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Plant recommendations for near the Aleutians?

 
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I was reading the thread about plants for a location in Sweden, and wondered if anyone has any ideas for a location on the Alaska Peninsula, on the Bristol Bay side.  My contact there says it isn't quite as windy as the Aleutians (one of my brothers worked on Adak for a few years, so I've heard some stories -- wind can blow cars upside down!), but the local trees (mostly alder and willow) don't usually grow more than six or eight feet tall and, at most, six inches in diameter.  It's a wet climate, a lot of marshy ground, decent soil with some gravel, winter lows usually no colder than -25 F, summers mostly in the fifties and sixties (F).  My kind of climate (I hate hot weather!).  I already have some ideas of what to plant there, but would appreciate suggestions, as someone else might think of something I've missed.  This might be for me, as I hope to move there eventually, but is also for the lady I'm in contact with there.  She has a garden and some chickens, and is experimenting with pasture legumes so she can eventually possibly have goats there.  They do have wolves moving through the village in the winter, large bears in the summer, and foxes at any time.

Kathleen
 
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I hear cabbages can be grown for timber at that lattitude. 
 
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polyparadigm wrote:
I hear cabbages can be grown for timber at that lattitude.   



LOL!  Yes, cabbage will grow well there.  So will things like currants, blueberries, and lingonberries.  I think elderberries might do well, and gooseberries, and crabapples -- stuff like that.

Kathleen
 
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potatoes? seems like they would like that summer if it was long enough.  what about filberts? they don't get real big so might be somewhat resistant to the wind.
 
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look on a hardiness zone map and find out what your zone is..and then google plants that grow in that zone..

i guess as i could say the best way to handle a windy site..is to try to stop the wind with a windbreak..what about evergreens..are there any that are hardy there..like maby canadian hemlocks??
 
Leah Sattler
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brenda is definitly on to something with the windbreak. and that moves into the idea of creating micro climates.......
 
Kathleen Sanderson
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I was wondering about hazelnuts -- it would be good to be able to raise nuts there.  They survive in New England, so they might survive there as well. 

Yes, a windbreak would be a really good idea.  I'm not sure what evergreens would grow there.  Black and white spruce grow in the Interior of Alaska, which gets much colder, but I'm not sure they can take the wind.  Jack pine grows in Southeast Alaska, so that might be a possibility. 

And my contact there says potatoes grow really well.  I think all the cool-season vegetables should do fine.  Mainly what I was wondering about was perennials, berries, shrubs, and trees.  If I ever make it out there, I'll take chickens and goats (possibly ducks instead of the chickens), and probably add a few sheep and maybe a pony if I can figure out how to get it out there.  My contact says one of the older men who lives there used to have three horses, and she has chickens if she can keep them safe from the foxes.

Kathleen
 
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don't forget to look for natural windbreaks that are already in existence. a bit of a hill or rocky outcrop....moving there would be quite and adventure! one of my favorite books growing up was based in aleutian islands so I have always had a romanticized view of them
 
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Lichens as food for live stock and humans.     
There are lots of lichens on the cistus bushes  in wild bits of the country here in Spain so i wondered if the goats eat them, though i suppose if they did there would hardly be any left and so i looked them up in the internet and got out a good paper on lichens as food, might be interesting in Alaska.
 
        In semi desert places they turn to extensive live stock farming as humans can't digest much of the stuff growing there and its hard to grow veggies so you need to get your calories from eating meat. maybe permies could change this or head from all over the world could.
          You don't have any Eskimos on the forum or Tibetans? Maybe there is an Eskimo forum that could answer about plants in Alaska. There are good pow wow videos in youtube. I never expected to see a modern pow wow.
          I post a foto of lichens on a cistus bush, agri rose macaskie.
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Leah Sattler
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thats is a fascinating proposal rose! It had never crossed my mind to cultivate lichen!
 
Kathleen Sanderson
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Well, in one of the books on pack-goats, the author says that when he had his goats above tree line up in the mountains, they would eat lichens off the rocks.  It might be a different kind of lichens, or it might just be that if the trees/bushes are available, the goats would rather eat those than lichens. 

I'm really dubious about people living in the extreme north being able to have a vegan diet, at least a locally grown one.  I think animal products are really necessary in that climate, because the animals can eat things that people can't (trees and brush, for example), and because it would probably require a greenhouse to grow most of the plant foods that would supply good-quality protein and fat (fat is very necessary in a cold-climate diet).  But I do still think that permaculture ideas would be useful in that climate, as well as any place else.  It's just a different plant guild, and different climate adaptations (such as the wind-breaks already mentioned) would be needed.

