Wild experiments in a wild garden in the north of Portugal

[Solko]

Hi everyone, I have been looking around on this forum for quite a while now, and I think it is time to introduce myself and my projects.

I am a painter (artist) from the Netherlands, who recently moved to the Geneva area in France. A couple of years ago I bought a little terrain in the north of Portugal, a climate 9a zone - just as a hobby. There is a little ruin of a traditional sheperds hut, which I am trying to restore, and the small area around it consists of abandoned terraces, that were once used to grow corn, but are now overgrown with Eucalyptus trees. It's small and wild, but I love the place and I try to grow all plants that I like there, basically killing the most of them, because I am apparently pretty optimistic about climate conditions. Besides my optimism about what seedlings can handle, they also have to deal with the fact that I can only go there once or twice per year - so no watering in summer and no pampering in winter! And that in a Mediterranean climate....

My basic approach that worked so far is just to put everything I can find in the ground in as massive numbers as possible and see what is still there next year...  This approach seems to be working for avocado and macademia, Feijoa and tea-plants, as well as a single mango (!) while at the same time so far no Lychee, Longan, Grumichama, Black Sapote, Cherimoya, or Eugenia raised from seed has ever survived... But I don't give up easily and am now focussing on Myrtaceae that could maybe handle a 9a-climate.

I have like the most of you ordered a wide variety of seeds from around the world and lots of them from Brasil. I raise all plants from seeds in my house in France, put the little plants bare-rooted in my suitcase when I fly to Portugal, try to look as inconspicuous as possible whe I pass customs, and then drive straight from the airplane to my terrain to put them in the ground. Most of them are about 20 cm high when I do that- there is just not enough room in my suitcase  for anything larger...

Probably the best way to introduce myself is to show the place where I intend to grow my plants. Here are some pictures of my place:





My garden started as an abandoned piece of terraced land in Portugal, that was fully planted with Eucalyptus. I am now replanting it as a mixed orchard or forest garden, while I leave most of the Eucs in place to provide overhead winter protection and protection from sun in summer for most seedling Eugenia's. There is no irrigation. The only thing I did to protect the trees is to put a fence against the deer, goat and boar around the place. I do not live there myself, so I cannot plant anything that needs a lot of care, watering or pest control. I don't have to have a big harvest either, all this is more of an experiment, I just love plants. I like to find the best varieties for the place, I am also really interested in breeding and crossing experiments, for my curiosity is often greater than my need for fruit.


This is the old hut on the terrain:





And this is what the general region looks like - it is a 9a climate, with granite, rocky soil, where people grow grapes, citrus, peaches, figs and olives:







As you can see, quite warm, but with snow on the mountain tops in winter...


And Here are some of the plants I killed!


Before:



And one year later:




I'm happy to say that all the survivors are in the ground now  and doing good.
I'm looking forward to exchanging seeds, ideas and experiences with all of you on this forum!

Greetings,

Solko

[Delvi83]

As I know the North of Portugal has a rainy climate? is it true? which are the avarege  of the max temperature in summer? and what's the Min in Winter?

[Solko]

Yes! Ha ha, that is what I thought... And then after I planted everything the worst drought in years occured and half the region burned in forest fires! Climate change is not funny!

Here are the statistics for the region:




Most books I know say to watch the dip regarding the drought: when (double) the max temperatures (in degrees C) start to exceed the rainfall in mm... here from end of  May until half September... Which can be quite long for a thirsty seedling
And then watch the min temp in winter, but that is obvious.
As you can see, plenty of rainfall throughout the year, but you need plants that can make it through two and a half months of heat and drought to be on the safe side...


Solko

[Luisport]

Hello my friend! What area are you? I live near Fatima...  I hope the best for your experiments! 

