now we both incorporate the processes and practices of syntropy into our work, Byron to a much greater extent than I do. We always look to adapt the principles to different people and landscapes around the world. We a...

It’s 1972. Led Zeppelin IV just hit the airwaves, and Greg Miller is planting chestnut trees as a junior in high school. With time on his side, he goes on to get a PhD in plant breeding, and vastly improves chestnut yields, nut quality, and disease resistance. 50 years later, the trees are still bearing huge crops. Greg has planted tens of thousands more trees, having refined the genetics over multiple generations of Chinese Chestnut and Chinese-American hybrids. Widely regarded as the pionee...

Russell Wallack, founder of Breadtree, joins us to talk chestnuts and perennial pantry stables. Breadtree farms on 800 acres in the Upper Hudson Valley (NY) and Southwest Vermont, where they steward 20,000+ food-producing trees and shrubs — including chestnut, hickory, oak, seaberry, apple, pear, mulberry, and persimmon — in orchards grazed by sheep and cattle. The practice of raising food crops, trees, and animals together has a long history in many cultures, and (today) is often called agro...

Take a listen to this phenomenal interview with Dana Shapiro, CEO of the Hawai‘i Ulu Cooperative. Ulu is the Hawaiian word for Breadfruit, which is a tree crop starch that traveled across the Pacific Ocean in canoes, and can still grow straight out of lava rock. And the conversation got. good. and I think we did a solid job of profiling this case study in rebuilding a food system with agroforestry. Hawai‘i imports 90% of its food, while half its farmland is fallow. Meanwhile, Dana and her tea...

Silvopasture is the intentional integration of trees, forage, and livestock, and Northern Argentina boasts over 200,000 acres of plantation silvopasture. If we’re going to make more silvopasture happen in the United States, it’s good to learn from similar climates, even if they’re in the Southern Hemisphere. In this episode, we talk to Luis Colcombet, who is a silvopasture veteran, and an agroforestry agronomist and scientist with INTA in Argentina. He’s been working in silvopasture for decad...

Here we have our first Australian on the Plant The Trees Podcast. I first met Darren Doherty at a Keyline agroforestry course in Iowa City in 2014. Back then we sometimes called it permaculture, but you could say that sphere was starving for pragmatism. How could we add financial realism to a socially-inclined ecological agriculture? There are so many things we can do on a landscape, but where do we start? And what goals and ends do we have? The Regrarians platform gives extremely thoro...

I’ve traveled to Hungary on five separate occasions, to learn more about black locust silviculture. Hungary grows 1 million acres of locust dominant forest and forest plantations, so it’s the right place for Robinia immersion. Have questions about planting trees on your land? Visit propagateag.com/contact-us to talk to someone from our team!