Kathleen
 
rose macaskie
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    It is true permaculture ideas would be a good idea there, the wind break idea must be specially necessary there and the idea of having a surface of water to heat things up that is like solar cooking ideas i suppose were you reflect the heat, sunlight at the pot you a e cooking food in so it recieves sulight and reflected sunlight from reflectors, so as to heat it, onlySepp holzer is refecting light to grow plants with, Sepp uses water as giant reflector as I understand it. In solar cooking you shut the pot up up in a transparent place,  a turkey bag for example, so as to retain heat it gets from the  light reflected at it and the sun it all in many types of solar cooking looks so different from a dark oven
    Sepp holster mentions ponds cooling things down or heating them up according to how you position them, and the trees round them, if you have a screen of trees behind or not. Are the trees like a wall in a sun trap and the water reflects the sun up so they have direct and indirect sunlight and if you change the position of everything pool, wall of trees, orientation to the wind, the pools have a cooling effect. I have not yet really tried to understand it properly yet. The pond warming the area could help too i should think.

  The live stock here eat willow, goats included, many country folk don't like talking about it, they like to be modern, the sticks with their leaves can be cut off the willows to feed to the cattle, i heard about it in reference to beef cattle, as you would for basket making.
    Maples leaves serve as forage for live stock here too and maples are hardy, they refill any of their water carrying pipes that have been emptied during the year, in spring. The sap of maples dashes round the tree in spring as the cold nights and hot days cause it to have enormous pressure drops at night, making it take up water and pressure build ups in its vessels in the day time, making sap shoot around and fill everynook and cranny in the trees, filing up every empty space, such as emptied tubes and spilling out into buckets if you make a hole in the trunk, to fill our stomachs.
      Other trees lose the use of the tubes if theese tubes get emptied and as frost can cause air bubbles in the water and so embolias. This loss of the use of tubes is great in cold places and stops many trees from thriving in them.
      The same happens in birches too and they and maples both grow in the tundra or near it so maybe you could grow them and as animals like maple leaves as forage if Spanish tradition is to be believed,  you can cut the trees to keep them as bushes as you do hedges so the animals reach the leaves or so as to help you cut branch for the live stock as they do here. 

    Is LOL solarcookingnut LOL? If she is hello, great solar cooker. I had my first nearly successful bit of solar cooking two weeks ago using one of your box cookers. i painted it with such foul smelling paint, it smelt of Ariel biological soap powder, that I dropped trying though it was working.
 
    I suppose with plastic cheap, and hoops of metal a green house becomes the easiest way to grow vegetables in the cold.

    A difference between Tibet and the tundra is that in the tundra not even green houses are going to help you in winter, you would need the caravan of Ricky in "The Trailer Park Boys" with all its reflective wall paper to reflect electric lights and make th eplants grow with artificial light if you wanted a winter salad. I said i had looked into marijuana peoples growing tecnics, i said i was not a saint but i had never grown marihuana. I would like to say saying i was ot a saint does not mean i have ever drugged i did not drug either in my youth or later except a bit of marijuana very every so often, i feel more a bit of a weed for not being more hippy rather than a heroe, but that is the case. Still marihuana growers are some of the interesting growers around.
    Though it is cold in Tibet, 7 degrees centigrade in summer if i remember right, you get sunlight in winter unlike alaska. I can try to get in touch with a monk i have the email of and ask him about veggies in the cold, i have only once written to him and he did not write back though he gave me his address as i was writting to the dalai lama. i don't know what will come of asking him questions. Look up secmol ladakh, the Tibetan place high up in really deserted looking in Pakistani mountains, they have lots of green house ideas and  solar energy and warm building ones, i think they may need Mollison or Sepp holzer as far as out door plants are concerned, i have not seen their outdoor plantations though.
      I have been busier in the last mounth or two talking about the information i have gathered before than drinking from sepps or mollisons knowledge so i am not good at suggesting permaculture ideas for alaska. researching again will come as i have less and less formerly gained knowledge to sick up. agri rose macaskie.
 
