Nuts Varieties for Utah

A columnar English oak can be grown in
many suburban gardens with out taking
over the full lot.

One of the most neglected plants in the edible landscape is the nut tree. In my native Utah, walnut trees are a common sight, but often outgrow the space they are planted in.

Below, I've put together a list of trees that can be planted on a typical quarter acre lot. Not all of them are the best choices for all home owners. When choosing a nut tree remember to account for size at maturity, how quickly it produces, how well the nuts will store, and yearly productivity. And don't forget personal taste!

Common Name Scientific name Cultivar Height Width Notes Bur oak Quercus macrocarpa 70-80' 80-90' Big prickly acorns, favorite ammunition for kids. Swamp white oak Quercus bicolor 50-60' 60-70' Great for wetter areas. Will get chlorotic (yellow) leaves in alkali soils. English oak Quercus robur species 40-60' 40-60 Susceptible to mildew and aphids. Fastigiata 50-60 10-15' Will get wider after three or four decades. Susceptible to the same pests as the species. Gamble (scrub) oak Quercus gambelii 15-25' 15-20' Native oak growing in clonal clumps with small acorns that attract bluejays. Given enough time and little maintenance clumps may get to be quit large. Almond Prunus dulcis All-in-One 15-20' 15' Hardy to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Best in warmer valley areas. Hall 20-30' 20' Best with a pollinator, Joranolo or Texas. Small slightly bitter nut. Starts blooming with apricots and ends with the peaches. Mission 20-30' 20' Small nut with a harder than usual shell. Late bloomer and pollinates best with Hall or Nonpareil. Filbert (hazel) Corylus 15-20' 15' Varieties vary greatly depending on where you buy them. Make sure you have an appropriate pollinator. English walnut Juglans regia 60' 60' Many varieties, make sure you get one listed as 'Carpathian' type for good winter hardiness. Nuts should be small to medium and well sealed for best quality. Butternut Juglans cenerea 50-60' 50-60' The tastiest nut in the Juglans genus but do not stand under the tree when they fall. The nuts are heavy enough to do damage. Apricot Prunus armeniaca Chinese (Mormon) up to 38' Use only sweet pit varieties as a nut, others are toxic. Piñon Pine Pinus edulis 30-65' 25 years to cropping. Will only crop heavily every third year. Single-leaf Piñon Pinus monophylla 30-65' 25 years to cropping. Will only crop heavily every third year.

Permaculture Pruning: Lesson One

Me climbing into the main crotch of a peach tree.

To prune properly, you need to know something about how the plant is structured and how it responds to getting cut. The following is a list and description of some of the important parts of a woody plant for you to know when pruning.


In future posts I will teach how to prune right.


Branch A subordinate shoot coming off of a larger stem.

Branch Bark Ridge This is a pucker of bark that appears on the upper side of the angle where two limbs meet. It is most common on angles where one limb is bigger than the other. Branch bark ridges do not appear on all trees. Lindens, for instance, rarely have them.

Crotch The area where two limbs meet.

Co-dominant Stems Two branches that are about equal in size and vigor.


Collar A swollen ring at the base of a branch where it meets the trunk of a larger branch. This ring contains wood created from the branch itself as well as the larger limb it is attached to. The collar is easily visible on some limbs, but it is usually hard for the beginner to see.

Included Bark When two branches grow close enough together that they are unable to knit together properly. This causes the back to get caught and die between the two branches. Crotches that have included bark are common breaking points when the tree is under stress.


Node The point on a stem where buds and leaves are or were attached.


Scaffold Limb The major branches of a fruit tree.


Spur A short, slow growing stem that is often the area of fruit growth.

Sucker A shoot growing from the base or roots of a plant. Watersprouts are often called suckers.


Trunk The main stem of the tree.


Watersprout A vigorous, fast growing branch. Watersprouts usually grow vertically.

Permaculture vs. Gardening

I think we all know what gardening is, but to many permaculture is a new term. Permaculture is a combination of the two words: permanent and agriculture. It was coined in the 70s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren for a system of farming they were developing. This system mimics processes and patterns in nature in the attempt to create more food and cut down on work in the long term.


Permaculture is mostly interested in the design process, but it also contains a loose group of techniques that is easiest described as, 'Best management practices for sustainable food growth'. 


I don't know when permaculture moved to the quarter acre lot, but it is a natural fit with farming's little sister, the garden. Permaculture matches well with today's interest in organic eating and gardening, preserving natural resources, and self sufficiency.


Here is a list of topics and practices that are common to permaculturists:

• Sheet mulching
• Forest gardening
• Garden animals
• Nitrogen fixing plantings 
• Community involvement
• Aquaculture
• Resource management
• Natural design and patterns
• The influence of structures and gardens on each other

You will notice that 'community involvement' is not an idea you readily relate to farming and gardening. The sustainability Mollison and Holmgren were looking for stretches beyond the farm. For many, permaculture now means 'permanent culture'. For them permaculture is searching for a better way to live in the world.


