Advice needed!

[melannen]

Comm, I have a problem.

You see, I want to grow vegetables. But my yard is basically a forest understory - there's no place that gets more than 3-4 hours of sun on a good day. I went to an ag fair a few weeks ago and asked everybody there what to do for vegetable gardening in the shade, and I got great advice like "cut down some trees" or "plant lettuce in a wheelbarrow and wheel it around to follow the sun" or "go ask those people over there."

Now, as tempted I am to make little robotic light-seeking raised beds, I'd rather just find some advice on vegetable gardening in the shade, but all the resources I can find for shade gardening in zone 7 (where I am) assumes you're growing nothing but ornamentals. Isn't there somebody who has already figured out how to grow nice edible vegetables under trees in a temperate climate?

It's not like my yard has any shortage of edible plants already growing in it. We have


raspberry (Rubus strigosis)



pokeweed (Phytotacca americana)



oak (Quercus phellos in the picture, but we have white, red, and pin oak, too)



mulberry (Moris rubra, probably hybridized with invasives)



wild grape (Vitis sp.)



dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)



chokecherry (prunus sp.)



black walnut (Juglans nigra)



common violets (Viola sororia) (with yellow woodsorrel, Oxalis stricta)



maple (Acer saccharum in the picture, but we have red and silver maple too)



Indian strawberry (Potentilla indica), growing with English ivy Hedera helix, which is not edible



and plantain (Plantago major) (with Carolina cranesbill Geranium carolinianum, not edible)


already growing in abundance, plus a pecan tree and wild mint and wild onions and some sort of volunteer rosebushes and usually some edible mushrooms at some point, and that's just the ones I can ID offhand in a quick turn around the yard in May--

But I'd kind of like to grow something that has a slightly higher calories-to-prep-time ratio than most of the wild edibles do. Anyone have any recommendations for growing vegetables under a forest?

Comments

[rydra_wong]

I can rec wild strawberries and wild garlic (ramsons); both cope with shade fine, and the wild garlic seems to thrive on complete neglect too.

It might also be worth asking in permaculture, since building an "edible landscape" that integrates trees is a key permacultural approach.

As a random piece of data: you're going to have to watch how closely you plant things to the black walnut -- it secretes a chemical into the soil that can stop various other plants from growing.

[melannen]

The black walnut was here before we were :D The pokeweed and violets don't seem to mind it, nor various shrubs that have grown under it over the years or other turf weeds and mosses (nor do the vinca or the English ivy that were planted against my advice, nor the wild grape and poison ivy we have to keep trying to keep out.) It mostly seems to suppress other trees, which makes sense (though there's still oak and cherry seedlings coming up right under it. Perhaps it is just a very laid-back walnut.)

I doubt I'll be doing much gardening under it anyway though, because a) roots! and b) the thought of having to rake bushels of walnuts out of any sort of intensive garden already make me tired.

We've got 'wild garlic' (I think Allium vineale) growing in a few places in the yard, and I have used them as a food plant, but they don't thrive there, seeming to prefer (shock!) more sun, so I've wondered about the more domenticated types. I've seen various onion/garlic-y plants recommended for shade growing & might try ramps/ramsons - they're at least native, unlike the garlic we've go now, although in terms of wild-to-domestic they're only a few steps up from what we've got...

What plant specifically do you mean by "wild strawberries"? I found there are enough plants going by that common name that I'm never sure which one people are talking about. The 'wild strawberry' we've got does seem to thrive but has an only slightly edible fruit.

permaculture sounds like a great place to look! Although I already went through a book on perennial vegetables and pretty much all the shade-friendly plants it recommended for my zone is stuff that's already growing volunteer (like onion and wild strawberry and poke), except Indian potato, which I've been wanting to introduce anyway.

[rydra_wong]

We've got 'wild garlic' (I think Allium vineale)

Ah, I meant allium ursinum -- different plant (I think this may be a US/UK terminology difference). And the strawberries would be Alpine strawberries (fragaria vesca).