Water Oak

 

Note from the Author: New plant, and a delayed post!

This picture is why I say you should gather a few leaves and draw a consensus about shape between them. On this one braNch they're elliptical but on the leaves in the background (lower left), they're spatulate shaped. 

Note the alternate branching pattern.

Mature water Oak bark is pretty distinctive

 

Common Name: Water Oak

 

Other Common Names: Black Oak, North American Barren Oak, North American Black Oak, Possum Oak.

 

Botanical Family: Fagaceae (The Beech Family)

 

Botanical Latin Name: Quercus nigra

 

Description & Habitat:  Water Oak is commonly found in Cumberland county North Carolina, and in our areas is effectively an evergreen. It is native to North American and is a fast growing medium sized tree at maturity. It often grows to a height of 50 to 80 feet tall with a canopy that can be up to 70 feet in width. Amongst members of the Oak genus it is generally considered to have softer wood than others and it has a noticeably shorter life span. Your average Water Oak often lives 30 to 50 years though in the urban environment that may be even shorter because of the usual impacts of soil compaction, damage and fungal intrusion. The native region in which you can find Water Oaks is the central or eastern United States, and they prefer forests, flood plains and beside rivers, streams or sloped areas with soil that is on the dry side. You can also commonly find them in the Coastal Plains and Piedmont regions of North Carolina. As you might expect Water Oaks prefer rich moderate to wet soils with a acidic pH and full sun exposure. Saplings will tolerate less than this but will grow to effectively create the aforementioned exposure environment and enrich their soil with dropped leaves. You can identify a Water Oak easily by its uniquely shaped leaves which are roughly spatulate or spoon shaped. I personally think they often look more like a vertically stretched version of the club from a deck of playing cards. There is a fair amount of differing leaf morphology on a given tree so you may have to collect or examine a bunch of leaves to reach a leaf shape consensus. The big problem with this tree is its weak branch architecture when compared to other Oak Species. The branch architecture lends to breakage in high winds or ice events which makes it less than ideal for planting near structures. It is however good for planting in open spaces or near bodies of water. Water Oaks are also a host plant for the Larvae of at least seven native species of Moths and Butterflies. In colder climates where Water Oak is deciduous its leaves turn a nice golden yellow color in the fall. As a final note for this section, it has been recorded that Water Oak can produce hybrids with Southern Red Oak (Q. falcata), Bluejack Oak (Q. incana), Turkey Oak (Q. laevis), Blackjack Oak (Q. marilandica), Willow Oak (Q. phellos), Shumard Oak (Q. shumardii), and Black Oak (Q. velutina).

 

Special Toxicity Note:  The tannin contained in the leaves and acorns of this tree aren’t toxic in general however they can cause nausea and cause iron absorption problems in people. The leaves from this tree are toxic to most livestock with the exception of Pigs.

 

 

When & What to Harvest:

          Water Oaks are interesting when it comes to the Oak family because their primary use since the 17^th century is as firewood. The leaves of this oak are particularly useful in the compost pile for making leaf mold and they absolutely pulverize when run over with a mower using a mulching blade. The Acorns can be eaten but often they are on the small side and can pose a slip hazard where they fall on hard surfaces as they range from the size of a medium ball bearing to that of a marble (1/2-1”). This means you would have to collect a lot of them just to extract a modest amount of nut meat to use for flour. Also the problem of tannin is still there, you’re still going to have to leech it out using boiling or soaking methods. In North Carolina generally speaking Water Oak will have acorns from September to November, but weather conditions might cause them to be plus/minus a month in timing. What you want to do here is to gather several pounds of Water Oak acorns with the expectation that you for every three to four pounds of unprocessed acorns that you gather will produce about a pound of flour in this case. The difficulty of this can vary on the number of trees and if or if not it is a masting year. Masting years are when trees produce so many extra seeds that things that might eat them cannot possibly collect them all. So tannin extraction or leeching is a pretty simple process you can either boil them or let them soak. Both methods prefer that you shell the acorns first; boiling is the faster method and all you have to do is shell your acorns then boil them until the water turns dark. Dump the water and replace it with fresh water and boil again, keep doing this until the water is clear you can add Baking Soda to accelerate this process. The alternative is that you can place the bag in a stream so it’s constantly wet and wait a t least a day possibly several until the nuts are no longer bitter. From here you can dry them, crush them finely to make Acorn Flour, or crush them coarsely so the chunks are of even size and make something akin to Grits. Or you can roast them and eat them as a trail mix sort of snack. There are tons of recipes for making breads with Acorns, failing that there are several companies that make Acorn Flour so you can work out recipes without all the grunt work.  As a final note for harvesting, Water Oak can be a host for Lions Mane Mushrooms in the wild.

