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How to Create a Food Forest – Step-by-Step Guide

by Pathik Sopariwala Leave a Comment

 

Grow 3-5X More Food with Less Maintenance Compared to Conventional Gardening
(Click Here to Get My Free Food Forest Starter Pack)

We are going to cover a lot of ground in this post, so I put together a free package of resources that will help you implement what you learn in this post. Be sure to grab it before you leave!

Your Free Resources: Download your Food Forest Starter Pack, which includes my step-by-step Implementation Checklist, a Site Survey checklist, 5 plug-and-play Guild examples you can copy and recreate in your food forest, and the exact Layout Planning Guide I used when establishing my food forest. (click here to download).

If you are wondering how to start a food forest, you are in the correct place.

In this post, I’ll outline the exact process to follow to go from an empty field to a fully-functioning ecosystem inspired by forests. You’ll learn how to choose the right plants for your food forest, design your layout, make soil improvements before planting, and much more.

What is a food forest? (aka forest garden)

Caption: Permaculture Food Forest vs. Conventional Almond Orchard

In layman’s terms, a food forest is a type of garden where you grow many different fruits, nuts, herbs, and even vegetables. It is designed to mimic a natural forest and has many different layers, from trees to shrubs, ground cover plants, vines, and more.

These plants all work together, help each other grow, and create a balanced ecosystem that provides an abundance of food and resources for you and an ideal habitat for your wildlife helpers.

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of HOW to create a food forest, let’s first understand the big picture WHY: Why would you want to plant a food forest instead of a normal garden? In particular, why is it more resilient than other farming methods?

How come wild cherries from the nearby forest do so well while the cherry tree you planted in your orchard five years ago dies miserably?

One of my earliest memories of visiting my grandparents’ farm was playing on the dry stone wall, tossing stones around, and generally fooling around.

Then, looking down, I came across a tiny seedling sticking out the side of the wall, growing in nothing, with barely any soil between the stones.

Out of childish curiosity, more than anything, I decided to set it free from the heavy stones and leave it to grow on its own. That was 20 years ago…

IMG_2303

Today, that seedling is this strapping young fellow on the image left – a European Ash tree.

He has survived the droughts, heavy snows, pouring rains, and sub-zero temperatures all by himself, without anyone taking care of him.

As I sit under his shadow today and plan my food forest I’m curious to find out how trees flourish without human intervention.

How come wild apples, plums, and cherries from the nearby forest do so well while the cherry tree I planted in my orchard five years ago has died miserably? To understand this I needed to return to the place where the seed of this Mountain Ash tree came from and revisit my teacher – the forest itself.

Forests Are Our Teachers

Just by my house, some 50m away, is an entrance to a forest. I visit there often; it makes me feel relaxed. I enjoy the serene sounds of nature, the falling leaves, birds, and other critters. Most importantly, I go there to observe and learn.

food forest inspiration
Entrance to my nearby forest. My source of inspiration and many seeds & cuttings.

You see, given enough time, most ecosystems end up like a forest. This is the endpoint of ecological succession, where the ecosystem becomes stable or self-perpetuating as a climax community. Without any significant disturbances, the forest will endure indefinitely.

This is exactly what you want your own food forest to be like. To achieve a low-maintenance abundance of fruit, nuts, berries, and herbs you’ll want to create a forest-like system where fertility comes from various sources, where you’re greatly aided by fungi, where wildlife is your primary pest control, where soil holds water like a sponge, and where you have a high diversity of plants.

You want a carefully designed and maintained ecosystem of useful plants that emulate conditions found in the forest.

However, the problem is often that you’ll find yourself starting with a bare field, a blank canvas, and the overall plan can feel a little overwhelming. Sometimes even reading books such as Edible Forest Gardens can make things harder rather than easier.

While creating my own food forest, I broke down the plan into smaller, manageable steps. I want to make as few mistakes as possible, and honestly, I don’t have time to make them. 

