Every late summer, I walk into my food forest with pruners and commit what looks like a tree massacre.

I put on an interesting podcast and start cutting hard on my nitrogen-fixing black locust trees. I must say, over the years I've come to really enjoy this practice as it puts me in some zen-like state.

But I’m sure the whole thing looks quite odd to my neighbors, who, when walking by, wonder at what I am doing and stare. There are branches everywhere, and trees with only stems standing, and to be honest, looking at the aftermath, any normal person would think I'd lost it.

But here's the thing. The nitrogen-fixing trees don’t die when you cut them this way; they're opportunistic and aggressive, and that's the whole point of planting them and doing this.

When you cut one in this way, as I’m going to show you, it comes back next spring as if nothing happened. Actually, that’s not true; they come back with even more vigor, as if to say, “Is that all you got?”

To be honest, some of my nitrogen-fixing trees are getting out of hand. But I can't complain; that's all free biomass that goes back as mulch around my productive trees.

All that decomposing organic matter is slowly pulling the pH down (my soil is alkaline), feeding the trees, shading the root zone through summer heat, and building actual soil year over year. Four jobs from one afternoon of pruning.

Now, timing matters more than most people realize. I don't do this in midsummer. If you were to chop and drop in the middle of a drought, you'd be stressing trees that are already stressed. So I wait until late summer/early fall, when the rain comes back, and the ground isn't bone dry anymore.

I filmed the whole thing mid-prune so you can see what "severely cut" actually looks like. I’d say that most people underdo it and miss out on the wonderful biomass they could be getting.

​Watch the video here.​

Until next time,

-William