10/24/2026
A big source of pride for me this year is the fact that I was able to rescue what I believe to be an old Vaccinium fuscatum from the brink of death. There were two things working against it.
It is just like Vaccinium corymbosum, except the berries are pure black.
One, this American holly popped up, as well as a black cherry near it, that were shading it out too much. It was getting zero sun.
The second were deer... the population of deer in this area exploded in recent years and, as you can see, there is little to no regeneration happening. I desperately need to get a deer fence up in the next year, if my hope is to save these plants. Every plant I sell, every job I do, what doesn't get reinvested into the nursery is being saved up to get the fence. (Unless a fencing company wants to sponsor me out of the goodness of their hearts, though I doubt that would happen.)
Despite cutting down the holly late winter and tben using the branches to make a protective dome of sorts over the shrub, they were still desperate enough to stick their heads in and munch on it.
I finally was able to get a proper cage around it, and hopefully in the next year or two, we'll be able to start seeing proper regeneration and hopefully reproduction.
The reason this section of the woods is this bad is it's at the farthest end of the property. I am not back here enough to run them off everytime they come through. Just 30 feet away, on the other side of the gully, you can see all sorts of plants growing, both native and invasive.
My goal now is to finish clearing out the invasives—in fact I hired Journeywork to come help me pull vines starting in November (because it's manual labor and extra hands are helpful)—and then once I get the fencing in, I can really start putting effort into planting the natives back in.