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I went to the Ladakh Ecology Centre in 1992 and bought a book Ancient Futures" by Helena Norberg Hodge which is a thoughtful book about this amazing place which has few resources but uses them very cleverly. Search Amazon for this.
 
rose macaskie
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Leah Sattler so  glad you like the idea of cultivating lichen though i had not really thought of that, just sort of if you know its good you don't do for it or you look for goats that eat it, reindeer etc. In england they paint new bits added to old buildings with browns, i take it browns are manure, liquid browns to encourage lichens to grow, thats all i know about growing lichens. Get the birds to do the dirty work for you encourage lots of birds feeding them, thats probably not kosher permaculturist action.  agri rose macaskie. 
 
Kathleen Sanderson
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Rose, we were friends with an elderly couple (brother and sister) in Alaska who cut willow, aspen, and a lot of 'weeds' for winter feed for their goats -- they had two does and a buck.  They had a big one-ton truck that they took out on the road-sides and cut everything by hand.  That's part of what I plan to use for goat and rabbit feed when we are back up there. 

Actually, most of Alaska does get at least some sunlight during the winter.  It's only above the Arctic Circle (such as at Barrow) that they have the 'long night' where the sun doesn't come above the horizon for several weeks.  Where we used to live in the Interior, we had at least four hours of daylight even on the shortest day of the year, plus a couple of hours of weak light on either side of that.  A well-insulated greenhouse, with maybe a little heat from the attached house, may not allow stuff to actually grow, but it is possible to keep cold-hardy greens such as some lettuces, spinach, kale, and so on, alive for fresh salads all winter long. 

Kathleen
 
rose macaskie
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Great to hear about a tradition for using the branch of trees for animals in some other part part of the world than this. It is hard to get myself believed on the use of trees and bushes to feed live stock here though the book on Spanish races of cattle mentions this use of trees for goats, cattle, horses and even sheep, which last animal, according to the locals, is only inclined to only go for what is below their noses, who don't browse.  Though Juan Oria de la Ruedas book on the trees that are natural to Castilla and Leon also mentions the use of what they call branch to feed the live stock and two men i know, not shepherds or cowherds, but a land owner and banker where cattle are kept, have mentioned it to me and you can see the trees are still prunedwhich would be strange in th efeilds if htis tradition did not persist.  Most shepherds are cagey about what they do, so people here don't hear it talked about and so a lot of people won't believe me maybe they do they are just thoroughly uninterested by all this and are not going to read the book on different races of Spanish cattle so i feel i will never be able to get through on the subject.

      The four hour days must be very full of atmosphere. I remember the early nights of the
English winter as something romantic, maybe because i was a child and went to bed before it got dark in summer so darkness was then very attractive.

    Cutting branch for the animals is one way of stopping goats doing for the bushes, you depend on your devices not theirs, unless the humans are hell bent on doing for vegetation, as they are here for fear of fires or maybe for other reasons like, to make walking around ground used for hunting and shooting  easier.
    Growing willow wands is a tradition in all of Europe, in all the world i suppose.
      I suppose everything grows well in summer in Alaska because there are suddenly so many hours of light, by which i really mean, how does that work out?
    In the wooded farms here the amount you can cut of the trees is stipulated in renting agreements and the number of trees an acre is stipulated by tradition and varies according to the province. Though this does not apply to the willows that simply grow in abundance in the rivers, when i came always as wands and now, thirty years later, cenutries for the young, growing into trees.