[huertasurbanas]

Hi Solko, congrats for your ideas and doings!  We are trying to grow a food forest in 9b climate at Junin, Argentina. (http://bosquedealimentos.org/)

In this forum you can meet Miguel and Luis from Portugal, they are not nurseries, but maybe you can buy them some bigger trees that can resist droughts? Miguel could have even some psidium longipetiolatum that should resist any frost there... but I dont know if it would resist a long drought (mines dont like droughts)

You should get some sete capotes too, they are very hardy, similar to feijoa in some aspects, and guaviyú too...

Are all the summers so dry as in that graphic? or this graph is from the last year only?

And what about guavas? they grow very fast... and p. cattleianum too...

Maybe another strategy would be to grow some species in your house of France just to produce a lot of seeds, and then sow them directly in the wild ground along with clover and maybe other small plants... maybe even jaboticaba could grow there... but they will need rain in summer...

I would sow directly guaviyu, guayabas, ubajay, feijoa, pitangas, sete capotes, uvaia, araticú (r. sylvatica), maybe pawpaw and others... pecan?

what about water ponds? they should help in many ways

did you know about  Sepp Holzer?

[FlyingFoxFruits]

Solko,

thanks for sharing the pics and info!
the scenery is breathtaking...and the hut looks very interesting (was that being lived in?...i wonder what the inside looks like??...i want to build one like that one day!)

good luck with your growing efforts...hopefully I can be of assistance!

[greenman62]

i would be happy to come check on your plants, say - twice a year for a week or 2 ?

You actually have a very similar climate to mine in New Orleans La.
zone 9a /9b border.
except we get a good bit of rainfall. its very rare to go more than 2 weeks without rain.

mulberry, fig, loquat, blackberry work well here...
guava does well, but it only gives me ripe fruit in late summer and fall.
Lychee and Longan might work for you. Grumichama and some other Eugenias too.

i even grow papaya.
they grow very fast with a lot of sun, and seeds are cheap (free with the fruit)
i start a dozen or more every spring.
i protect them best i can, near a building, with plants on either side of them
often, they will make it through a light freeze.
if not, its no real loss...

[Miguel.pt]

Hello Solko

Welcome to the forum!

I remember your from "Cloudforest" some time ago.

[treefrog]

there are several varieties of avocado that will tolerate a moderate amount of frost once they are established.  poncho, joey, brazos belle, fantastic, lila, mexicola, and  others.  if care is taken in planting, they will survive and resprout after a hard freeze.  a very effective tactic is to plant them considerably deeper than they were in the pot from the nursery.  plant them so that they end up in the bottom of a hole 15 to 25 cm below the surrounding soil level.  soil or mulch will wash in and cover the graft union.  if/when, you have a hard freeze, the underground parts will survive, and resprout the following spring.  if the graft union is below the frost line, it will resprout with tissue from the scion.  if you planted too shallow, the scion will die and the respprouting  will be from the rootstock - in all probabliity, an inferior plant.
once they are planted deeply and well established, avocados will tolerate fairly dry conditions, but they don't like soggy, poorly drained soil.  the first year or two are critical.  if you can get them past that, they are hard to kill.
good luck

[Solko]

Hi Luis, I am in the very north, in the Parque Nacional de Peneda Geres, near Arcos de Valdevez.

And Hi Marco from Huertasurbanas. Thank you so much for your recommendations! I actually follow your Youtube channel and there are many Eugenia's I would have never found out about without you posting about them. Your foodforest is also a very interesting project! I am anxious to see how that will turn out. In my experience the planting out of seedlings in the field is the most delicate procedure...
The summers in Portugal are all as dry as in the graphic - until you book two weeks of a camping-holiday over there :-) - my sister did that and then she got ten days of rain

