I May Be Having Too Much Fun With This

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]After planting roughly 1.3,736,238 trees by hand, I bought an augur So, I got a few chinka pins from the Petals from the Past nurs nursery. If you have not been to Petals from the past in gemstones, Alabama, I highly recommend it. It is a fantastic nursery with a lot of interesting plants and fresh fruit and a upupic. I mean, it's acres of it's acres of nursery with a cool kind of a country store and everything. So, I got these chinkapins.

[00:02:13]Now, chinkapins castana puma is a native chestnut.

[00:02:21]They used to grow all over this area.

[00:02:24]It's a small chestnut. It's really good for wildlife, but it also has a sweet edible nut. Used to be all over the place, but because of clearing and burning and the pines and everything, all the pine plantations and stuff, it's almost disappeared from the wild. It's also, some of them have gotten bllights and other things. So, I was able to get two of them, so I have pollination. And I'm going to plant them both in my food forest. This area that I just mowed over and drilled out was where I had some sugar cane, but I now have more than enough sugar cane to last me forever and ever and ever and ever. So, I'm taking out some of my older sugar cane plantings that I had put in the young days of the food forest and I'm replacing them. I tell you what, this is a really easy way to dig a hole. It only takes a massive tractor and $1,000 of augur and bits.

[00:03:23]Kind of ridiculous, but I've been waiting for a very, very, very, very long time to get one. So, I finally got one.

[00:03:32]I'm already halfway through my life. I think it's time to get an augur. And there we go. We have a little chinkapin here. And now I have to find a spot to put its mate. Just above this blooming gummy berry, you see this long green stick going way up into the sky. It's about 12 foot tall. That is a Nepali hog plum, which is supposed to only be tropical. Well, guess what? It went totally deciduous for us and it leafed out just fine. It leafed out once when it warmed up and burned back and then leafed out again and it looks great. So, it's obviously deciduous and it looks like it lives in zone 8, not just the tropics. This is why we experiment. I started this from seed and it grew this tall in just a very short period of time.

[00:04:47]I literally planted so many sugarcane out in our field once I had grown up these patches here that I said, "You know what? I'm just going to stick them out once I moved the cows." I said, "Well, I got all this space that I can put sugar cane in." So, I put a lot of the sugarcane last year out in the field, and that gives me the space back in the food forest to do more food foresty things like plant castana pome like a boss.

[00:05:24]I have to come back and bring some water out here. We're a little ways from the closest hose, but it is important to water your plants in. Well, just if I don't show you on one of my videos that I've done something that you think is important, don't worry. I probably did it. Whatever I do is always in accordance with best practices. Because we're in a marginal area for citrus, having a little bit of shade protects them. So, I put some holes out here beneath this large oak, this large divided oak. And we'll put some bumper satsumas out here, some kumquats, and then a seedling that I started.

[00:06:09]And then another big kumquat that I've had in a pot for quite a while that I started to pull out of the pot and then it just boiled out with fire ants. So, I gave up on that.

[00:06:20]But we'll stick them in around here and we'll get that canopy overnight, which really makes a big difference on freezing nights. And citrus can actually produce in the shade. So, there we go.

[00:06:31]And it was certainly easier to dig like this than it would have been with a shovel, considering how many roots are coming out of that oak. I cut a pathway through here. This was our sugarcane patch this last year. And then I stuck in another hog plum right here.

[00:06:50]I put in a bare root moleberry that I hope lives right here. This year the pomegranates look really good.

[00:06:58]I don't know why people don't just plant pomegranates as ornamentals. Well, I guess there are some ornamental varieties, but man, if you wanted an edible landscaping, you could put in a hedge of pomegranates.

[00:07:12]It would be beautiful. The flowers are stunning. Plus, the hummingbirds really like them.

[00:07:20]It's been extremely dry. So, my planting has come to a halt.

[00:07:26]This is about a week after I filmed putting in those plants with an augur.

[00:07:31]Maybe even two weeks. It's been really busy at the shop this spring, but we are under severe drought conditions right now. So, I don't really want to plant much more that I would have to drag a hose around to water. But, the ones that I put in are looking good.

[00:07:46]I got a long hose and dragged it out here. I put 175 foot of hose and dragged it through. But it's looking pretty good.

[00:07:57]Some of these blueberries. Talk about edible landscaping. These blue leafed rabbit eyes are just unbelievable. That would be a great landscape plant. Plus, it feeds you. I mean, that would be really, really good. Yeah, the food forest is starting to look more like a forest. The density has gone up. It's looking good.

[00:08:21]And I've got, you know, some various weeds like this wild lettuce and the everpresent wisteria coming back and the occasional popcorn tree.

[00:08:31]But I leave a lot of the weeds, especially when it's dry like this, just to provide cover. And when it starts to rain really well, then I come out here with the machete and I cleaned it up.

[00:08:44]But otherwise, we're just mowing pathways through these rough islands.

[00:08:48]And bit by bit, more and more food is coming together. And you can see how crispy everything looks right now.

[00:08:55]But there's a lot of life in here. A lot of things are just kind of waiting for that rain to go for them to kick in. I should have yams climbing this tree, but they're just waiting to come up.

[00:09:06]Overall though, I am glad that I got an augur. I put in another 25 or so random trees at one edge of our yard along with the ones that I actually did on video.

[00:09:18]So, if I can plant enough trees to make it worth the capital investment, I mean, it goes so fast and I can dig holes even in dry, hard ground. So, I think it's worth it.

[00:09:33]I mean, why not? It's like adding the labor of five people.

[00:09:41]So long as we can afford diesel, it's still the deal right now with how much work that thing does. See those blackberries?

[00:09:51]Look at that beautiful gooie berry.

[00:09:53]Nitrogen fixing species.

[00:09:56]It bore a lot of fruit last year. We'll see how it likes this drought. But coming to the edge here, it's it's going to be good. I'm just waiting. We're just in a holding pattern until we get rain.

[00:10:05]When the weather gets a little better, I'll do a proper tour through the food forest. But I wanted to give that augur a try and put a few things in the ground. And I've been meaning to come out here and finish this video. And now I finished it. So, thank you all for joining me. Um, like I said, the shop is consuming a lot of my time. We have a farm and garden store in Atmore, Alabama. Now, that is Atmore Farm and Garden, and I'm there most of the time.

[00:10:26]If you are in Florida or if you are in the lower end of Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama, check out my book, Create Your Own Florida Food Forest. All the stuff that's in there for North Florida will apply to through zone 8 areas of the other states. But if you're in Florida, it's an awesome resource. It covers South, Central, and North Florida. And I will put a link to that below. Create your own Florida Food Forest, a big fat illustrated book of plants. And if you're a plant nerd like me, uh, that will appeal to you. Thanks for joining me. Maybe I'll see you at the shop or online. And until next time, may your thumbs always be green.

[00:11:35]Thank you all for joining me. Uh when the weather gets a little better, I'll do a proper tour through here. Instead of just wandering around and drilling holes and talking about stuff, I'll just talk about stuff in a consistent manner.

[00:11:46]That's mostly just the stuff that Thanks.