    Have you thought of holly for your goats on Alaska.
Does holly grow their?
    In Juan Oria de la Ruedas book on trees that are natural to Castilla and Leon he gets really enthusiastic about the traditional importance of holly, ilex aquifolium to feed the live stock and i suppose the importance of this lies in holly having leaves in winter and so bing a source of food in this season, as does the evergreen oak too but the evergreen oak would never grow in Alaska i suppose.  Maybe holly would. He talks of holly feeding horses and cattle.  He say charcoal makers have done for lots of holly recently, in the last two hundred years, that they started cutting down the trees from the ground when medieval ordenances rule that the trees should only be pollarded.  They even used the bowls of the trees for charcoal. 
  He says that there are more holly trees in regions that are full of live stock than in other regions, which is proof that it was planted for them, though in another place he claims the role of planting hollies for the thrush.  What is normal here is to clear forest for the livestock so making sylvo pastural farms and so maybe they were just more cleared were there weren't live stock rather than less planted. Anyway the anthropozoic conection is proved by it, which i think means the human, live stock, related action on this plant.
    He says that holly regenerates easily after being nibbled and survives the pression of live stock well. It is used as a hedge in England. He has a foto of a highly nibbled in its lower parts tree in the snow. He also says it survives the live stock because being nibbled it starts to create a wide low bed of holly, I had a wide bed of oak quercus pyrenaica, the oak whose leaves are prefered by the live stock, in my garden, when i first got it, it is now a patch of trees, so nibbling trees so they grow as a bed of leaves stuck to the ground might be considered one way of growing trees, i have seen it. As the cattle do manage to nibble hollies prickly leaves but don't like walking in it, the holly manages to send up shoots in the middle of the mass it has formed of lower growth, that can flower and produce fruit, so it does not get killed by the cattle and while other trees such as beeches, birches, oaks and limes, get done for by the live stock. It must be that the herders don't protect them when they are young as i have seen done with cherries.
      He mentions the great Spanish races of cattle and horses that keep this tree in order, cattle from the iberican black stock and the asturian pardo, origen that come from wild prehistoric cattle and semi wild breeds of horses. He says that if the holly covered slopes are not grazed by this type of cattle the beeches, birches, oaks and limes, start to take over from hollies, that become an understorey tree and stop flowering and fruiting and so eventually disappear, something, he claims, you can see clearly today in Soria. Soria is just on from my house in Guadalajara i should go and look at them, maybe they are in the north of Soria, a bit further away. 
      This writer likes studying historical documents so his information is not just on Spain now, though normally he is talking about the present use of trees and, or that which is just getting lost now, but he does talk of old traditions too. He talks of holly being much prized to feed the live stock and for this reason much protected and mentioned in the old days, in medeival ordenances, that include orders to protect it, that they talk of how many heads of cattle were to be allowed on the hills and what sort of cattle, also, as metioned above, that you could not coppice it only pollard it or cut wood from off main arms, desmochar or descogollo. He also says it is used in Wales to feed cattle, I did not know this but then I'm almost completely ignorant about the use of trees in the British isles. agri rose macaskie.
 
rose macaskie
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      I wanted to say that if you're to cut trees as forage you need to have a substainable system. In Spain the amount you can cut is sometimes written into the contractes of renting the land and  in one point in history there was a rule in some part of the country that you could only take what you could break off with your hand, there can be rules about the number of animals you can let on the land. Another control can be tradition and what is considered good practice. You prize your trees, you teach your children what they can take without harming the future of the tree.
 The dehesas, wooded farmas were the leaf of trees and their fruit serve to feed the live stock, have been places where absentee landlords kept miserably underpaid workers. agri rose macaskie.
 
Kathleen Sanderson
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Yes, this is something I've already discussed with my contact there, as at least some of the browse/forage would have to come off of 'commons'.  We don't want to see that over-stocked or mis-used. 

Kathleen


rose macaskie wrote:
      I wanted to say that if you're to cut trees as forage you need to have a substainable system. In Spain the amount you can cut is sometimes written into the contractes of renting the land and  in one point in history there was a rule in some part of the country that you could only take what you could break off with your hand, there can be rules about the number of animals you can let on the land. Another control can be tradition and what is considered good practice. You prize your trees, you teach your children what they can take without harming the future of the tree.
 The dehesas, wooded farmas were the leaf of trees and their fruit serve to feed the live stock, have been places where absentee landlords kept miserably underpaid workers. agri rose macaskie.

 
rose macaskie
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it is easier to stop over use of browse trees, bushes or willow wands, for a private person, if the people using the twigs are using common land twigs or edge of the road twigs, a situation arises in which if you don't take it the next man will so ther eis no o point in being responsible and assurign the survival of the plants you cut. Also, in common land no one is planting new trees or in the case of willows that grow from sticks stuck in the ground putting in new cuttings.
    A strong ,county council ,English term, maybe could maintain order in the exploitation of recoursees in no-mans lands but if there is not organisation of the exploitation of such recourses they can be destroyed.

    In the Sierra de Magina Jaen they have bushes of pistacias, of the family of anacardiacias, a pretty Mediterranean bush and other scrubland bushes in common lands and what mantains the bushes, apparently, according to the writer Salvador Mesa Jimenez, in the book, "Los Bosques Ibericos" by the editorial Planeta, the book is a copilacion of variouse writers, these varouse bushes aren't so terrible delicious as to get eaten right down so there is always vegetation for sheep and goats. The oaks that start to grow there get so grazed as to have no chance of surviving.
    The grazing of common land can be arranged successfully, it is in Navaredonda de Gredos a village in the mountains of Avila in the centre of Spain that i know a bit.
    Another factor of the successfull administration Navaredonda in Gredos, Gredos is a mountain range and part of the central system, is that their pine wood does not get burnt down. It is an old one with grass under the trees and clearings, it belongs to a sylvo pastoral tradition, they graze cows in it, which is organised by the village and the result is a pine wood that does not get burnt. The owners of live stock aren't annoyed with the forestry commission for taking all the land.
      I read that live stock owners are one of the people responsible for forest fires in Galicia, the north western corner of Spain. If there are so many forests that the trees don't allow poor shepherds to scrape out a living on common lands or by road sides, then there is no possibility of staying in your village and considerable resentment exists that causes forest fires, forest fires that don't exist in the drier wood of Gredos in central Spain that are open to herdsmen from the village. agri rose macaskie.
 