I am for now doing exactly what you suggested: I have here in France a small collection of seedling Eugenia's: Pitangatuba, Grumixama, Cherry of the Rio Grande, Candolleana, Pitanga and Guaviyu. I also have Jaboticaba's: The 'normal' one from Oscar, the hybrid and last year I got the Delicatula from Helton... Since I grow them all in pots in a climate that is not ideal, I seem to have a bit of a different experience than most of you. For me the M. Delicatula is by far the healthiest and easiest to grow.... It is incredibly tolerant of alkaline water, soil, small pots, sunshine, cold, dark winter conditions, etc... Most of my plants are from seeds of Oscar. I have also last year ordered a couple of batches of seeds from Helton, but they had a hard time surviving the mail to Holland - most seeds were available in my winter or summer and either got fried or frozen in the mail... But I have two Campomanesia's that survived... I think one is Xanthocarpa littorale and the other I am not sure of.
I have found several Feijoa cultivars here in France, and figs as well, but these take the winters here, as long as I keep the snow off of them.
Guavas do very well in pots, but all the ones I planted out died. I think they are too tender for my area. I have found a larger strawberry guava on the local market in Portugal and planted that one two years ago. It didn't grow much so far, but is still alive.
Pawpaw and Pecan are also in the ground there, and so far these are doing great.
The soil is very good for Eugenia's, the ground is very rocky, and drains extremely well, with not a lot of quality organic matter in it, except on the terraces - these have been filled for over a couple of hundred years with cow dung... I tried to create a pond and some swales on these, but the ground it so well-draining, that it does not really hold the water well. Still, I think it is worth a try. I know of Sepp Holzers farm, it's awesome!

Here is what my 'garden' looks like in France:





Adam, the hut is absolutely crazy! It is the reason I fell in love with the place. It is over 400 years old and not in use anymore. People never used to live in these huts, you can find them all over the higher regions in these mountains. The way societies were organized in the past was less around 'individual property' and most villages are in the lower valleys, but when they went up in the mountains to see their cattle, the trip was often long and so they built these shelters all over the higher plateaus, just to spend the night... most of them are owned by 'nobody' or the community as a whole. There are even entire villages of them... All abandoned now. I was lucky to find one on a piece of private land. It's about 3 x 4 meters on the inside. Sheperds would overnight in there, together with the smallest calves, to protect them from wolf attacks...

The inside when I bought the place...





And this is how it looks now:



You should absolutely build your own one day!


Greenman, You are welcome to come and visit once I finished work on the hut! I seperated the terrain in areas for 'drought tolerant' species like mulberry and Feijoa, and keep the spots that retain most moisture for the Eugenia's. Longan and Lychees that I planted didn't survive, I don't know wether it was the drought or cold that killed them... It sounds like you can grow a little more heat loving plants than I do.

Hi Miguel, Yes, I wondered wether you were the same Miguel from Cloudforest. I am totally in awe of your collection! Great to see you here again. Next time I am in Portugal I hope it will be possible to visit you and maybe see your plants! That would be fantastic.

Hi Treefrog, I was amazed by the diversity of seedlings in Avocado. It is a really satisfying plant to experiment with. I saved up seeds in the fridge for a year and planted out over a hundred of them. Actually a lot - almost 50% survived the first winter there, and quite a few also survived the summers. I grow them on site as rootstock for now, and I am not sure if any of the cultivars will ever make it, but a lot more trees then I expected survived. The ground is very well draining, so that is good for them. The neighbours know of one large tree in the region, but they don't know wether it fruits...
The trees in the ground are about three years old now, so next year I will see if I can start grafting them over to known varieties...

Thanks for all your replies!

[Delvi83]

Strawberry Guava could be perfect for your climate...

[Luisport]

Congratulations! Gerês is a worderfull place, very very beautifull. I'm shure you will a lot of things there! 

[Tropicaliste]

This is fascinating. Looking through those pictures made it feel like I "went away" for a minute... the snow capped peaks really look wonderful, my goodness, it's easy to see what you love about that place. That and France ... you must have some good blood pressure, because that it looks so peaceful in the pictures.

That aside, maybe you could grow some hardy bananas, annona montana, some citrus, and white sapote? It seems everyone suggested the eugenias and whatnot, so I won't repeat it.

[Miguel.pt]

Hi again Solko

I happen to know someone in Portugal that can arrange some cold hardy mirtaceas... some with a good size... some fruiting already...