 

Related Plants: Black Jack Oak (Q. marilandica) is visually very similar.

 

Recipe:

 

Additional Information: (If applicable)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_nigra

 

 

Where to get Seed or Bare Root Plants:

          -There are a few sites that sell Water Oak, but it would be cheaper to just find one and collect the acorns as there are tons of them in the area.

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but my booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog.  In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said; if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

Fall Produce:

Garlic, softneck

Soup Kits, Parsnip

Soup Kits, Turnip

Carrots

Celery

Onions

Parsnips

Red Potatoes

Turnips

Sweet Potatoes

 

Plants Coming Soon:

TBA, new stuff in spring

 

 

How to stay in Contact with Us!

All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.

 

Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville

 

Also please take a gander at the YouTube version of this blog:

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (-): [On Winter Haitus]

 

Meetings are still going on! Our next (unofficial) meeting is January 24^th (Weather Permitting) at the Fayetteville City Market at 325 Franklin Street between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.

That Crazy Mad Max Vibe

 Welcome back to another episode of Lost In the Farmers Market, and wow what an interesting series of events have occurred in the last two weeks. For those living in their bomb shelters we had a fuel shortage what had most gas stations out of gas, with long lines at the ones that had any at all. Surprisingly gasoline didn’t get rationed (it really should have), and an advisory had to go out to actually tell people not to put gasoline in plastic bags. Yes you read that last part right, the Consumer Product Safety Commission actually had to issue an advisory over this. Ironically the pictures everyone had seen as it turns out were several years old from an incident in Puebla Mexico where a few guys tried to steal extra gas from a gas station. Go figure, but the Hoarding was real, much like with the toilet paper panic in 2020, people lost their minds and started hoarding gasoline by putting it in every container possible. Yours truly saw antique looking plastic kerosene containers, three liter soda bottles and a bevy of not-close-to-legal containers used. It was unreal and to a certain extent it’s still going on as I write this. Of course the fuel shortage is ironically kind of good for the pollinators since fewer lawns get moved and more weeds get to bloom which means more food for the bees and such. Still if I recall right the entire Mad Max series was based on a crippling fuel shortage, and really if I start seeing weirdos about town in weird leather outfits I think we’re in some hilarious trouble. With that said this post is still a bit late, but we’re going to handle two topics. Firstly I’m going to talk about the worst tree you could ever plant and then compost, the best soil amendment you could ever produce. 

So first the photographs below were taken during that odd wind storm we had in April, the subject is a Bradford Pear (Pyrus calleryana). Some of you out there might groan, but I’m going to cover the history of this strange tree that everyone had a frenzy for and now it’s just an artefact of an earlier time.

So this specimen located in Downtown Fayetteville NC lost about a third of it's crown in a recent storm. We had thunderstorms and wind, but no ice and this ting just split right at the branch crotch angle. It was lucky, around the corner another Bradford literally snapped off just above the root line. Others around town shed bits like ti was going out of style.

The scientific name Pyrus is a derivative of the word Pome which refers to the shape of the fruit in the genus, the second specific epithet calleryana derives from the first person to proliferate this specific species. the second part of the botanical Latin name is derived from Joseph-Marie Callery, who sent specimens of originating stock of these plants to Europe from China in the first half of the 1800’s. These trees out nor arrive in the United states until a bit over a century later; it wasn’t until the 1960’s that a USDA facility in Glendale, Maryland introduced a cultivated form of the tree and they became popular with landscapers afterward because they were cheap, could handle being transported and grew fast. In 1966 though the tree gained extra popularity when Lady Bird Johnson planted one in Downtown Washington D.C.  The New York Times got in on the action when they published the following; "Few trees possess every desired attribute, but the Bradford ornamental pear comes unusually close to the ideal." This was good and well because the trees added more accessibility to those who wanted to beautify their properties. Bradford pears had some key advantages over other trees, they grew fast, in spring their white flowers absolutely covered the plants in color making them look like they’d been snowed on. There was the fall color to consider as they turned a decent shade of red before dropping their leaves in the autumn. Bradford Pear leaves as the organic crowd knows are really good compost (Don’t all good plant stories involve compost?) fuel they break down  fast and the resultant soil is ready sooner rather than later.

