UNHIDE Agroforestry booklet 2025.09.22 - Flipbook - Page 17
“I started this because my life in the city was millions of nothing. …In the soil there are millions of
everything”, Jona states.
To enhance the underground cooperative exchanges that knit the living world together on their
approximately 4 hectare site, Etta and Jona plant
and invite as much species diversity as possible.
This contributes to loosening up the soil in the
“nut field”, compacted due to earlier grazing by
horses. As nitrogen-fixing trees and plants have a
considerable impact on speeding up succession,
they have planted hundreds of small common/
black alders (Alnus glutinosa), as well as comfrey
(Symphytum officinale) and other nitrogen-fixers
in “islands” around the nut trees.
“The field with nut trees is quite nutrient poor,
you can see that from the common broom (Cytisus
scoparicus) and common gorse (Ulex europaeus)
growing here. They wouldn’t have come if there
wasn’t a need for nitrogen: they are niched on
hard soil where there is very little nitrogen. Both
are considered invasive. Our opinion is you
definitely shouldn’t remove what comes in naturally, as it will most likely have a positive function.
Eventually our nut trees will shade them out”, Jona
explains.
According to soil scientist Dr. Christine Jones, a
globally recognised expert on soil health, weeds
aren’t invaders but messengers; they show up because something else disappeared, acting as the
voice of compacted soil, of imbalanced minerals
Grafted sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa).
and of collapsed microbial diversity. “The seeds
of the weeds carry with them beneficial microbes,
passed down from the mother plant, bringing in
whispers of its origin ecosystem, and kickstarting the connectivity”. The more diversity of plant
families, the more exchange of microbiomes,
passing from one root system to another, making
the community become stronger, more resistant
and more alive. Jones concludes that “it’s actually
not the survival of the fittest alone, but the survival
of the most connected.”
“MARRIED WINE-GRAPES”
Intertwined with some of the walnuts, Etta and
Jona grow wine-grapes (Vitaceae spp.). “Winegrape is a forest plant, it needs to cooperate with
the fungus, but it doesn’t do that in modern agriculture” they explain.
In nature one of the main roles of the vine is to
cover and bring down weaker or older trees and
allow succession to continue and complexity to
increase. With the ancient technique “married
wine”, vines were grown between one tree and
another. Often reeds were planted below the
vines to create a framework for the grapes to rest
upon. Thanks to the trees to climb on, the grapes
grew several meters above the ground where they
could access more sunlight, dry quickly after rain
and thus avoid mold and mildew outbreaks. Such
a system offered natural protection against com-
Common broom (Cytisus
scoparicus). Invasive plants
and weeds often prefer sunny
spots, bare soil and are less
dependent on mycorrhiza,
unlike other species further up
in the succession towards a
forest. When clearing ditches
along roads, or exposing bare
soil for planting annuals, we
create favorable conditions for
these pioneers.
