mountain ash is very tolerant of water. i have one grafted over to pear. theres water around it for at least half the summer and all winter and its been a vigorous grower.
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How about cold hardy citrus? Just have trifoliate as the rootstock.
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I assumed that building a mound meant simultaneously digging a trench nearby
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Usually the logic is to put good soil not more clay. Though if theyre clay tolerant sure
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What about growing this in the water collectors for rabbit, chicken or quail etc. feed
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Haskap? Those do fine in clay on my zone 8b allotment, on clay, but they don’t like drought.
Ribes species, like blackcurrant seem to be very good at rooting from any point on their stems and can grow in boggy forests. If you want something bigger, josta-plants grow really fast. Just put any prunings in the soil and you’ll quickly have a row of plants.
Blueberries and cranberries depend on your pH of course.
Highbush cranberries (Viburnum) and (European) elderberries should definitely work. They grow on the sides of ditches here and are happy in clay.
Some blackberries will grow anywhere.
I agree with other posters that it could be nice to make some ridges to create wetter and dryer spots. If you want to grow sea buckthorn, you could even add some bags of sand and plant them on a mound. In the wild, on our pretty wet coast, they grow in pure sand in places with a high water table.
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In Michigan I took care of a Highbush Blueberry planting next to a stream. The rows were raised about a foot, but lower in some places, and the whole thing flooded all spring and sometimes had standing water into summer. Very productive bushes.
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I keep stubbornly planting blueberries in a wet area and they keep dying. Water table is about 6” down most of the winter, and it floods in that area at least once a year. I have to find somewhere else.
@Buckjohnson sea buckthorn (seaberry) needs well draining soil. It can grown by the sea, hence its name, if it is growing in a rocky area. Himalayan blackberries (Armenian blackberries) grow extremely well in boggy areas, and will also clamber up your hill in no time. They’re thorny and invasive, but delicious.
@JohannsGarden I agree… blue elderberry, which grows well in PNW, needs a chance to dry completely out, or it suffers badly from fungal diseases.
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Look at Nick Kasko on YouTube & Facebook. He has a fairly similar climate and soil situation to you, but flat land instead of a hillside. A little colder where he lives also.
Here’s what I remember of what he does.
He typically plants on a mound and amends a decent amount with compost and manure (to reduce waterlogging).
He grows apples on Malus fusca rootstock. This rootstock handles his wet conditions well. He also has gotten pears onto M. fusca. I think both using interstems and specific varieties that just happened to take. I don’t know if he uses any pear rootstock specifically.
I believe Nick grows all of his stonefruit on plum rootstock. He says plum handles the wetness better than other stone fruit roots do. Sometimes he will do an interstem between say a plum and peach with a hybrid of the two fruits. This way he eases the transition to minimze graft incompatibility.
Nick sells scionwood I believe.
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This might be stretching the definition of ‘fruit’ but Chionanthus virginicus (fringe tree) grows very well here in areas that have regular standing water in the spring. It will supposedly fruit if you have both a male & female, which I apparently don’t, so no reports on whether it’s worth eating or not.
I like the tree enough that I’m planting more though. Nice, clean leaves, pretty flowers in spring, and very tolerant of adverse conditions. Don’t know why it isn’t more widely grown.
I have also heard good things about elderberry, but haven’t tried it yet. I have some ordered this spring.
fwiw, our haskap did not do well in a wet area. The apple tree actually did better. It might also have been the western exposure it disliked, not the wet. They are doing better now in a drier area with almost full sun.
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Mayhaw - best jelly there is. Grows in the swamps. Not sure if the more commercial varieties do as well as the native “swamp mayhaw”. We would harvest the fruit from a boat while they were floating on the water during spring flood. Grow in the deep south
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