If there wasn't a picture you would not have believed me. This Bradford was seriously growing roots into it's own branch crotch probably because there was a pocket of dirt or consistent moisture. Bradford Pears might be the idiots of the tree world.

 

But the story of the Bradford Pear isn’t all cookies and sunshine, this tree had problems, it wasn’t the perfect candidate for use everywhere that everyone thought it was. The first problem came from the flowers, which smelled kind of bad, some have likened their smell to rotting fish, cement gone bad and some even said it smelled like semen. I don’t know about that last one or what exposures it takes to authoritatively judge that, but yes the flowers smell bad.

 

 

https://www.npr.org/2015/04/24/401943000/whats-that-smell-the-beautiful-tree-thats-causing-quite-a-stink

You can see where the branch angle was weak and the wind sheared it right off, though it's news to me that Bradford Pears come with a cup holder.

 

But this isn’t all; with flowers which do help the pollinators in spring but with it comes the problem of fruit. Bradford pears produce tiny inedible fruit that only become edible after they have been hit by a frost or two. Realistically the fruit are about the size of a large pea maybe and the birds get at them making a bigger mess. Where the fruit falls can make a mess and pose a slip hazard, then there’s the issue of the seeds coming up where they are not supposed to and the plant escaping cultivation. Did I mention that Bradford Pears are currently considered invasive? Well as it turns out this garbage-tree is considered invasive in the eastern and Midwest regions of the USA because its fast growth allows it to out-compete native species. It is known that this tree has escaped cultivation in at least 152 counties in 25 states in the United States and the escaped types are all wild interbred types that may have even reverted enough to regain their thorns and fruiting spurs. But wait its worse, as it turns out Bradford Pears are impressively short lived as street trees because their average life span is twenty-five years. This is assuming their other greatest weakness does not come into play and end them sooner. You see without proper pruning to cut out forked branches and crossover branches, the fast growing speed comes at the price of weak branch-crotch angles and weak wood in general. As if this wasn’t bad enough after storms like the one we just had Bradford Pears are the most likely tree to have been wrecked especially in high wind conditions, torrential downpours or any weather with ice involved.  This makes them susceptible to ‘shattering’ which may or may not be a biological evolution to asexually reproduce. If one of those branches lands the right way it ‘might’ survive and take root. I wouldn’t bet money on this happening but it could explain the strange proclivity of these trees to fall apart at the slightest of storm winds. There is supposedly an ‘improved’ form of Bradford Pear called the Cleveland Select Pear (Pyrus calleryana ‘Cleveland Select’) which realistically still has the same kinds of problems and is literally a terribly false hope for a crappy street tree.

A close up of the foliage and unripe fruit of a Bradford Pear.

Enough about failed street trees, let’s get down to the nitty gritty, the straight dirt, that’s right compost. Compost is as individual as the gardener’s preferences are. There are composting systems that are incredibly diverse ranging from models that spin on a specialized rack to make turning easy to those that roll on the ground, and then there’s the cone shaped ones that can compost bones, the standing bin types and let’s not forget the ones that are designed to handle dog feces. It’s all a very diverse field of options that all have their benefits and disadvantages. Today I’m going to talk briefly about the unit in the Test Gardens which is a standard bin type composter made of black recycled plastic and has a capacity of 80 gallons or roughly about 12 cubic feet. Well due to a conversation in the Sustainable Neighbors Text chat I thought I’d talk about the process I use with some pictures to show what I mean. The basic rule of composting is that you need four things, moisture, soil, green material, and brown material.  The soil which ideally should already be moist introduces the soil borne organisms that will break down the green and brown stuff to make nutrient rich compost. The soil also forms the core basis of the final compost but still should always be about a third of the mix. The soil part can be up half if you are using some especially fast decomposing green material such as grass clippings, or very fast decomposing items like spoiled fruit or leaves like those from spoiled produce, Bradford pear, or a Mulberry.

 

The first few shovel fulls of compost always tells you what the rest is going to be like. Although there is a bit of an Ant issue, the compost is light, airy, dark in color and clearly full of remaining bits of the process like the eggshells you can see in the lower center of the pile.

 

This is my finished product, due to the use of potting soil instead of regular soil my compost has a lot of perlite in it and weighs a lot less than conventional compost but it's no less useful and nutrient dense.

