Woodland crops only (forest farming)

@smsmith

Those 3 and invasive honeysuckle are real problems sometimes. The blackberries and roses rip me to peices! Wild grapes are not as bad.

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Even the invasive honeysuckle is a good honey plant…and the berries could be edible in a pinch…or mixed in a blend.

I’ve never heard of anyone eating those berries, I always thought they were bird food…

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@BlueBerry

I ate some and they tasted like poison to me. We might be able to graft honeyberry on them. We could sure try it. My sister got a good laugh when i tried the red invasive berries. They are very bitter and taste strongly of fruit poisons. Cyanide or arsenic i think.

update
“Honeysuckle berries are not safe to eat and can cause illness if consumed in large quantities.”

https://plantaddicts.com/are-honeysuckle-poisonous/

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Bush honeysuckle doesn’t grow in the same areas as PI does at my place.

I fight buckthorn big time, bush honeysuckle I pretty much leave alone. It is nowhere near as invasive as buckthorn on my acreage

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Tis true…eating a lot of acorns is going to have bad results, too. :crazy_face: I’ve eaten a half dozen at least a time or 2…very astringent and also acidic. … But not that much more so than underripe ARONIA!

They are starling food…not sure if many othr birds like them.

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Clark, isn’t it interesting that HONEYBERRIES is the type of honeysuckle “Plant Addicts” pictures as poisonous?? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I’ve tried most things. Used to use a 3 gallon sprayer spraying tobacco plants using DDT.
Of course, I had no shoes on as I did this…much less gloves or a mask.

(You reckon it’s the tobacco or the chemicals used on it that caused most of the cancers… :crazy_face:)

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Same here. I grew up around vining poison ivy and learned to recognize those distinctive woody lianas held fast to tree trunks. Here, poison ivy grows mostly as a low spreading groundcover, with the vining phenotype being very uncommon. It flowers and fruits when about shin high. On coastal dunes, Ive seen poison ivy take on three distinct forms- groundcover, vine, and TREE! Yes, it can actually grow as a freestanding tree under the right conditions. It thrives in pure sand with blistering sun and salt spray, and so grows to be the “canopy” species of some coastal dunes. When it does so, it looks a lot like sumac

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One species I think is a viable woodland crop (and one I want to do some experimenting with in the future) is the beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta). It grows and produces quite well in the hardwood understory on my property. I plan to propagate and spread it throughout the woodlot. The main issue I see are the blue jays…they move through quick snagging them all before they’re even close to ripe.

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Ramps could easily be cropped. I’ve planted lots at my place. Mayapple is one Ive been playing with too. Its biggest issue is protecting the fruit from critters. There is a patch of quite old mature forest near me on my wife’s family’s land. Its a great place to hunt mushrooms- reishi, chaga, maitake, lion’s mane, chicken of the woods, oyster, pear puffball, and many others. Ive long thought how cool itd be to manage a forest for maturity and make it pay with mushrooms, woodland herbs, and very low impact selective cutting of high value logs for niche markets like luthiery. Itd be a life’s work, but in the long run its a much better model in terms of forest health at the minimum. Theres room for cutting too. We need more thickets, and Id like to see them managed for production too!

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