That person is me!

and of course you are most welcome at my place to take those personally with you... please notify me in advance next time you came by and we will try to arrange a meeting... problem is I do travel a lot professionally... but please refrain your expectations because my place is still a "Work in Progress" and there is not much more to see than a GH full of plants and pots... and many, many weeds everywhere!

I will contact you by email so we can coordinate better.

[huertasurbanas]

blue lilly pilly could work there:

" Grows as an understory tree in rain forest but is more frequently found in wet sclerophyll forest near rain forest margins or in sheltered situations in eucalypt forest."

http://keys.trin.org.au/key-server/data/0e0f0504-0103-430d-8004-060d07080d04/media/Html/taxon/Syzygium_oleosum.htm

[treefrog]

hi  solko,
your idea of planting many avocado seeds is interesting.  there are some points to consider.  many types of fruit go through an extended period before they reach reproductive (fruiting) maturity - this is parallel to puberty in humans.  with avocados the length of time is variable, five to fifteen years, depending on the individual seed, and on growing conditions. 
in grafted nursery stock, the scion is from a reproductively mature plant, and will blossom as soon as the rootstock has enough vigor to support it.  (often before it has enough to carry the fruit to ripeness.)  don't be surprised if your seedlings take forever to bear.  likely, they will give you less than optimal fruit, but we should remember, every desirable cultivar started with a chance seedling. 
if you get a tree that survives your local conditions but bears undesirable fruit, you have a good chance to practice your top-working skills.  if you have the seeds, and enough space, go for it!

[Solko]

Hi Miguel, that is very generous, I can't wait! Unfortunately, due to work schedule it will take some time before I can visit Portugal again, but I'll make sure to let you know, and see if we can match our busy schedules! My place is also a full work in progress, I am looking forward to meet an other fruit and plant aficionado!

Hi, Huertas, I have read about the lilly pilly, and ordered seeds two years ago - they didn't germinate... After that I read the taste of them is disappointing. On the other hand, I am fascinated by the types and numbers of unknown myrtacaea that you seem to be able to get your hands on in South America! I am now getting into these 'lesser-known' genusses of the myrtacaea, because they seem promising for my 9a climate: Myrceugenia, Amomyrtus, Luma, Myrtus, etc... Do you have any experience with these smaller fruiting plants? A lot of them seem to be growing in the southern parts of South America, and have only berry-sized fruit. They might be worth investigating though. Guaviyu, Pitanga, Ugni, Cereja and Jaboticaba seem to offer already a large variety in seedling variety, fruit size and cold tolerance, so maybe the Myrceugenia's could also offer larger fruit in a couple of generations?
As a side note, on my terrain, I have found the Eugenia's not to be affected by the allellopathy of Eucalyptus, and they grow well as an understory plant. Maybe because they are in the same family?


Hi Treefrog, I planted all the avocado seeds with exactly that in mind. I counted on at least half of them dying, and the remaining ones to be of inferior fruit quality, but I can use them as a good rootstock for better varieties. The experiment is as fascinating for me, as getting good fruit is. I know of a couple of people who are trying to grow avocado's in the north of the Iberian peninsula and on the French Riviera. A couple of older trees have been found, that live well, and even fruit, but none of them bear good fruit. Still, it leaves one to think that avocado really has a lot of genetic potential that isn't yet fully discovered, bred, or exploited...

[Grapebush]

Hi Solko. First of all congratulations for your Project, and thank you for having invested in my country!

Other members had already give you some tips, and also ofered help to keep that going, and as they should have more experience than me, (specially wit that climate), I will only give you an advice: In the first post, you mentioned that there were plenty of Eucalyptus; so my recomendation, is to get free of all of them (if you haven't done that yet)!
Eucalyptus (specially E. globullus, the most spread in Portugal), are very competitive with other plants, normaly killing them, by many ways! The most common way is by taking all the water availlable, in the soil (adult trees can drink up to 100ltrs/day or even more) leaving it completely dry. Another way is by steeling their light, as it grows really fast and tall, and keep other plants in the shade, leaving them to die by lack of light. But the worse is, it's always dropping leaves and bark sections, that release a substance, wich acts as germinating and growth inhibitor.
So my advice is to cut them all, and if possible, even the neighbours ones, and then keep an eye on new seedlings that will be sprouting for the next few years...