 

            Greenery as noted before are typically grass clippings from moving the lawn, but can be any green material, such as spoiled produce from your kitchen, soft clippings left over from pruning or even crop plants that are effectively spent for the purposes of food production. The greens tuff is essential because it introduces nitrogen based compounds that can accelerate decomposition of the brown materials and will draw in decomposers to the pile.

 

I had to turn the composter over to get at the remaining chunks of compost so that the materials can be turned and the bin re-seated on it's pad of cardboard and newspaper.

 

The brown stuff is typically materials like fallen leaves that have turned brown and are usually crunchy in texture. Brown materials can include limited amounts of pine straw, wet newspaper, wet cardboard, wet tissue paper, and vegetable scraps that are not high in sugar. The brown materials are the longer-lasting food source for decomposers and will often be the last things to break down in a compost pile. Some of the brown materials may even be recognizable a year later, for instance Pineapple skin and tops can persist in the compost for a year plus.

 

The remaining half of the material in this been has been put back in to form the basis of the next 6 cubic feet of compost. For note under the bin is a layer of cardboard and newspapers that keeps root intrusion to a minimum.

Now that we've covered the compost here's some photographs from the gardens.

Alabama Blue Collards overwintered nicely and are about to go gangbusters.

On the left you have store-bought spinach leaves, on the right are homegrown ones from the test gardens, there is no doubt which is better.

This is the first frog seen in the test gardens this year, and it's always a good sign when our amphibian friends are about since they eat a LOT of bugs that might otherwise be a problem.

Coreopsis pubescens 'Sunshine Superman' This coreopsis effectively escaped cultivation, but isn't really invasive and the cheery flowers are always delightful.

 

Speckled Chestnut Mushrooms, I bought these from another vendor at the FFayettevilel City Market. Your read that right folks we now have a Mushroom vendor!

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. Also, as of the start of 2019, my booth can now process credit or debit cards thanks to the acquisition of s a Square reader so your payment options have doubled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic vegetables, herbs and fruiting shrubs come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

Summer Veggies & Herbs: ($3.00 each)

Sungold Cherry Tomato (Sale $2.00)

Chocolate Cherry Tomato (Sale $2.00)

Lemon Drop Tomato (Sale $2.00)

Sweet Hundreds Cherry Tomato (Sale $2.00)

San Marzano Improved Paste Tomato (Sale $2.00)

Aunt Lou’s Underground Railroad (Sale $2.00)

Paul Robeson Tomato (Sale $2.00)

Cherokee Purple Tomato (Sale $2.00)

Walla Walla Sweet Onion

 

6" pot Sungold Tomato (Sale $3.00) 

6" pot Chocolate Cherry Tomato (Sale $3.00) 

 

Pepper, Sweet Banana

Pepper, Poblano/Ancho

Pepper, Habanero

Pepper, Golden Bell

Pepper, Ghost ($4.00)

 

Wonderberry (Limited Quantity)

Ground Cherry (Limited Quantity)

Cotton, Erlene's Green (Limited Quantity)

Okra, Jing  (Limited Quantity)

 

Basil, Emerald Tower

Basil, Dolche Fresca

Basil, Rutgers DMR Devotion

Oregano

Mountain Mint

 

 

Ornamental Stuff: 

Zanzibar Castor Beans

Mexican Sunflower 'Fuego Del Sol'

Flowering Tobacco 'Saratoga Lime'

 

Coming Soon: 

Comfrey (Mid summer)

 

We have a new place to share information and work on groovy sustainable stuff!  You can look for Sustainable Neighbors in our own Nextdoor.com group under the name “Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville”. You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join but it is a private group so feel free to request to join us if you are signed up on the Nextdoor.com site.

 

https://nextdoor.com/g/ybvdm226x/?is=nav_bar

 

Unfortunately, Covid-19 is still mucking up the works in terms of meeting in person. The good news is that Sustainable Neighbors does have a Discord Server. You can request access through our Meetup.com page or you can request access via our Nextdoor.com group. The meetup.com page is below for anyone looking to join us.

 

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

 

Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to buy anything or maintain any sort of attendance standard, you can come on in and join the meetings. When this Covid-19 mess calms down we may be able to resume normal in-person meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market. This brings to a close the tenth LITFM post of 2021; stay tuned the next episode which should be posted on the 28^th of May. There will be more garden updates and other cool stuff.