At its base, permaculture is just a collection of good tools to make my garden better. I will always call myself a gardener first, because it is an old word that everyone understands. It is a way of life that that extends back to the beginning of history. But even with that history, it never hurts to reach out and choose a new tool or two. So I guess I am a permaculturist as well.

Making Permaculture Better

A well pruned peach tree that will provide lots

of good sweet fruit. It is trimmed low enough

that my elderly client will have little problem 

harvesting it.

Many people jump into permaculture head first when they finally find it. This is not a bad thing, if they realize that permaculture is primarily a design art and that much of its effectiveness is based on experience and observation.

A good example of this is a friend of mine last summer. She put a couple of dozen apple shoots in water. When they seemed to be healthy, she proceeded to plant them, only then to reap disappointment when they all died.

Observation of a bouquet of flowers with lots of greenery might have given a hint at how difficult it can be to start a plant from a cutting. A quick chat with an experienced gardener might have have given her some tips for a better outcome. A well worded internet search also would have given her some things to think about.


A reasonable knowledge of practical gardening wisdom would have been enough to lead her to a highly successful apple propagating experience. This knowledge can be gained a number of ways, and I will cover that in later posts.


Here are three key areas permaculturists will find especially helpful:

Plant Propagation 
Most of us get how to grow a plant from seed, a few have successfully save seed, a couple are willing to pollinate flowers by hand, but who knows how to graft a favorite apple tree? What about getting a cutting from a peach tree to send out roots? By expanding our knowledge of creating new plants we create better opportunities for quality food.


Soil Science 
Of all the permaculture and home gardening books I have read, only one does justice to the soils of my home state. And that book is dedicated to flowers. With the complexity of soils extending from pH to soil structure to water infiltration to nutrient availability, no permaculturist can afford to have a less that professional scientific knowledge of the soils they rely on.


Pruning 
I know Fukuoka preached in favor of no pruning on his citrus, but not pruning doesn't work well on peaches and many other temperate fruit trees. A permaculturist must not only know how prune a fruit tree for best food production, for the health of the tree, and safety of those who work and play under them.

Stone Fruit Pruning Notes

When pruning cherries, plums, almonds, peaches, and other stone fruits you can cut off up to half of the expected leaves. Most of the stone fruits don't need that much. Only peaches need to have heavy pruning to promote enough new growth to give fruit the following year.

Almonds and apricots need some pruning to generating new fruit producing wood. But since the wood will produce fruit for more that one season, often just pruning for structure is needed. I know of a tree near where I live that is judged to be a hundred years old that is producing nicely with such basic pruning.

Cherries and plums only need structural pruning. They just keep on producing without regard to what we do to them.

Judging the expected leaves of a tree is the hardest part. You can't rely on guesstimating  based on a the before and after profile until you have a fair amount of experience. You can make a good guess by looking at the pile of limbs and comparing it to what is still on the tree. Just remember to compensate for how tightly packed the pile is.

And as a final note, remember that it is best to prune the tree less if you have any question. You can always prune more later if you need to, but you can never prune less.

Small Cherry on the left,
European plum on the right.
Before pruning.

And after pruning.

Asian plum. Before.

After

White peach. Before.

After.

P.S. Feel free to ask questions!

Growing Nutritious Food

The western world is becoming more and more conscious of what it eats, finally. But we are struggling with deciding what is really healthy. While the long held definition of a nutrient is that the nutrient is required by the body for basic life, is good for some things, it is a far cry from a comprehensive definition of what is healthy.

Scientists are now looking at many naturally occurring chemicals and the affect they have on our bodies and trying to decide what is really important. Given the size of the task, it will be decades before we have a good foundation for what we really need in our food. Maybe centuries.

But if you turn away from the more complex science, the answers become clear. Healthy food will be food that is raised healthy. That should make sense even to a non-farmer or gardener.

Here are some of the more important factors:

Plant Nutrients 
Make sure the plants have balanced nutrients. This includes all the micro and macro nutrients. Most of the nutrients are more likely to be deficient, but two are more likely to be in excess: nitrogen and water. Yes water. Watch how much nitrogen and water you use.

Sunlight 
Sunlight is the basic energy for plants. You can have everything else in abundance, but the plant won't live if it doesn't get light. Most common food plants grow best with full sun, but only a few are damaged by too much sun. Do your research and adjust accordingly.

Color 
Typically plants with more color have higher levels of nutrients and beneficial phytochemicals. Choose species and varieties with higher intensity of color in the part that you eat. A good example is zucchini versus butternut. The butternut comes out way ahead for nutrition.

Organic Content of Soil 
This is another way of saying carbon in the soil. While there are many ways to get organics in the soil, including adding charcoal, the best ways are to add compost and plant based mulches. Soils with high amounts of organics grow better for a number of reasons, enough that I’ll have to cover that in a later post.

You will eat better if you grow your own food and will have better food if you plan ahead with these factors in mind.