Here in my Island they're considered the worst weed/pest, and in the last 25/30 years they had destroyed most of our cultivated forests, and even some parts of the native rainforest (Laurissilva, Unesco world heritage), beeing in this moment the main threat for the conservation, of this forest, and some types of wildlife.

Cheers, Nélio.

[Solko]

Hi Nelio,

Thank you for your tips. I have often wondered what to do with the big Eucalyptus. There seems to be a lot of controversy about them in Portugal and everyone has an opinion about them. I will cut them, but I am doing it in phases. Here is how I went about it. I thought I could use their cover as protection from sun and frost for the first three years, while I planted seedling avocadoes, pawpaws and other subtropical fruit seedlings in between them. I have understood that they have a germination inhibitor, but do not actually affect seedlings after germination, except for competition for light and water as you say.
I have lost a lot of these seedlings in the last years, but I am not sure wether it is because of the trees, or because I am zone pushing too much. The Pawpaws are fine, Feijoa's also have no problem, nor the avocados. But now that they are bigger, I plan to cut most of the Eucalyptus down next year, and give the fruit trees full sunlight. My big worry was the forest fires that regulrly occur there, so i had already thinned out the Euc's, and cleaned upo the brambles and gathered all the leaves and bark of the Euc's into big mulch-piles.
Next year I plan to go for a longer time and post pictures.

Cheers,

Solko

[Grapebush]

Hi Nelio,

Thank you for your tips. I have often wondered what to do with the big Eucalyptus. There seems to be a lot of controversy about them in Portugal and everyone has an opinion about them. I will cut them, but I am doing it in phases. Here is how I went about it. I thought I could use their cover as protection from sun and frost for the first three years, while I planted seedling avocadoes, pawpaws and other subtropical fruit seedlings in between them. I have understood that they have a germination inhibitor, but do not actually affect seedlings after germination, except for competition for light and water as you say.
I have lost a lot of these seedlings in the last years, but I am not sure wether it is because of the trees, or because I am zone pushing too much. The Pawpaws are fine, Feijoa's also have no problem, nor the avocados. But now that they are bigger, I plan to cut most of the Eucalyptus down next year, and give the fruit trees full sunlight. My big worry was the forest fires that regulrly occur there, so i had already thinned out the Euc's, and cleaned upo the brambles and gathered all the leaves and bark of the Euc's into big mulch-piles.
Next year I plan to go for a longer time and post pictures.

Cheers,

Solko

You're right about the fires! Sometimes it is as bad as Eucalyptus; but having them on the terrain is a way of having yet more things burned, than if it was clean, as they burn even green, and then they come back from the ashes even stronger than before
One thing I saw in your photos, that is very usefull, and it seems you also have a lot are the Pteridium aquilinum ferns! They are a weed, but you can use them in your favour, by cutting them before the spores como to maturity, and spread them over the soil! They are a great mulch, that keep many weeds at bay, as well they avoid evaporation, from the soil, and the better thing is that they decompose, in less than a year giving a lot of organic matter to your soil.

About the Eucalyptus, compost, don't use it before it is completely rot/decomposed, as it took a long time to decompose and during this time it keep releasing bad substances in your soil.

Cheers, Nélio.

[Solko]

Here is a long overdue update on my attempt of turning a piece of wild land in the north of Portugal into a garden. So far I am still chest-deep in the brambles 

First of all, it is a slow process! Life happens while you are making plans and after starting to clear the terrain and planting the first trees I moved from the Netherlands to France. Trying to start my business there took up all my time and resources for two years and I haven't been back to maintain the garden.
But I finally had a chance to go back a couple of weeks ago and here is what I found and what I can report on.

