Nanabush Food Forest Stories

This has a double meaning...   We are building new hugelkultur mounds at our flagship forest (check out the photo as we begin to layout the base).   We are also designing and planning to start planting 2 new food forests in the City of Ottawa.  More details to follow... SOON!

We were fortunate to return to the site of a previous year's discovery to find a nice 2016 harvest of maitake mushrooms.  It was a pleasant surprise given the drought and heat of the summer.   Not only do these mushrooms taste delicious, but they also pack a nutritional and medicinal punch (with 25% protein, loads of B-vitamins, glucose moderating and anti-tumour effects).

Having failed to report news in a timely manner, let's go with better late than never...  it was thrilling to have our first (small) crop of hazelnuts from 4 year old trees.  Check out some of the hazel close-ups (of both nuts and the male flowers a.k.a. catkins that form in the fall)!  

Bright red beauties, little anti-inflammatory superfruits!  The low bushes are now starting to produce at the homebase food forest... I like to drop a few into a cup of herbal tea.  Perhaps next year there will be enough to put into some products to share.  They are a lovely plant that does well at the base of larger fruit trees.  If you are planning a home food forest, please consider growing goji berries (a.k.a. wolfberries). 

No, its not a rewrite of the Kansas song, its a fruit that seems to be wayward of the tropics.  I am referring to the Asimina triloba plant, or common pawpaw which is the largest indigenous fruit on the North American continent.  A native of Ontario and many northeastern U.S. states, this plant is the only one of its genus found outside of the tropics, wayward?  perhaps... but that is not the only unusual thing about it... The pawpaw has fetid or stinking flowers that attract scavengers such as flies and beetles to pollinate it.  The source of the smell...