Can You Use Pines as a Living Yam Trellis?

Quiara asks about growing true yams upon pines:

Hi! I’m from South Louisiana. I’m curious if you can use pines for a living trellis? How acidic is the soil underneath after being mulched with its own pine needles for years? Of course our soil is sandy and acidic anyway… I’m trying to think of ways the large pines all over my yard could be useful.

There is some debate over whether pines make soil acid, or whether they thrive in places where the soil is already acid.

My bet is it’s a combination of both. Pineland soil is an unfriendly home for most garden crops. I’ve never seen yams mixed in with pines, though I have seen smilax vines and wild muscadines.

That said, my friend Rick grew a potted yam up the side of a pine tree in North/Central Florida:

And 11 years ago, Marabou Thomas posted a video of even larger yams growing up pine trees:

But they weren’t in the native soil, they were in pots. That’s an easy way to get good yams in bad soil, though: just put some yams in big pots or grow bags and send them up the sides of pine trees.

You might also have luck with digging a hole and filling it with compost, then planting a yam bulbil or piece of root in it.

Pines are, obviously, also useful for lumber: a friend with a saw mill cut the planks we used to build one of our big bookshelves.

Pineland soils also support edible and useful species including:

Sparkleberry
Deerberry
Saw palmetto
Wild and cultivated blueberries of all sorts
Blackberry
Gallberry
Yaupon holly
Maypop
Native pawpaws
Nopale cactus
Persimmon
Mayhaw

…and some others I’ve forgotten.

If life gives you pines, work around them. You can also add lots of pulverized limestone to areas you clear and improve the soil enough to grow pasture for grazing animals. I’ve seen some really nice pasture carved out of an area of terrible acid pineland soil via liming and grazing.

Pines may make decent trellises for cultivated muscadine grapes and other vines that don’t mind the soil. It’s certainly worth a try.