Not so surprisingly I found everything completely overgrown with brambles and ferns and Eucalyptus trees.



A nice discovery though was that one of the most agressive 'weeds' is a great nitrogen fixer: Cytisus Striatus or Portuguese broom. It is an incredibly fast growing plant, so in one way it is something to keep an eye on when left unmanaged, (by not going there for two years for example,) but on the other hand it is an excellent nitrogen fixer and a great resource to quickly generate bio materials for mulching and composting in the chop and drop way.

Portuguese Broom


The chopping and dropping is quite some work, but where it is just broom and no brambles it goes faster then expected. After an hour I found my first patch of avocado seedlings under the dense brush. And from that moment on every two or three hours we discovered another bunch of seedlings of the plants I planted and the seeds I have sown there between 2012 and 2014

Big Avocado


We cleared the best part of the terrain and the biggest result I can share on this experiment is that when you want to transform some wild forest land into a food forest without cutting all the existing trees down right away, USE SEEDS! If you don't have the time or resources to chop down the forest, level the land, install irrigation and do all these intensive things, but when you want to minimize management and just replace the existing trees with fruit trees over time: USE SEEDS!!  Direct seeding won on every account from planting out small seedlings. I know that in the industry it is common practice to cut everything down and level the land, raise small trees in nurseries, graft them there and then plant them out in the field. But that is on terrains that are next to the farm, where you can use a tractor and where you live the entire year and you can irrigate and take care of the small trees the first years. I cannot do that, because I don't live near the garden. But the direct seeding in small nursery 'patches' worked extremely well, whereas planting out small trees was hard work and did not yield good results. Peach, pawpaw, apple, cherry, avocado, white sapote and macadamia were all planted as seeds or as 6 month old seedlings. And most of those are still there. While I lost around 80% of the young nursery trees I planted around the same time. Apples, citrus, peach, avocado, loquat, cherimoya, pitanga - they were all dead sticks while their younger brothers were still alive. The small ones hadn't grown much, that is true - they spent half the year being overgrown. But they were still alive and I figure that by now they must have a decent enough root system that I can chop all the surrounding brush and trees to give them more light.
Once these trees have a little size, I can graft them over in the field.



Once all the seedlings were recovered, we took a day trip to Braga to visit the 'Sitio das Frutas Raras' (he is on Facebook under that name) to buy some more 'exoticos' to plant.
I am experimenting with using weedblock on the cleared patches and my friend and I planted out 22 young seedling trees of the Myrtle family: Uvaia, Cherry of the Rio Grande, Grumichama, Guabiroba, some different Psidiums and something identified as Eugenia Velloziana (?)
It all remains a big experiment, but it is great fun and now that the first 4 or 5 avocado seedlings seem to start to develop into real trees, and the Feijoa's, peach and apple seedlings are becoming taller then myself, it starts to feel it actually may slowly transform into a garden at some point .



I hope I will be able to get back there in 6 months to do another round of planting. I am planning on cutting down most of the Eucalyptus trees this winter.

I hope you enjoyed the update on my progress, any thoughts and advice is always welcome!

Solko

[greenman62]

Solko
you certainly have a little bit of eden.
as i said, i am also in zone 9, and growing some of the same plants, Eugenias and others.
im sure i get a lot more rain though.
a couple of plants i grow that are drought tolerant are
Jujube and Carob.
i love Jujube and they are very healthy. Carob also.
carob is even a  nitrogen fixer.

Juju grows fast with little care or need for fertilizers.
carob is the same.

Honey locust might work too...
https://permies.com/t/1664/edibility-honey-locust-leaves-pods

good luck
keep us updated...

[JonathonForester]

The downside to that weed block is that you will block any rain that isn't heavy enough to flow under that plastic. Do you have irrigation set up? I was assuming you don't perhaps erroneously.