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Welcome to today's presentation on natural foods and decoratives from the woods or backyard. My name is Gary Wyatt, Extension Educatorin Forestry with the University of Minnesota Extension based out of our Mankato Regional Office. Today we are going to talk about natural food sand decoratives. First of all the native woodland wild harves thunter gatherers and harvesting in the woods.

 Also, non-timber forest products and forest farming and then we'll be talking about planting edibles and decorative plants in your own environment and landscape. Native woodland harvesting - know what you are harvesting and when. Identify the woodland or site you're going to harvest in. Identify whether it's public or private and get written permission if you don't own the land. State or Federal lands need a permit to gather and harvest wild edibles and decoratives. Specific rules are regulated on all those state and federal lands. Also sustainably harvest products - usually leave about ten percent of the products that you're picking in the woods.

Non-timber forest products include forest floral greenery, wild edibles, medicinals, landscaping and forest wood products and firewood,also crafts and art, miscellaneous products, forest-based cultural or eco-tourism with a non-timber forest component. Forest farming is the intentional manipulation and integration and intensive management of woodlands that capitalize on specific plantinte ractions to produce non-timber forest products.


In this particular slide we see pine straw in the upper left hand corner, maple syrup, shiitake mushrooms, ginseng and medicinalsor florals on the under story. There are many berries native to the upper mid west - june berries, strawberries, plums, cherries, currants and we aren't going togo through those today but there are many that are available in the upper mid west depending on your location.

The Minnesota Harvester Handbook is available at the Minnesota bookstore. This was developed by our University of Minnesota Extension forestry staff. Topics include tips on social, markets and policy. We have products by season and there are different chapters. We have eight chapters of edible mushrooms,six bark, sticks and woods, four edible greens and berries, 4 holiday decorations and saps and syrup are discussed in this booklet. This booklet is available at the Minnesota bookstore. Cultivating foods and decoratives - many of the native wild plants or similar cultivars can be planted in your own landscape  provided the same habitat that they do grow in in the native habitat such as the same soil or sunor drainage habitats in the wild.

Some of these growing edibles and decorativesin your backyard or in other landscapes that your don't have these particular landscapesbgrowing, certainly they do have to have the right habitat for these plants to grow. We are going to talk about decoratives includingbdogbwoods, willows, buds, flowers and showy fruit. And then the edibles we are going to talk about serviceberry, june berry, hazelnut, cranberry, black choke berry, elderberry and honey berry. Dogwoods and willows are very decorative and used in floral markets everywhere and can be used locally or by families or even sold out of state. There are desireable dogwoods you can plant and willows that you can plant for sale and cuttings. Scarlet curls willow, curly willow, fantail willows adds character to any type of floral arrangement and used in many markets.

Floral arrangements are very popular with these particular decoratives. Decorative buds including the various buds of pussy willows are used in different markets. Forced spring flowers including witch hazel,also cherry, apple and plum flowers, and forsythia certainly are used in a timely manner. A showy persistent fruit such as holly and bitter sweet. Just wanted to review the two bitter sweets we have in Minnesota. We have American, which is the native variety and Oriental, which is the invasive species that has entered the state. We want to make sure you know the difference between these bittersweets. American is the good native variety. It's an orange capsule. After it breaks open it's seed position or fruit position is at the tips of the branches.

On Oriental the yellow capsule is noted between the orange as American and yellow is Oriental and then also the fruit position of Orientalis along the branches, not necessarily on the tips. That's a very distinctive to understand and know both the fruit capsule color and the fruit position. Oriental bittersweet is definitely a menace to our landscapes in Minnesota and we need to report this when you see it to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. There is an excellent website from the Nebraska forest service that talks about specialty forest products and they have done extensive work on nurseries that offer these types of decorative plants like willows and dogwoods that homeowners and people that want to get into the business of raising these florals for market can purchase and raise and produce cuttings in your own landscape.

Here is another excellent website and fact sheet that they have at the Nebraska Extension Service and it is a retail nursery stock sources for plants that produce specialty forest products. Let's talk about fruit now. We aren't going to talk about apples or berriesor grapes or pears or stone fruit. Those are very extensively reviewed at extension website and also the University of Minnesota website. There is a nice fruit website that I've linked here with our z link: z.umn.edu/um fruit and all the fruits are listed here on this particular web site.

We have an excellent extension website that we have put together on edible fruits and nuts and trees and shrubs for the home landscape plantings and this is available at the previous website and also our agro forestry website. We'll just talk about a few of the edibleplants and berries and nuts that we introduced.

Serviceberry/Juneberry/Saskatoon can be ashrub form or tree form, very nice and attractive and edible. Obviously you do have to beat the birds tothese or protect the berries from the birds. American Hazelnut is a shrub type. It's gained popularity with Nutella and otherproducts of hazelnut coffee and so forth. The involucre you can see is the main coveringof the outside of the nut and then the nutshell and then the nut meat is inside that shell. These are shrubs that can be grown anywherein Minnesota. American Cranberry is a cranberry berry thatcan be made into jams and jellies. It does have to go through a freeze cycle.

You'll notice in the spring time that manyof the berries will be on the plant and the birds will gather them up in the spring timeafter winter. Black Chokeberry is aronia berry. It is high in antioxidants also a shrub thatis becoming more and more popular. A lot of people are growing this as just aone plant that you don't have to have two or three plants for pollinators. One plant is a self-pollinating plant andwill produce a lot of different berries for your home use.

 Elderberry - there is a Minnesota elderberryco-op that has been developed and also they sell elderberry plants that you can sell back the fruit to this co-op and I will show you a slide at the end of the presentation today about that. Another edible crop in Minnesota grown onshrubs. Honey berry is a fairly new shrub crop for fruits in Minnesota. It's a Canadian type of plant, blue honeysuckle/haskapis another name for honey berry. It's kind of a blueberry type raspberry cross but a very nice attractive berry.

 Again you do have to protect this particularplant from the birds. One thing about honey berry is that is has to be cross-pollinated with a different  plant and there are many different plants that are available on the market. You need to have one pollinator plant per five plants that you have and you have to make sure that you have the right pollinator plant. You can't have five or six of the same species or same variety. You have to have a different   variety that matches up with the other one. Fruit Coops or Organizations: black choke berry(aronia berry), elderberry, honey berry, and hazelnut.

They all have websites and groups that will educate you on growing these particular plants. This is the Midwest Aronia Berry website from Iowa. And the Minnesota Elderberry Coop from Minnesota. And these coops will purchase your berries as well. This is the Canada - University of Saskatchewanha skap or honey berry website. This is the hazelnut website from Wisconsin. Also the University of Minnesota is a part of this group that educates the public on hazelnuts - Midwest Hazelnuts.org If you are interested in buying hazelnuts and growing them they do have extensive pages on how togrow them and how the growers that do sell them to homeowners like yourself. Some of these particular berry crops may becomeinfested with the SWD: Spotted Wing Drosophila. This is an invasive species fruit fly from the Asian countries.

This is a particular problem in raspberriesin Minnesota and has been noted to be in aronia berry as well. Just become aware of that. Also, we have an excellent agro forestry website for extension.  will get you to our website and we have many of our fact sheets that are listed there and available to you. Forest farming is a part of the five practices of agro forestry. Agro forestry includes forest farming, riparian buffers, windbreaks, alley cropping, and silvo pasture. Another great website for forest farming is the national agro forestry website down at Lincoln, Nebraska. Their website is given here and this particular site has a wealth of information and publications you can download or order free of charge. Thanks for watching today's presentation. If you do have any questions you can contact me How to control weeds without chemicals.