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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-057
Sweetfern
Comptonia peregrina
Sweetfern is a low, colony-forming nitrogen fixer that works at knee height rather than as a shrub or tree, so it covers ground almost nothing else can fix nitrogen on. Its fern-like, aromatic leaves make a pleasant tea fresh or dried, and crushed leaves or a smoky campfire of the dried plant repel mosquitoes and other insects. It needs real cold and fails once summers turn hot, and it wants sharply acid, sandy, low-fertility ground with no tolerance for heavy or limey soil - once established, it cannot be moved.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–6
- Soil
- Sand · Loam
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 4.5–6
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 2–5 ft
- Mature spread
- 4–8 ft
- Plant spacing
- 3–6 ft
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Root
Keep exploring
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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