Is This the Most Useful Plant on EARTH?

Willow is one of the most useful plants on the entire planet and we find it throughout the temperate regions of the world it's so versatile it's so easy to propagate and it's really a plant that could help us to repair many ecosystems to be more productive more sustainable more resilient wherever we are Cara hunter moon has spent countless hours creating a repository of useful Willow species I think you're really going to enjoy seeing what Cara Hunter moon is doing in the world of Willow Willows are an amazing plant to relate to aside from the gorgeous baskets we can make from their stems you can use them for ecological restoration purposes including stream Bank stabilization they also can be used to make beautiful living fences that are part of the Harvest in your garden not just a boundary everyone who walks into my garden the first thing they really look at is the willow fences they go wow what's that is that alive they're really gorgeous why would you put in a metal fence when you can put in a living fence as soon as you put in a metal fence it starts to degrade and it gets worse over time but when you plant a living Willow fence it gets stronger over time so you end up with something that becomes more functional as it ages and not only that but we're stacking functions so you've got a fence you've got basket Willow material that you cut off your fence when you're maintaining it you've got habitat at and there's always the sequestering of carbon we have to be thinking about that in everything we do now so a willow fence will sequester carbon and especially the way it gets severely pruned with the polling process to maintain it as a fence structure encourages more sequestering of carbon than if we had just planted a row of trees Willow has a superpower that a cutting of any size will attempt to root these were planted already in a fence structure and then as they're being maintained the stems are getting fat and eventually everywhere that the stems cross will graph together and it will be a solid diamond patterned wall of Willow with the branches coming out of the top the way to plant a willow fence is to harvest cuting in the dormant season and then plant them directly in the ground where you want your fence to be generally in January or February this will tell us how far apart we're making our holes for planting so here's my guide here's my other guide turn it so it's 45° there's different patterns that you can use but you want to weave the fence immediately when you plant it so if you're doing a diamond pattern you're going to do the in out in out and tie those Crossings immediately after you put the staks in the ground each year it will need maintenance it will need pruning and shaping if you really want a tight fence take all the new growth and weave it into the existing fence line that that will eventually create a wall of trunk with branches coming out of the top another way is to prune off anything that's not part of your original diamond pattern or whatever pattern you planted and that will make your diamond pattern get fatter and fatter and graphed together where it touches itself and after the second year of growth that's the when you want to start pruning in the winter in particular when the plant is dormant most of the energy is stored underground in The Roots so we could cut this Willow all the way back to the ground and in the spring it would regrow from The Roots this is where we harvested last year and you can see the cut from this pretty large diameter stem that I cut off here and this is all the new regrowth this branch is 12 ft long and it grew in one season and there's not just one of these there's this huge bunch of stems that grew in one year when I cut these off it's going to do the same thing again next year Copus culture is really important important and all of our ancestors all over the world practiced Copus culture at some point if you go back far enough in time in history because the ability of trees to resprout after cutting is really important for keeping ecosystems intact and unfortunately we started cutting forests in a way that was not sustainable so we need to go back to a form of Forestry that involves Copus because when we cut trees with the intention that they will regrow with species that will regrow from the stumps humans are part of the ecosystem and benefiting all life many people are afraid to cut their plants because they think that they're hurting them but actually what happens when you do compassing or polling that resets the plants biological clock and it extends the life of the plant so while you might think oh my God no I'm killing it actually what you're doing is making this plant live longer and if you use varieties that are good for basket making then you have basket making materials right there growing on your fence that you prune off every [Music] winter the art of creating a basket is to partner with the willow so you do what you do and The Willow does what the willow does and you end up making something [Music] together the amazing thing about baskets is that the willow is so beautiful that even your first basket is going to be beautiful plastic only became commonly in use in the 1960s one of the things people used to do before plastic was make a lot more baskets as we de-industrialized we're going to be making baskets more it's going to be really valuable that you have your basket materials right there growing in your garden usually the fencing isn't part of