Back in spring, as part of my quest to plant protein, I planted a bareroot walnut out in a part of the forest where its habit of killing most things beneath it – walnuts are allelopathic, meaning that they produce a chemical called juglone in their leaves, roots and bark, that essentially functions as an herbicide – won’t matter much.  You can read more about allelopathy here.

Though the plant finally leafed out, as it turns out deer seem to enjoy fresh walnut leaves, leaving me no choice but to build a little walnut fortress out of t-posts and chicken wire to protect the tree.  So far, the defenses seem to be holding – deer are annoying, but they don’t seem especially clever or ambitious – and I hope to remove the cage in a year or two when the tree really takes off.