How to Plant a Food Forest!

in #homesteading7 years ago (edited)

Greetings Steemians!

Shad here, from Atitlan Organics. I want to take a break from the Permaculture Principles to share a new video on how to plant a Food Forest. Tomorrow we will get back into the principles!

There is truly nothing better than walking through a healthy forest and filling your pockets with loads and loads of fresh fruits. This image is what inspired me to begin homesteading and studying permaculture.

Food forests are created by modelling and mimicking nature and natural patterns. The whole idea is to build a healthy forest that does all the ecological services of a forest, but also feeds you! Forests can grow in almost every part of the world and the trick becomes to learn different edible plants that grow at the different layers of the forest.

Layers of the Forest
From bottom to top, here are the layers of the forest, followed by plants we grow in each layer here in Guatemala:

  1. Root layer - Taro Root, Sweet Potatoes, Comfrey, Tumeric
  2. Ground Cover layer - Mint, Sweet Cucumber, Clover, Oregano
  3. Herbaceous layer - Lemon Grass, Naranjillo (lulo), greens like Amaranth, Bananas (big herb!)
  4. Shrub layer - Coffee, Tree Tomato, Pigeon Pea
  5. Mid Sized Tree layer - Mulberry, Lime, Orange, Loquat, Pomegranet
  6. Big Ass Tree layer - Avocado, Jocote, Zaopte, Macademia
  7. Vine layer - Passionfruit, Chayote, Squash

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Naranjillos in the food forest, say what!!!!

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Mulberrys putting on fresh growth.

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Some of the sweet sweet bounty!!!

Now lets take a look at creating food forests year-by-year.

Year 1: Our food forest has a central, or focal, point. This is almost always a medium-to-large fruiting tree--in our example above, an avocado tree. In temperate climates it may be an apple or a nut tree. Around the focal tree there is a great diversity of other plants which both help the tree and also give us a variety of other yields as we wait for the avocado (apple/nut, etc.) tree to mature. These plants help by providing mulch in the form of organic matter, providing habitat for beneficial animals and insects, covering the ground to stabilize temperature and humidity, and filling the space to prevent weed growth.

Year 2: Our avocado tree has grown, but not much. There is a saying about perennial trees: first they sleep, then they creep, then they leap. Our avocado is still in its creeping stage. Meanwhile, the other, smaller plants have grown quite a bit and are nearly ready to give their harvest. Herbs and grasses are already providing a harvest of food for us and animal fodder. All of the plants together create a micro-climate which supports the avocado's growth.

Year 3: The avocado tree has begun to 'leap,' filling up space. Smaller trees and shrubs are giving off good harvests. Much maintenance has been needed up to this point--the first two years of establishing a food forest require the most care and work. Immediately after planting we recommend a heavy mulching, and you will need to go back 2 to 3 times each growing season to weed. While weeding you can fill in any empty space with new plants and reapply mulch.

Year 4: Our food forest is now fully established. It is a functioning eco-system which draws its own population of beneficial birds, insects, and wildlife. It is designed to feed us, but also works as a forest in its own right: it cleans the air, filter water, holds carbon, and cycles nutrients rapidly. It no longer requires much maintenance; weeds are controlled by shade and dropped organic matter (mulch), and new plants establish themselves from fallen fruit. By year 4 you are ready to sit back and enjoy the 'fruits' of your labour :-)

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fantastic :D really enjoyed your enthusiasm and thanks for showing different stages (i think that's important for people to connect with the idea!)! let's get that info out there: resteemed :)

Awesome! Yeah often times you see food forests at only one stage. Really young or really mature. And it's often unclear how it evolves over time. Thanks for the resteem!

Awesome!! I live in North Carolina USA and put roots in the ground for my food forest about 1.5 years ago. Some times I wish I could fast forward about 5 years so i can just see the progress it has made. Oh and to eat delicious nutrient dense food!

It's kind of amazing, people don't think to replenish, or that the forest needs to be replenished.

While most of the forest's growth is a cycle of old and new, we still should always think about leaving it better than we found it. Something my parents instilled into me.

@goldendawne it's so true. I think conservation and environmentalism, while good in some ways, has convinced people that anything they do in nature is bad. That we have to stay out and no interact at all. This is a shame because humans really can regenerate and replenish. Cheers!

Yeah, this is the dream for me to create my own food forest, we're currently living on land that has a nice amount of fruit and nut trees but all very spaced out and it's not our land to begin with so we can not really to anything but we are lucky to enjoy the fruit. I'm a big fan of Geoff Lawton and his teachings on food forest. The variety you have in yours is great, I look forward to the day when I can walk around my own and have as much variety as you. Thanks for posting and your enthusiasm in sharing with us all.

Thanks @trucklife-family I think the idea of a food forests is Soo exciting. I too first learned about then through Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton. Rooting for you guys to get your own spot going. In the meantime enjoy the fruit!!!

Sustainable fruit forests are such a great idea. I first came across it in a Ted Talk by Shubehendu Sharma: https://www.ted.com/talks/shubhendu_sharma_how_to_grow_a_forest_in_your_backyard
I'm wondering if it would possible to grow a vegetable forest as well? Especially in semi-arid regions of the world?

Interesting idea of a vegetable food forest. What would be the big trees??

Trees that can provide dappled shade for the growing plants.

I'm not a farmer but most vegetables seem to have a life-span of only a few months.

I've heard about alley-cropping, a farming technique in which trees are planted in rows to provide shade for crops during hot dry seasons in parts of Africa. The trees used belong to the legume family so in addition to shading the crops, they add fix nitrogen in the soil. The extra branches are pruned back when it rains.

I'm thinking the two ideas could maybe be blended to create vegetable forests?

Nice. Alley cropping is a great idea. Love this comment chain. New ideas!

Great to see some more permaculture stuff! The video won't play on my phone but I'll check it out when I get home from work.

Glad to hear it. I am loving the steem community so far. Excited to share and learn more.

I am in year one. I planted three peach trees, a tangerine tree, and three apple trees for rootstock. I have tried growing stuff near the base of the trees, but they didn't do so well. The soil in my area is clay and I am going to need to build up the soil.

My thinking is the apple and peach trees are deciduous and they will provide a lot of organic matter when the leaves fall on the ground. I am looking at growing lemongrass, radishes, and borage under the trees. I tried to grow a comfrey plant, but it didn't survive. I think the clay soil was my downfall. I'll keep building up the soil and try again next year.

Awesome to hear your kicking off your own food forest. Over time the soil should improve, but even a very lite and shallow tilling around the trees, and then mounding up some compost sould not only help support plants to get established, but should also help your trees grow better too. Hope this helps!

Just dropping in quickly to point out that food forests (or forest gardens) in cold temperate climates rarely look as dense and saturated as in the tropics. They still work and work very well, just the spacing must be tweaked to allow for a vastly different solar regime.

A simple example is using strawberries as a ground cover plant. In the first years, you will get an yield of fruit, but with the closing of the canopy and development of the shrub layer, all you get is a ground cover. If you want those strawberries, you'll have to replant them (or encourage them to grow) on a sunny edge of the system.

Graham and Nancy Bell's food forest in the UK is a nice example. Maddy & Tim Harland's too comes to mind.

All good points. Especially about wider spacing in temperate climates. I tend to forget that, being in the tropics! Cheers!

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