Food Forest Farm Plant Trials

One of the goals of Food Forest Farm (F3) is to continually add to the spectrum of plants available to the Permaculture and broader gardening community. To do this F3 uses a set of criteria by which to choose plants for trials. Those criteria include plants that:

Potential Polyculture Plants for Permaculture Practitioners

What is a potential polyculture plant?

A polyculture is a mix of different species grown together, planted in such a way that each species benefits. F3 looks for plants that have the potential to be good candidates for perennial polycultures of multipurpose plants. That is they are:

What do you mean by potential?

Currently, there is very little knowledge about how the plants being sold through F3 grow together, support one another, and benefit the soil, ecosystem, and human communities that coexist with them. Without someone trying to grow and experiment with these plants, we will not know their POTENTIAL!

Why sell plants that no one knows about?

Good question. My hope is that other folks would like to experiment with these plants too. Even share your experiences with F3. Because I am already taking the time to trial them, and wouldn’t sell a plant that I don’t think has some potential anyway, you’ll be sure to get a plant that will thrive in your garden.

Can you give an example of a Potential Polyculture Plant?

I thought you’d never ask :)

Spinach Vine: Hablitzia tamnoides

This exciting new plant, practically unknown to most of the temperate climate gardening world, has the potential to become a much-loved green for the North American kitchen. My journey with this plant has been an interesting one. For the last three years I’ve been learning all I can about it, starting with a book called Food Plants of the World by Ben-Erik van Wyk. A picture of Hablitzia tamnoides pops onto the page (p.25), with a basic one-sentence caption - nowhere else in the book is it described. From that moment on, I search for what seems like a hundred hours, in books, by word of mouth, over the Internet, and through my own personal experience with the plant, learning what I can. Amazingly obscure, even in scientific literature, Hablitzia’s time has come.

Throughout my research, no one has been as significant a resource as the “extreme salad man” of Norway, Stephen Barstow. His article “Caucasian Spinach: The Unknown Woodlander” in No. 52 of Permaculture Magazine, helped to solidify my passion for this plant. His enthusiastic experience and thorough analysis of Hablitzia furthered my quest for more. Stephen’s article is a cornucopia of Hablitzia facts. I encourage you to take a look.

Travels of the Unknown Woodlander

My story will begin where Stephen left off: Hablitzia tamnoides is indigenous to the extremely botanically diverse Caucasus Region of Eurasia. From Russia and Turkey to Azerbaijan, and between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The plant is described in the Flora of the U.S.S.R. (1964) as found in its habitat of “shady woods… ravines, and riverside thickets… An ornamental garden plant used for pergolas, porches, etc.” Nowhere in my research can I find Hablitzia used as food in its native homeland. My hope is to someday learn that it has been, or is still being used, as a traditional food, or medicinal herb, but I have yet to fulfill that assumption.

In more modern times, the Scandinavians have a hundred year history with Hablitzia. Throughout this newfound humanplant partnership, Scandinavians have grown it as both an ornamental and as a food. From the Scandinavian Illustrated Garden Encyclopedia (1920-1921), Hablitzia is described as being grown in semishade, in humusy soil, being used as a spinach plant. This is the region of the world where Hablitzia was birthed anew!

Hablitzia comes to America

As far as my limited research suggests, outside its uniqueness to the science world, North Americans have yet to know this plant (Hablitzia tamnoides is the only species in this genus, in the family Chenopodiaceae.). This conundrum was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it allowed me to tread where very few had tread before - an exciting adventure indeed! A curse, because as an amateur botanist and permaculture garden geek, I needed to grow the plant and learn its ways. With no one selling seeds or plants of Hablitzia in the U.S., frustration set in. It took two years to acquire enough seed to grow my first five plants to adulthood. In the winter of 2006/07 the seeds came with the luck of the draw. After emailing a bunch of seed sources in Europe, a packet of seeds arrived at my doorstep. Once planted, a little time, sun and love, brought forth 13 wonderful newborns. Amazingly vigorous and hardy, the little seedlings danced, one variety solid green another with scarlet red undersides. That’s right, apparently there is a natural color variation to boot. Some of my research suggests that not only are these two varieties different in color but in habit as well, each having different tolerances to shade/sun and vigorousness (we will see in the years to come).

Knowing that Hablitzia is a forest adapted species I set out to introduce it into my three-year-old edible forest garden. Situated between climate zones 5 and 6, and smack dab in the middle of the Northeast temperate forest ecoregion, Holyoke, MA should be just right.

The fate of six plants

Out of the thirteen plants that where birthed, some perished from harsh neglect, five were planted into the forest garden, and the rest were given to friends. Out of the five transplants, three plants exploded in growth, some reaching over six feet in length their first year, with leaves the size of my hand. One (living under a Norway Maple) hardly grew at all. And another, growing in full sun, did great through the spring and early summer then withered away in the year’s hot, drought stricken days. From this experiment, those plants in partial to full shade and cool, moist, mulch covered soil did the best, and even thrived, with no care at all. Despite the literature’s description of Hablitzia’s inability to set much seed, I was able to collect over 30 seeds from two different plants. Not enough to break records I agree, but surely enough to pump out more of this wondrous plant.

Hablitzia as a cooked green

Why so wondrous you might be asking? Well, because Hablitzia has grown so fast and so wonderfully for me. I had a chance to eat a bunch of its leaves in its first year of growth. With a light musky flavor, the blanched leaves have a similar texture to cooked spinach or amaranth. This plant grows fast… being able to harvest the leaves most likely in quantity the second year boggles the mind.