your garden it's just the boundary but when you're growing a living wheel of fence the fencing is a crop you can actually Harvest that and use it for feeding livestock especially here where we have a really dry summer if you don't irrigate your pastures by August they're all dried out and the food value is gone but in August your trees and shrubs still have green leaves that are high in food value and it's the perfect time to cut them the trees have already done most of what they need to do to survive the winter especially when it's common to buy hay from farther away and import it with fossil fuels it's really good to think about what we're going to do when that system doesn't work anymore growing trees and shrubs on your land in order to feed your livestock during that summer drought season is a really good way to increase the resilience of being able to support yourself one of the things that Willow will do for your animals is reduce their parasite loads so reducing parasite loads actually helps them utilize their other forage sources more effectively because they're not being stressed by the parasites you can get started with Willows and within 5 Years be doing significant carbon sequestration and helping feed your animals a variety of foods Willow is an amazing friend for helping us with ecological restoration today we're at a 40 acre property in the Coyote Creek Watershed to help prevent erosion on a pond Bank by planting Willows and creating some Willow spiling along the bank to hold the bank in place we're putting these stakes in like right up against where there's Bank on one side and water on the other side water that is rapidly moving against banks will cause erosion in some places we actually want that to happen because we want streams to have meanders that slows the streams down and helps the water sink into the ground to recharge the water table but there's other places where we might see erosion happening that's actually causing damage and it's not helping the water slow down and may actually be helping the water speed up and leave the landscape faster so in this case we have waves that come across the pond from wind and they slam into one side of the pond and wash the soil down so that makes the pond fill in so makes the pond shallower and it also erodes the soil away from the roots of the plants that are growing on the side of the pond planting Willows along that bank can help slow that down and hold the soil in place spiling is when you take living stems of plants often Willows but not always and you put them in the ground and then you take more living stems of usually the same plant and weave them in and out so you're basically making a basket that is rooted into the ground and then soil will be heaped on the uphill side of of that and then all of those stems will attempt to root into the soil usually the ones that are vertical will have a very high success rate in rooting and the ones that are horizontal will have a lower success rate in rooting so the horizontal ones have a dual purpose of holding the soil in place now while it's not rooted and then some of those will root to continue holding the soil later but even if they don't the uppr ones will root and that will hold the soil as these horizontal ones die when we're looking at using biological solutions to the world's problems Willow is infinitely useful weaving basketry shade soil building stream restoration animal forage in the summertime erosion control Willow is such an incredibly useful plant Willow is a really easy entry point into reclaiming our ability to live on land because Willow is so flexible and forgiving it's almost The Stereotype of the willow the storm bends the branches and yet they do not break I use Willow as an image for my own resilience during these challenging times the fact that when I cut the Willow Willow grows back in a way that actually is more generous makes more useful shoots for baskets all the ways that we get hurt that I feel I'm hurt during this time in history and just being cut again and again and again and how can I manifest my inner generosity and grow back in a way that produces good in this world there's so much to learn from Willow as we figure out how to belong again on this Earth are you ready to transform deserts create Lush backyards and feed communities in my almost 30 years as a permaculture designer traveling the world I've put everything I learned into Oregon State University's online permaculture design course or PDC the PDC and PDC Pro are the ultimate ways to begin mastering permaculture Me and My Team guide you through over 20 assignments with more than 100 hours of top quality video lectures and resources all focused on developing your own property or project throughout the course you'll get personalized feedback from a dedicated instructor in a small group setting people are always asking me how can I be part of the solution this is your starting point check the link below for upcoming courses and join us in creating a better world for everyone see you in class

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 1,343,184

Keywords: willow, salix, permaculture, permaculture gardening, permaculture design, living fence willow, living fence ideas, living fence plants, living fence for livestock, Andrew, andrew millison, ecological restoration, ecological restoration projects, stream restoration, ecosystem restoration, healthiest plants, medicinal plants

Id: MPR0-06L2ks

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023