rose macaskie
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I looked up premaculture england in you tube  and found a great New England  permaculturist that might be a help if you go to the Aleutians as someone said that there is some similarity between new england and the Aleutians. The permaculturist Daniel Botkin has a big really roomy friendly furnished with tables and chairs hoop house, green house, that he made and tells how to make and then has lots of videos on how to grow seeds that he grows in the hoop house that seemed to me very usefull on growing vegetables from seed.
      You can get him tapping into youtube  "permaculture england" or tapping in, permaculture daniel botkin. If you only tap in daniel botkin you get a pop singer.

    For Brenda Groth who is worried about all the people losing their jobs and how they will get by, his videos on how to plant seeds seem to me very easy and good and without very complicated equipment.agri rose macaskie.
 
rose macaskie
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i liked Daniel botkins advice on how to grow seeds because normally the idea of having an enormous quantity of seed trays full of transplanted seedlings is daunting, really it is more than daunting, if i am being fair to myself, here in the flat there is no room were there is light for them and i could not look after them miles away in the country of course i can just plant seed there that is to look after itself but not what will need special care. When i have the new hardy seeds of bajoos in the new forum self seeding vegetables i wont need to grow any vegatables except those htat grow from seed sown straight into the garden.

    Daniel  Botkin though he shows how to prick out, plant out, tiny seedling in the traditional way into a great big seedling tray in one of his  many youtube videos, also grows the seeds all in one pot so there are according to him 200 seedlings in the pot. He assures us that you will notice when they run out of nutrients in the pot, the seedlings will start to look a bit off colour and then he just moves all the esedling in a clump, the whole lot, into a bigger pot where there is room for a bit more soil. He says you will be able to separate them out later and by then they will be strong enough to plant straight out and he does not try to spread them out in the new pot he puts them in to their new home as they came out of the old one in a clump in one side of the new pot and says they will fill it out, organise themselves, plants don't move but their roots push against each other, i reckon, pushing the plant into a slightly different place.
      Here in Madrid they plant the trees in the centre of the hole in the pavement made for them and after a few years the trunks have always moved from the centre to the side, of the hole made for them, furthest from the houses and i reckon that their roots push against the walls of the houses and push the trees away from the centre of the holes.
    Having lots of seedling in a small pot till they grow big enough to really need a bigger space, makes it so much easier to grow seeds in a small place that it seems to me to be a most marvelous piece of information. Agri rose macaskie
 
Kathleen Sanderson
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Rose, that is indeed a useful idea, because I don't have much space for flats of seedlings either, even though we live in a house.  There's only one useful south-facing window, in my daughter's bedroom, and it's already filled with plants, although they can be moved to other windows for short periods of time.  I have cold frames, but some things need to be started so early that the cold frames aren't sufficient protection for them.

Kathleen
 
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Thanks freeholder,
your mentioning usefull ideas reminds me, these might be usefull -:

  In japan they don't lament their frozen fruit trees they wrap them all up for the winter.