So today, I’ll let you in on my process and share additional resources that will help you go from that bare field to a fully-functioning ecosystem inspired by forests.

Want to create a food forest and grow 3-5X more food with less maintenance compared to conventional gardening?

 

Good! Grab a copy of my Food Forest Starter Pack. It will walk you through the exact steps you need to take to implement this 5000-word blog post you’re reading (click here to download).

 

Ok, let’s dive in!

STEP 1. Set a Goal: What Do You Want From Your Food Forest?

First, you have to be clear about the ultimate goals of your project.

Why is this important?

You see, with a clear goal, everything becomes more manageable. You know where best to place your efforts and, most importantly, what the priorities are, what to focus on, and what to postpone for the time being.

You have to think are you doing this because of: 1. being more self-reliant, 2. making an income, 3. producing healthy food, 4. educating others, 5. having a fun project for all the family

As you can see, each of these will require different considerations for your precious time and money. For example, if your goal is to create an income from your food forest, you’ll want to focus on researching which tree crops sell well locally and then think about how to grow them in the most efficient manner.

On the other hand, if you want to be more self-reliant, you’ll want to think about creating a diverse food forest with as many fruits, nuts, and herbs as possible to fulfill your needs and stop being dependent on the grocery store.

Don’t overdo the thinking at the outset; just be clear about what you want from the beginning.

STEP 2.  Explore, Sit Quietly and Observe, Analyse

2a. Explore your local forest so you’ll have an idea of what will grow best in your area

Start with taking casual walks in your local forest. When designing a food forest, you want to learn from the local ecosystem and try to emulate it. This is why such observations are important. This is how you discover what plants will grow best in our area.

You’ll want to look around and identify the plants that are thriving. As Mark Shepard would say: identify the perennial plants, observe how they grow in relation to one another, and take note of the species. Later, you can use that list to find commercially productive variants of the wild plants you can grow in your food forest.

This step is crucial because if you want to create an edible landscape requiring less work and maintenance, you need to grow species well adapted to your area, i.e., species that are volunteering to grow around your site.

If you have nature as your ally and use the natural tendencies of the native vegetation, then you’ll be doing considerably less hard work. This is one of the fundamental permaculture principles of working with nature rather than against it.

For example, when I walked in my forest I saw elderberries, hazels, hawthorns, lindens, cherries, apples, junipers, etc. So, guess what I’ll be growing in my food forest?

I’d also take seeds from those naturalized species and use them as rootstock for my plants. But that’s a lesson in itself, so be sure to read my post on growing trees from seeds.

2b. Sit quietly and observe your site

Next, sit at the future site of your food forest. Whether it’s 5 or 50 minutes, just sit there quietly. Brew yourself some coffee or tea, and just be mindful of what is happening around you. Immerse yourself and study the wildlife, feel the breeze, and listen to the sounds of the natural world around you. You can learn a great deal simply by sitting quietly.

One of my best ideas, which saved me a lot of time, came when I just sat down and observed my site. For years, I tried to get a wild hedge under control, and year after year, I cut it, but it kept re-sprouting. This mindless management involved a great deal of work, as I always found myself battling against the hedge’s natural inclinations.

It wasn’t until one day, when I was sitting quietly looking down at the hedge, that I came up with an easy solution to the problem. I asked myself a simple question: How can I let nature do the work for me? As I observed the hedge more thoughtfully, I realized that some of the species growing there were useful, while with others, I had even planned to grow them there anyway.

If I just gave a head start to the species I want there, they would eventually overgrow the ‘non-useful’ ones, and I wouldn’t need to cut down everything each year mindlessly. Sometimes we are just too much in working mode to come up with solutions that are a whole lot easier. Having the time to observe, think and ask the right questions helps us save money, time, and unnecessary labor.

These moments of mindfulness help put things into perspective and reveal a wealth of important information about the site.

