The path to creating an abundance of plants is best observed in the patterns of nature. What is pictured above is not something you might see in nature, this is “crafted” cultivation. More specifically these are pear scions of the variety Bartlette and Ayers. I have been working on cultivating many different types of plants from seeds, root crown division, cloning, air-layering, grafting, and probably other types I can not think of off the top of my head. Recently, I have decided to focus on the production of perennial, food-bearing plants to add to my ongoing project to design, build, and grow a food forest. I am trying to increase my diversity.

The term food forest in my context is a .25 acre plot in Zone 3b. It gets cold here in the winter. Like the kind of cold to have to question how anyone survives a place like this knowing how extremely frecking cold it can get. There have been seasons with only 115 days of frost-free growing. This pattern is about to know when time in the growing season is limited you have to maximize labor, time, and most important energy, to make the most of each “warm” season.

I am lucky to have come upon a plot that has a south-facing sun with very little shade from neighboring greenery. It gets great exposure and has supported most of the plants I have brought in. What I started with was sod on a primarily sandy loam base. There was little organic matter and very few observable worms, or insects. As I have been trying to build better soil, amend when needed, and add diverse polycultures, I have needed to find plants that can tolerate my harsh conditions. Saving time with known and proven cultivars has been a tremendous advantage in the building of abundance.

Using a method of taking semi-hardwood cutting maybe isn’t the ideal way to propagate fruit-bearing trees. The success rate can be very low, and the environment needed is often difficult to maintain at ideal conditions for long periods of time. This small group of scions was collected with the purpose of grafting onto existing pear rootstock. Pyrus communis is commonly listed as a vigorous-growing rootstock. This led me to take a stab at creating clones with the intention of potting up later in the season all the while saving space and using the low-tech method of just covering the cuttings with a ziplock baggie. Each pot has 20 cuttings and I will update my success, observations, and failure rate with this method in the coming weeks.