      I bought a gardening book just because it described wrapping up trees. It talks of so many techniques  together it seems a bit muddled.  it gives a page to each theme how to prune your trees for example.
      It talks of putting pine branches with all their leaves on, or fir branches freshly cut ones between the branches of the tree and  all over the bush or tree a solid mass of them, they have tied the pine branches on in the foto. The next paragraph says you will get better protection with an Indian tent of bamboos covered with sackcloth tied to the tent with wires or rope.  In the next paragraph they say cover the base of the plant you want to protect with a lots of earth and then with dead leaves and wood chips. and with the aerial part that your are to tie its branches together and wrap the whole in straw matting that you stand upright and roll around the tree they are supposing your tree is as tall as your mat is wide, and long enough to wrap round the whole tree and over lap a bit. The fotos of grass matting is like that bamboo fndicng material except with strawall tied or sewn together into a fence of upright stalks instead of bamboos.
  The two fotos seem to show a less confusing medley of ideas. The first foto is of the tree with pine branches between its branches it is a very small tree so its branches are flexible and not too long and probably tied up because you can't see them. The stuffing of straw and freshly cut pine branches covered in leaves goes all round the trunk and  branchesmixed with bunched up bits of straw. Maybe the straw is really an alternative to pine branches. The next photo is of the first changes it has had earth and leaves piled up round its base, to protect its roots i suppose and straw mat tied round all the Ariel part of the tree holding in the straw and pine branches the stuffing you have tied round the tree in the first foto and providing another layer of protection.
      So the above is one answer and building red indian type tents of bamboo covered in sack cloth another.
    I think i have seen a sort of heavy really well made thatch roof on trees in photos of japanese gardens.
      On another page the book mentions fir tree branches and or crumpled up balls of straw round the bottom of rose bushes or trees that freeze in winter. In the photo they have a lot of fir branches among the stems of the rose and some string running through or round them to cage or tie them in and decorative snow on top. The snow is optional, circumstantial, would be more exact though it also is good against frost.
 
        My grandmother said that even a small net on top of a plant broke the frost, so the branches of trees above though leafless would help protect plants.
        One of my ways of protecting plants is not pruning them in autumn. I find they frost on the windward side and if they have all their branches if some branches frost there will be lots left protected by the frosted ones, i can prune the frosted ones at the end of the winter. I leave long grass and such for the same reason,and dead bits of plants such as the dead flower stems of lavender that stand up from the bush and dry when flowering has finished,  as protection from the cold.
      I knock the bottom out of flower pots and put them the pot upside down  over small plants or to protect the plants or their bottom half. I do this as much to protect them from the sun and drying air, as from frosts. I do it to young plants.
      Maybe its not permaculture because it is not just letting things be natural and so not killing yourself with work, it is working to keep them alive. nmaking plants meant for other climates live in yours instead of growing whats apropiate for your climate.  Still, till tree takes it is worth doing a bit of work. I suppose you should always stop to ask yourself if this is not just a workfull way of producing when a more natural one exists like growing from seed when a tree grows from seed it puts down a long taproot really quickly and looks after itself. The don't work unless you have to is a good pricipal there are people who need attention an dother things to do that are not work to sustain yourself excxtly but are important and health is imporatnt to which isnot sesrved with too  much work.
    I also get a square of stiffish transparent  plastic and tie it into a fat short tube shape and place these tubes over plants in winter. You can place a lid on them.
    Bill Mollison makes tents of woven wood and leaves to protect plants from the heat, you can see it in his video on helping them grow food in the African plains that have been lost their vergetation and soil because of the sort of things we Europeans did to change Africa.
    Brenda Groth i did basket work at school you soak the willow or whatever, in water till its flexible, and then make your baskets or what ever.

    I suppose if you make lots of frames with legs they could serve to stand over plants so you can throw tarps over them to cover plants on bad nights. Maybe just stakes and posts knocked into the ground would serve to hold up tarps off plants allowing  tarps to protect them without squashing them. On you tube there is a woman who covers things with blankets on cold nights if i remember right.

  [shadow=red,left]If we leave millions of kilometers of earth to lie fallow every year, heating up in the sun, naked soil that is dark and so absorbs energy, and it is also an accumulator of heat, leaving it bare we will heat up the world that can't cool itself down because greenhouse gasses reflect the energy escaping into outer space back towards the earth and so the heat can't escape. We can reduce green house gases making it easier for heat to escape and we can stop the earth from heating too much so there is less heat to lose .[/shadow]    agri rose macaskie
 
Kathleen Sanderson
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I used to have some information from the University of Alaska on growing stuff up there, and one thing they recommended for fruit trees and such was bending the trees over so the stems grew along the ground.  Keep the branches either bent down or pruned low, so the whole thing was no more than five feet high, and you could cover it easily for winter protection.

I'll bet your book was just trying to throw different ideas out there so people who had one kind of resource available but not another would get ideas about using what they had.

Kathleen
 
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I realize this thread is old, but for anyone checking it now, check out this related post, many of the plants should work for Bristol Bay.  https://permies.com/t/62584/plant-resource-world-northernmost-botanical#533950
 
I think they should change the spelling to Sandy Eggo. This tiny ad agrees with me.
Special fundraiser JUST for the permaculture bootcamp!
https://permies.com/w/bel-fundraiser
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