I'm still thinking about this video I watched on youtube a week or two ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRPP4Ilpxso
In one section, the farmer that is being interviewed talks about how he deliberately kept a chestnut tree with "chestnut blight".
> Chestnut blight is ubiquitous in the eastern part of north america. If a tree is going to get chestnut blight here I want to know early on in its life...
> ...cause I don't want to waste my lifetime or a century or 4000 years raising a tree that's susceptible to a disease when we can get something next to it that doesn't have it.
By planting densely with high genetic diversity the presence of these diseases helps establish a forest that will grow without labour-intensive management, pesticides, fungicides, etc.
He describes the method as STUN; Sheer Total Utter Neglect.
> The ones that get diseases and die they're gone. I know that they're not any good for here.
My partner and I have struggled with certain kinds of pests eating our tomatoes, okra, and certain flowers. Meanwhile, plants that grew out of seeds in our compost are doing well, even when we thought they were weeds and tried to kill them. Our frangipani, guava, and hazelnut have gone weeks without any direct care.
