Seeding the Permaculture Nursery at Mountain Jewel

This year at Mountain Jewel we have been busy planting seeds for the future.

Along with various vegetative propagation techniques, we began to establish trees from seed on the land. Using air prune beds to grow high density vigorous roots of easy to transplant trees, our goal is to continue the spread of useful, edible trees that are hardy to our bioregion.

With a focus on natives, we have seen what varieties grow well with little care and where we want to expand. Allying with these noteworthy trees and shrubs that fit perfectly into permaculture systems, we are excited to plant out future offerings to share with our community and beyond.

Check out what we have in stock!

Air Prune Beds

We created 8 air pruning beds this winter. Air prune beds are beneficial because the open bottom facilitates gentle pruning of the roots when they come in contact with the air. This stimulates lateral and fibrous roots, particularly in trees with taproots. This allows them to transplant with ease and start immediately with new vigorous growth. We use a mixture of organic matter, biochar and worm castings.

In these beds we have planted a variety of hybrid Chestnuts (Chinese x Japanese x American x European), Select Chinese Chestnuts, Persimmons, Select Pawpaws and English Lime. All of these plants thrive in our bioregion.

These trees will be available fall 2020 to purchase through our website. We offer shipping and local pickup.

Hybrid Chestnuts growing strong in our outdoor airprune beds.

We are ever excited about ramping up Pawpaw production here. In addition to wild seeds we’ve planted out to graft in the future, we will have select Pawpaw seedlings from Susquehanna, Overleese, NC-1, Sunflower and other amazing cultivars. These fruits are much larger than wild ones with outstanding flavor. They are resilient because they don’t rely on a graft and offer a broader genetic base while being “true to seed” (they carry over similar genetics from their parent tree).

Handling some superior genetics (listed above) – impeccable flavor and size!

Wild pawpaw seedlings growing in a high tunnel air pruning bed. Most of them will be ready to graft select cultivars spring 2021.

Planting out small trees can be advantageous for many reasons. They are almost always less expensive – you can plant more!! Because of their small size, they are easier to transplant and suffer less lag time than older trees. Trees don’t move and transplanting them is a distinctly human endeavor. Easing their transition is ideal for all involved and this is easier with small trees.

Grafting & Stool Layering Nursery

Ini planting persimmon root stock in the nursery row.

We also planted out 50 ft rows with native trees and shrubs including Aronia melanocarpa, Apple Rootstock (M 111), Osage Orange (Che rootstock), Persimmon and Mulberry (for rootstock). These beds are intensively planted at 6 in to 1 ft spacing. This encourages the trees to grow tall and straight and allows for easy bulk management.

After these trees establish, we’ll graft some this spring and others next year. They’ll be available Fall 2021. Che is a fruit-bearing tree from Asia in the Mulberry family. It has delicious watermelon flavored fruit shaped kind of like a mulberry and we’re excited to offer this in the future. We will graft Asian and improved American varieties onto Persimmons & Mulberries improving yields, flavor, and diversity.

Regarding Aronia, we have created stooling beds. These will produce an abundance of runners off of these hardy, well-tended mother plants. Aronia are an amazing native plant that provides antioxidant rich berries and fantastic bee forage. They are drought resistant and make a beautiful landscaping plant offering striking foliage during the growing seasons.

Aronia melanocarpa in bloom this spring. We had a late frost this year that hit many plants, but the aronia was absolutely unphased.

Other Nursery Beds

In other beds, we have direct seeded apple, pear, English lime, jujube, and wild pawpaw seeds. We have also started propagating elders, roses and goumis. So far the elders have taken of with gusto and we’ll have the following varieties available as established plants Fall 2020: Wyldewood, Marge, Bob Gordon. We’ll cuttings of these and York and Nova also available on our website for order from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021. The goumis are more difficult to root from cuttings and we’ll try softwood cuttings this summer. Our heirloom roses are rooting well and we hope to have some available after they’ve established good root systems after a year or two of growth.

Bob Gordon elder cuttings rooting and leafing out. We’ll have cuttings and rooted plants available.

Exciting work is happening at Mountain Jewel. We are happily rooting our expanded community vision to share the plant genetics we have grown to love. Please send us a message at ozarkmountainjewel (at) gmail (dot) com if you’d like to get on a waitlist for any of these plants. When they’re available, we can send you an email. Thanks and happy growing 2020!