Plant The Trees

68:06

Farm Forestry for Fine Woodworking — With Rowan Reid

Plant The Trees ·

2026/09/11

Rowan Reid is an agroforester from the southeast of Australia. He’s been planting and growing trees since the 1980s, and spurring forestry and fine woodworking in a region that didn’t have a whole lot of it. Today we talked about Australia’s forest types, eucalypts, pruning timber trees, reaction wood, pine plantations, growing your own lumber to build your own house, keeping sawblades sharp, The Master Tree Grower Program, and farm networking to share ideas and perspectives. A huge thanks to...

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57:48

Rot-Resistant Lumber and The Market for Black Locust...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/07/21

Black locust is a fast growing hardwood, native to the Allegheny Plateau and surrounding bioregions in the eastern half of the United States. The wood is highly durable, and rot resistant, and lasts 2-3x as pressure treated wood in contact with the soil. Robi Decking is a company that mills, processes, markets, and distributes black locust decking to all 50 US states and throughout Canada. Today, Robi’s founder Zach Rike joined us to dive into the uses of black locust, the downsides of ...

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18:48

The Nuance of Invasive Species

Plant The Trees ·

2026/05/26

An audio-version of our written article: https://www.propagateag.com/blog/the-nuance-of-invasive-species The Threat of Invasive SpeciesThe American Chestnut (blight) and Climate AnaloguesNative to when? → Black Locust's native rangeThose who live in glass houses... Introspection without despair.What can we do? Narrative vs. Action.Agroforestry Systems as an actionable next stepIntro: Invasive species are non-native plants, animals, fungi, and pathogens that spread aggressively and disru...

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38:30

Building with Whole Trees and Structural Round Timber...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/05/20

Amelia Baxter is the CEO and co-founder of WholeTrees. WholeTrees Architecture and Structures uses structural round timber (literal whole trees) to create durable, functional, aesthetically-breathtaking buildings and features of the built environment. The company was founded in 2007 to develop and sell products and technologies that would scale the use of underutilized or waste-trees in commercial construction. This increases forest revenues, and offers green construction markets a new materi...

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70:16

Agritourism and Agroforestry in Costa Rica — with...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/05/06

Costa Rica has one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Quite a few years ago now, they dissolved their military and placed their focus on services. Not just education and public health, but ecosystem services. Water quality, flood mitigation, biodiversity, weather stability… Scott Gallant is an agroforestry practitioner based in Costa Rica, and has worked there for over a decade. Today we dove into the agriculture, agroforestry, and agrotourism of Costa Rica. We talked about ...

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64:35

Bear, Lynx, Goshawks, and 350 Beaver Dams per Sq....

Plant The Trees ·

2026/04/22

We’re planting all of these trees, many of which carry the goal of ecological benefit: conservation, regeneration, fish, wildlife, water quality, flood mitigation, relative homeostasis in weather and climate. But what does intact nature really look like in the forested biome (biomes) of the Northeast United States? The Mid Atlantic, Great Lakes, the Humid midwest? How can we know? How can we get there? There is no one answer, and often many answers are inherent, given that diversity is the sp...

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73:33

Machinery for Agroforestry — with Darren J. Doherty

Plant The Trees ·

2026/04/14

Darren J. Doherty, founder of Regrarians, is a pioneer in modern regenerative agriculture and agroforestry in the anglosphere and beyond. He’s planned hundreds of farms across Australia, New Zealand, The United States, Vietnam, India, The Country of Georgia, Mediterranean Europe, and beyond. Today we’ll dive into the mechanization of planting trees. Trees are permanent infrastructure, so you want to plant them in the right place, the first time, and in the most efficient way possible. O...

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38:47

Mechanizing Agroforestry — with Bob Walker

Plant The Trees ·

2026/04/09

How do you further mechanize tree planting? Where are the leverage points? How do you get the trees on a perfect grid or a Keyline grid, at inch-accurate, GPS-guided intervals? Can you mow, subsoil, rototill, seed, and mark all in the same tractor pass? Bob Walker is a core member of the Propagate Team. He has decades of experience farming, and I’m really thrilled to finally get him on the podcast, because he’s the guy that makes all of our work truly efficient and effective. Here we’ll dive ...

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48:03

Multi-Generational Capital, Family Business, and...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/04/01

Jeremy Kaufman, together with our CEO Ethan Steinberg, and I, started working on Propagate in 2016. 10 years later, we have some insight into planting trees on farms, not without with a the standard battle scars of entrepreneurship. Today, and walk through why trees need to make money, the financial and economic bottlenecks in agroforestry, working with farmers and not replacing farmers, Jeremy’s family business in the wood products industry, and why black locust and chestnuts stand out.

