The Importance of Sustainable Growing And Harvesting Practices.
In pursuing a self-sufficient lifestyle, permaculture and homesteading enthusiasts often turn to resilient and nutritionally rich plants like sea buckthorn. Although still considered a new crop for many North Americans to discover, as its popularity grows, the need for sustainable growing and harvesting practices becomes more crucial to ensure this superfood can continue to thrive with minimal impact on natural resources or harm to the environment.
Sustainable growing and harvesting practices for sea buckthorn require careful planning and regular execution. The main objective is maintaining the health of the plants and their surrounding ecosystems. One way to achieve this is by controlling suckering shoots in open fields or sandbanks. Another is avoiding overharvesting, which ensures the plants can regenerate and continue producing fruit year after year.
Environmental Impact of Sea Buckthorn Cultivation
Sea buckthorn is a hardy shrub that thrives in a variety of challenging environments, including poor, sandy soils and areas prone to erosion. It plays a significant role in permaculture systems. Its deep root system helps stabilize the soil and improves soil fertility by fixing nitrogen, making it an excellent plant for regenerating and enriching the land.
Integrating sea buckthorn into a permaculture landscape is a great step towards a sustainable homestead. Its ability to improve soil health and prevent erosion makes it a valuable ally. Furthermore, its dense foliage provides habitat and food for wildlife, contributing to biodiversity and the ecosystem’s overall health. But remember, sea buckthorn is not indigenous to North America, and is very capable of spreading through its extensive root systems.
Planting Sea Buckthorn
When planning to grow sea buckthorn on your homestead, it’s important to consider the plant’s needs and how it fits into your overall permaculture design. Sea buckthorn prefers full sun and well-drained soil. While it can tolerate poor soil conditions, incorporating organic matter will help improve growth and fruit production.
To ensure successful pollination and fruit set, plant at least one male for every six female plants. Sea buckthorn is dioecious, meaning individual plants are male or female, so both are needed for fruit production and only female shrubs will produce berries. Space the plants about 6 to 10 feet apart to give them room to grow and allow for adequate air circulation.
Caring for Sea Buckthorn
Once established, sea buckthorn shrubs require relatively low maintenance, but a few key practices ensure healthy growth and high yields. Regular watering is essential, especially during fruit growth and dry periods. Mulching around the base of the plants can help retain soil moisture, suppress weeds, and add organic matter as it decomposes.
Pruning is another essential task that benefits the overall health of the shrubs and yields
Harvesting Sea Buckthorn Berries
Harvesting sea buckthorn berries can be challenging due to the plant’s thorny branches and the berries’ small, delicate nature. However, with the right techniques, you can efficiently collect a bountiful harvest.
The berries typically ripen in late summer to early autumn. They can be harvested either by hand, which is the most labour-intensive and painful method but allows for carefully selecting ripe berries without damaging the plant, or by cutting berry-laden branches and freezing them. Once frozen, the berries easily shake off, reducing the risk of damage from handling.
When harvesting by cutting the branches, it’s crucial to avoid stripping the plants bare. Fruits develop only on two-year-old wood, so one must carefully consider which branches and how many are taken to ensure the plants retain enough foliage to sustain their health. Sufficient one-year-old branches must remain on the shrubs for the following harvest.
As painful as it may be to leave fifty percent of your harvest behind, always leaving these young branches ensures the plant’s continued health and productivity. This also provides food for wildlife, contributing to your homestead ecosystem’s overall biodiversity and health.
Principles of Regenerative Cutting
Regenerative cutting is a pruning method designed to rejuvenate plants, encourage healthy new growth, and maintain long-term productivity. For sea buckthorn, which can become leggy and unproductive without proper management, regenerative cutting ensures that the plant remains vigorous and productive. The key principles include:
- Maintaining Plant Health: Occasionally cutting back overgrown primary branches reduces the risk of pest infestations and diseases.
- Encouraging New Growth: Cutting back older branches stimulates the plant to produce new shoots, which are more productive in berry yield.
- Improving Light Penetration and Air Circulation: Thinning out the plant’s canopy allows more light to reach the interior branches and improves air circulation, reducing the risk of fungal diseases and promoting overall plant health.
- Balancing Growth and Fruit Production: Proper pruning helps balance vegetative growth with fruit production, ensuring that the plant does not expend all its energy on growing branches at the expense of berry production.
Techniques of Regenerative Cutting
To apply regenerative cutting effectively to sea buckthorn, follow these steps and techniques:
- Timing: Depending on your selected method of harvesting, a good time to perform regenerative cutting on sea buckthorn is during harvest. However for the modified leader harvesting method, regenerative cuts are done in late winter to early spring before the plant starts its new growth cycle. This timing minimizes stress on the plant and takes advantage of its natural growth patterns.
- Tools: Use clean, sharp pruning tools such as secateurs (pruning shears) for smaller branches and loppers or a pruning saw for larger branches. Spraying tools with hydrogen peroxide between cuts helps prevent the spread of disease.
- Identifying Branches to Cut: Focus on removing the following types of branches:
- Dead or Diseased Branches: Remove any branches that are clearly dead or affected by disease to prevent further spread.
- Old, Unproductive Branches: Cut back older branches that have become woody and less productive. These are often thicker and darker than newer growth.
- Crossing or Crowded Branches: Thin-out branches cross or crowd each other to improve air circulation and light penetration.
- Cutting Technique:
- Cut just above the crown: For larger, older branches, make clean cuts roughly twelve inches above where the branch meets the main trunk. This encourages new growth close to the crown of the shrub.
- Angle Cuts: Make cuts at a slight angle to allow water to run off, reducing the risk of rot at the cut site.
- Remove in Phases: Avoid removing too much at once. Instead, pruning should be spread over several years to rejuvenate the plant gradually without causing excessive stress.
- Managing New Growth: After the initial pruning, monitor the plant for new growth. Young shoots will emerge, and some selective thinning may be necessary to prevent overcrowding and ensure robust growth.
- Mulching and Fertilization: After pruning, apply a layer of organic mulch around the base of the plant to retain soil moisture, suppress weeds, and add organic matter. Consider applying a balanced organic fertilizer to support the plant’s recovery and encourage vigorous new growth.
Integrating Sea Buckthorn into a Permaculture System
Sea buckthorn’s resilience and environmental benefits make it an ideal candidate for permaculture systems. Here are a few ways to integrate sea buckthorn into your homestead:
- Windbreaks and Shelterbelts: Plant sea buckthorn along the edges of your property to act as a windbreak. Its dense foliage can help reduce wind speed, protecting other plants and creating microclimates that benefit the entire system.
- Erosion-Prone Areas: Sea buckthorn’s extensive root system makes it excellent for stabilizing soil and preventing erosion on slopes, hillsides, and riverbanks.
- Intercropping Systems: Sea buckthorn can be integrated into agroforestry and intercropping systems, providing benefits such as nitrogen fixation and attracting beneficial insects.
- Urban Gardens: Due to its compact size and ornamental value, sea buckthorn can also be planted in urban gardens and community projects, adding both aesthetic and ecological value.
Sea buckthorn offers numerous benefits for permaculture and homesteading enthusiasts, from its nutritional value to its positive environmental impact. By adopting sustainable harvesting practices and integrating sea buckthorn into your permaculture system, you can enjoy this superfood’s rewards while contributing to your homestead’s health and resilience. Whether you’re growing sea buckthorn for its berries, juice, or herbal tea, it’s a valuable addition to any sustainable living plan.
