Podcast · Tech & Science

Plant The Trees

by Harry Greene · English · Tech & Science

In this podcast, we'll talk about all things agroforestry and what you need to know to plant, grow, and monetize your trees.

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 57 min
Latest: 11 Sep 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

11 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

Farm Forestry for Fine Woodworking — With Rowan Reid

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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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

21 Jul 2026 · 58 min
Rot-Resistant Lumber and The Market for Black Locust — with Zach Rike
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 ...
26 May 2026 · 19 min
The Nuance of Invasive Species
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...
20 May 2026 · 39 min
Building with Whole Trees and Structural Round Timber — with Amelia Baxter
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...
S1 · E25 · 6 May 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
Agritourism and Agroforestry in Costa Rica — with Scott Gallant
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 ...
E24 · 22 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 5 min
Bear, Lynx, Goshawks, and 350 Beaver Dams per Sq. Mile: Forest Management and Biodiversity — With Ethan Tapper
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...
14 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 14 min
Machinery for Agroforestry — with Darren J. Doherty
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...
9 Apr 2026 · 39 min
Mechanizing Agroforestry — with Bob Walker
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 ...
1 Apr 2026 · 48 min
Multi-Generational Capital, Family Business, and Agroforestry – with Jeremy Kaufman
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 the standard battle scars of entrepreneurship. Today, we 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.
26 Mar 2026 · 57 min
Multi-Generational Chestnut Ecosystems – with Dr. Amy Miller
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
24 Mar 2026 · 9 min
Trees for Beginners: 5 Perennials for Fruit, Timber, Starch, and Winter Florals
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...
11 Feb 2026 · 32 min
Funding Agroforestry – The myriad ways of paying for trees, and the unspoken reality of how the dollars flow.
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
5 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
Hickory Oil and Damp Soil — with Jesse Marksohn of Yellowbud Farm
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...
27 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
Trees for Rural Economies: The United Nations, Türkiye, and Robinia – With İsmail Belen and Márton Németh
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...
10 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 11 min
Syntropic Food Forests in New Zealand and Beyond, With Byron Grows
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...
3 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
200+ Acres of Productive Chestnuts! Managing a Multigenerational Farm in Ohio, with Julie Richards
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...
26 Nov 2025 · 1 hr
50 Years of Commercial Chestnuts, with Greg Miller
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...
19 Nov 2025 · 21 min
Agroforestry and Personality: Planting The Right Trees For The Right People
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. Have questions about planting trees on your land? Visit propagate...
12 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
Chestnuts and Food For the Future
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...
5 Nov 2025 · 20 min
Can Agroforestry Feed the World?
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!
29 Oct 2025 · 52 min
Market Development for a Heritage Agroforestry Crop – Breadfruit in Hawaiʻi
Take a listen to this phenomenal interview with Dana Shapiro, CEO of the Hawai‘i Ulu Cooperative. Ulu is the Hawaiian word for Breadfruit, which is a tree crop starch that traveled across the Pacific Ocean in canoes, and can still grow straight out of lava rock. And the conversation got. good. and I think we did a solid job of profiling this case study in rebuilding a food system with agroforestry. Hawai‘i imports 90% of its food, while half its farmland is fallow. Meanwhile, Dana and her tea...
22 Oct 2025 · 1 hr
Silvopasture, Heat Stress, and Fast-Growing Trees
Today’s guest is Austin Unruh of Trees For Graziers, who is a silvopasture and agroforestry practitioner who I’ve known for about seven years now. He does phenomenal work planting trees for water quality and cattle shade, and shatters the tradeoff between the two. We talked tree species, planting techniques, and a whole lot more. Have questions about planting trees on your land? Visit propagateag.com/contact-us to talk to someone from our team!
15 Oct 2025 · 58 min
Silvopasture in Argentina
Silvopasture is the intentional integration of trees, forage, and livestock, and Northern Argentina boasts over 200,000 acres of plantation silvopasture. If we’re going to make more silvopasture happen in the United States, it’s good to learn from similar climates, even if they’re in the Southern Hemisphere. In this episode, we talk to Luis Colcombet, who is a silvopasture veteran, and an agroforestry agronomist and scientist with INTA in Argentina. He’s been working in silvopasture for decad...
8 Oct 2025 · 13 min
The Climates and Agroforestry of Argentina
Argentina is full of agroforestry. From 200,000 acres of silvopasture across the northeast, to thousands of miles of windbreaks in Patagonia, to shade-grown yerba mate, trees on farms just make sense. It's incredibly helpful to compare agroforestry systems across different climates and different economies, and we can learn a great deal about our own climate and agroforestry through the lens and the experience of another unique but similar region. Have questions about planting trees on your ...
1 Oct 2025 · 53 min
The Regrarians Platform and Regenerative Agriculture across Climates, with Darren Doherty
Here we have our first Australian on the Plant The Trees Podcast. I first met Darren Doherty at a Keyline agroforestry course in Iowa City in 2014. Back then we sometimes called it permaculture, but you could say that sphere was starving for pragmatism. How could we add financial realism to a socially-inclined ecological agriculture? There are so many things we can do on a landscape, but where do we start? And what goals and ends do we have? The Regrarians platform gives extremely thoro...
24 Sep 2025 · 50 min
Silvanus Forestry Shares Decades of Insights
When we try to transform the world’s distressed or abandoned farmland, we'll come across a massive leverage point. That can be a new technology. Or it can be a tree species. Today we’re going to the country of Hungary to focus on a very unique tree. It grows fast, fixes nitrogen, and produces timber that rivals tropical hardwoods in strength and durability. In Hungary, it’s a species that’s woven into songs, poetry, and everyday life — but in parts of Europe and even its native landscape, it’...
24 Sep 2025 · 14 min
Black Locust in Hungary
I’ve traveled to Hungary on five separate occasions, to learn more about black locust silviculture. Hungary grows 1 million acres of locust dominant forest and forest plantations, so it’s the right place for Robinia immersion. Have questions about planting trees on your land? Visit propagateag.com/contact-us to talk to someone from our team!
24 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
36 years of Silvopasture Intel, with Brett Chedzoy
The key to healthier livestock, resilient farms, and strong rural economies is found where trees and livestock intersect. Today’s guest has spent over 30 year making the case, in real life, that silvopasture isn’t just a concept you see in a textbook — and that it’s a relevant part of a multifaceted agricultural economy. From planting black walnut and black locust on a New York hayfield in the 1980s, to regenerating degraded rangelands in Argentina into thriving silvopastures that feed cattle...
24 Sep 2025 · 16 min
All About Black Locust, An Introduction
Black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, is extremely unique. It’s the only fast-growing rot-resistant hardwood, native to the eastern United States. In this episode we’ll dive into how it grows, what the wood is used for, and the culture surrounding this phenomenal tree. Have questions about planting trees on your land? Visit propagateag.com/contact-us to talk to someone from our team!
14 Aug 2025 · 1 min
Coming Soon — Plant The Trees Podcast!
Welcome to the Plant The Trees podcast! You may have heard that money doesn't grow on trees, but it totally does through a practice called agroforestry. In this podcast, we'll explore the ins-and-out and benefits of agroforestry, how people are putting it into practice around the world, and how you can do it on your own land.

About Plant The Trees

In this podcast, we'll talk about all things agroforestry and what you need to know to plant, grow, and monetize your trees.

Plant The Trees is a English tech & science podcast from Harry Greene. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Harry Greene
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 57 min
Latest episode: 11 Sep 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1833281257

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