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57:10

Multi-Generational Chestnut Ecosystems – with Dr. Amy...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/03/26

It’s one thing to plant trees. And stewarding a chestnut ecosystem is a multigenerational endeavor. Today we’ll dive into chestnut yields, harvest and post-harvest processing, predatory wasps and soil nematodes, chestnut buyers & markets, and a lot more. This might be the most information-dense episode yet. Dr. Amy Miller is a wealth of knowledge, and we’re thrilled to bring this conversation to you. Route 9 Cooperative Propagate Website

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9:10

Trees for Beginners: 5 Perennials for Fruit, Timber,...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/03/24

Before you plant apples, blueberries, and black walnut, try these 5 species instead. I started out 15 years ago planting black walnut and apples, because apples are the go-to fruit and black walnut veneer logs can pay off a mortgage. But what other species can feed us, create economic value, and provide ecosystem benefit with a more gradual learning curve? For best-fit tree options on non-forested land that you own or manage, don't hesitate to reach out to our team: https://www.propagat...

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31:38

Funding Agroforestry – The myriad ways of paying for...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/02/11

How are we paying for trees? How are you paying for trees? At the end of the day, there is no free lunch. We’re either paying with our time, or paying with our wallet. We’re going to explore both sides of that coin, and hopefully leave you with a better understanding of funding agroforestry in the United States. If you’re not in the US, you’ll still get a lot out of this episode. Link for how to work with us: https://www.propagateag.com/technical-assistance

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67:41

Hickory Oil and Damp Soil — with Jesse Marksohn of...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/02/05

Farmland is often considered marginal because it’s rocky, steep, or because the soils are too shallow. But in much of the northeast and midwest, farmland is “sub prime” or less productive because it’s wet or poorly drained. Not wetland, but damp farmland that’s harder to access until it’s dry in mid summer. The question here is: what tree crops work for this soil? Chestnuts don’t like clay, or wet feet. But yellowbud or bitternut hickory is a great fit, and this tree produces high quality cul...

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66:40

Trees for Rural Economies: The United Nations,...

Plant The Trees ·

2026/01/27

Global perspectives on forest-driven economies. It’s easy to confine ourselves and our thinking to our own countries, states, and bioregions. But we all live on one planet, and the integrity of our rural economies and our ecosystems reaches beyond the borders of our nation states. Today we’re joined by İsmail Belen and Marton Németh. İsmail is from the country of Türkiye (Turkey), and he is the Chair of the United Nations Forum on Forests and the Inspector General of The Turkish Forest Servic...

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71:11

Syntropic Food Forests in New Zealand and Beyond,...

Plant The Trees ·

2025/12/10

Byron and I first encountered syntropic agroforestry in the same way. There was a stunning documentary released in 2014 called Life in Syntropy. It profiled farms in Brazil utilizing planned ecological succession to grow food and restore the vibrant, verdant Atlantic Rainforest. Now we both incorporate the processes and practices of syntropy into our work, Byron to a much greater extent than I do. We always look to adapt the principles to different people and landscapes around the world. We a...

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65:24

200+ Acres of Productive Chestnuts! Managing a...

Plant The Trees ·

2025/12/03

Julie Richards stewards the operations of Ohio Chestnuts and Wintergreen Tree Farm. 200+ acres of chestnuts produce great food for real people, while improving water quality in the streams and creeks that flow into Lake Erie. Julie grew up with chestnuts, and came back to the family farm not just because chestnuts are really satisfying crop to work with, and not just because she had the opportunity, but because it was a really good financial and logistical decision for her and her family. Her...

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60:02

50 Years of Commercial Chestnuts, with Greg Miller

Plant The Trees ·

2025/11/26

It’s 1972. Led Zeppelin IV just hit the airwaves, and Greg Miller is planting chestnut trees as a junior in high school. With time on his side, he goes on to get a PhD in plant breeding, and vastly improves chestnut yields, nut quality, and disease resistance. 50 years later, the trees are still bearing huge crops. Greg has planted tens of thousands more trees, having refined the genetics over multiple generations of Chinese Chestnut and Chinese-American hybrids. Widely regarded as the pionee...

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20:55

Agroforestry and Personality: Planting The Right...

Plant The Trees ·

2025/11/19

What do agroforestry-interested land managers have in common? And how do they differ? Are they open minded and risk averse? Are they extroverted and orderly? Our hypotheses, based on working in this space for 10 years, may surprise you. It’s well established that we have to fit the tree species to the soil type. Listen on if you’re curious about aligning the tree species with the people that are managing the land.

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65:15

Chestnuts and Food For the Future

Plant The Trees ·

2025/11/12

Russell Wallack, founder of Breadtree, joins us to talk chestnuts and perennial pantry stables. Breadtree farms on 800 acres in the Upper Hudson Valley (NY) and Southwest Vermont, where they steward 20,000+ food-producing trees and shrubs — including chestnut, hickory, oak, seaberry, apple, pear, mulberry, and persimmon — in orchards grazed by sheep and cattle. The practice of raising food crops, trees, and animals together has a long history in many cultures, and (today) is often called agro...

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19:44

Can Agroforestry Feed the World?

Plant The Trees ·

2025/11/05

Planting trees? On farmland? But what about feeding the world? There’s a lot wrapped up in this question, and we’re here to bring you the frameworks and the data on how agroforestry can feed the world with caloric staple crops, ecosystem services, and financially successful farms. Have questions about planting trees on your land? Visit propagateag.com/contact-us to talk to someone from our team!

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