Little Forests Kingston

Friday April 30th we planted 7 Mulberries and 3 Catalpa from Golden Bough, 20 American Persimmons from Grimo Nut Nursery, and 2 American Chestnuts donated by John, from Eastern Ontario Nut Growers Association. Thank you to awesome Sweet Grass Circle for planting in the rain!

Agenda Saturday April 24

Zoom link for tomorrow (Saturday May 8 at 10:00 am): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81195507009?pwd=cHdyaVpFUVNrRmVBYmdnR1lWcVZrQT09

• Keyline design. Bob Chambers is joining us to talk about using keyline design at hwy 15, a method for slowing, storing and spreading water that he’s used at Edible Forest Farms.

• Site Specific Watering Recommendations. Sweet Grass Circle’s A team has been hard at work researching site specific watering and will be reporting back with their recommendations.

Updates & help needed

Help needed for nursery bed prep & planting: We’re receiving Golden Currant, Buffaloberry, and Beaked Hazelnut bareroot, ETA Wednesday. We can plant the ones planned for Lakeside, but the ones for the other sites will need to be planted and cared for over the summer in a nursery bed. Need people Sunday at 1:00pm at Lakeside to prepare the nursery bed and Thursday morning at 10:00am to plant.

Sourcing seedlings complete: Maureen paid in full for the Verbinnen’s order with funds from KILN’s TD Friends of the Environment Grant. Joanne ordered the Beaked Hazelnuts. We’re still missing a few species, but will be swapping them out for some of the overages in Verbinnen’s order or trying to locate & transplant. Anyone know of some Shagbark seedlings that need rescuing? Species spreadsheet. Orders in Ordering folder.

Treasurer needed: Anyone interested in helping track our finances? We have a lot of money coming in and need to account for it across all the Little Forests. We’re going to create a social enterprise called Little Forests Kingston. This will allow us to transfer money from the gofundme into our Little Forests bank account and to source from wholesalers.

Soil tests: While we’ve postponed the soil workshops until the lockdown ends, we’ve done soil texture tests at hwy 15 and Lakeside. Clay clay and more clay at Lakeside. Nice distribution of sand, silt and clay at HWY 15 lowland site.

Can Little Forests rewild human microbiomes?

“Viewing [ecosystems] through the lens of cognition, microbiome collaborations, and intelligence may contribute to a more holistic approach to studying ecosystems and a greater human empathy and caring for the health of our [landscapes]”. ~Suzanne Simard

Humans are holobionts, colonized by bacteria and other microbial organisms. This means that, like plants and soil, we are multispecies organisms or ecosystems. In restoring the biodiversity of the land by planting Little Forests, might they in turn help us restore our own microbial biodiversity?

Microbiome rewilding hypothesis hypothesizes that restoring biodiverse habitats rewilds the urban & human microbiomes.

The next frontier in rewilding could be the human body. Changing the way we design green space and encouraging foraging in cities (through community gardens, food forests and fruit-bearing street trees) could improve our microbial biodiversity.

Microbiome-Inspired Green Infrastructure (MIGI). Imagine virtual reality tours of microbial communities, part of this MIGI proposal! MIGI is a “nature-centric infrastructure designed and managed to enhance health-promoting interactions between humans and environmental microbiomes.”