2c. Do a site survey and make a basic map

It’s time to put on your permaculturist explorers’ hat and take notes about your site. You’ll want to ‘read the landscape’ and note down everything you can decipher about your water situation, climate, soil, slope, aspect, wildlife…

The landscape you see around you and its resulting ecosystems are formed from the interaction of climate, landforms, soils, and living things. Therefore, to better understand your site, you should analyze these elements, or parts of them, one by one…

At this point, you want to be actively involved and walk the site, conduct surveys, and look at different natural processes. You can use modern technology (smartphones and desktop computers) to help you understand the weather patterns, terrain shape, and water movement across the land.

You also want to get your hands dirty and investigate soil texture, structure, and biological activity. You can also perform some lab tests on your soil and experiment with some basic tests yourself. 

SITE SURVEY CHECKLIST:

There are many things you’ll want to explore during a site survey. Click here to download my free site survey checklist and use it as your reference during this phase of the design.

 

Based on your collected information, make a rudimentary hand-drawn map or use Google Earth as a base layer and annotate the printout with your notes. You can even make multiple thematic maps for each landscape component you’ve analyzed.

From this site assessment map, it should be visible where the site potentials lay and what you’ll need to design for.

Site assessment map: microclimate example

STEP 3. Food Forest Design – Create a Layout and Choose the Plants

Food Forest Design
Illustration from Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway. Excellent reference when designing a food forest.

3a. Choose a general layout – orchard, woodland, savannah

Four basic layouts determine the final look of the food forest: In their book Edible Forest Gardens, Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier suggest more options, but I’ll round it down to the basics:

1. Savanna type systems – alley cropping and silvopastoral system – examples: Mark Shepard/Grant Schultz

Food Forest Mark Shepard
Mark Shepar’s New Forest Farm

2. Orchards – woodlands with regularly spaced trees – examples: Permaculture Orchard, David Holmgren

Food Forest Melliodora
David Holmgren’s Melliodora

3. Mid – to late succession woodland – this is what we are trying to emulate – examples: Robert Hart, Martin Crawford, Geoff Lawton

Food Forest with swales

4. Closed canopy forests – the end point of succession, these are mature forests – example: “Your local forest.”

Which layout suits you best depends on your goals and your site’s characteristics (climate, terrain, biome, etc.). Different systems require a different design approach, management, and maintenance….

Savanna-type or agroforestry systems are based on a keyline design and are much better suited for commercial fruit, nut, and herb production. Usually implemented on a broadacre scale, this layout with equidistant rows enables efficient machine harvesting.

The woodlands we call orchards are more of a hybrid system that you can use for both commercial production and home use. The layout also has equidistant rows, but permaculture orchards are usually implemented on a relatively smaller scale.

Mid- to late-succession woodlands offer the opportunity for the most varied, interesting, complex, and productive patterns of trees, shrubs, and herbs. Although primarily geared towards home food production, you can implement this layout in your suburban backyard and scale up to a farm scale.

3b. Start by outlaying your infrastructure first

Start your design with the scale of permanence in mind and plan your water, access, and structures first. It’s best to begin with these essentials because they will be the most permanent elements of your food forest.

This includes thinking about the most suitable places for your water tanks, irrigation lines, and other water elements and planning for the locations of access points, different buildings, and fences.

Water planning comes first, as water is the number one priority for any permaculture system. The water systems you develop in this stage will become permanent land features that other infrastructure components will follow.

Immediately after designing the water systems, consider where to put your roads and paths. Their placement will define your movement around your food forest for many years, so think long and hard about their potential locations. Once they’re in, it’s hard to rearrange them.

The fencing pattern will generally follow access, and you can subdivide your food forest into different growing zones. By doing so, you can manage and protect them separately if necessary. Finally, consider where to put different buildings, if any…

Good infrastructure design is essential to minimize maintenance, maximize productivity, and provide a habitat for beneficial animals.

3c. Make a list master list of plants you wish to grow

Make a master list of plants – your desired species and others necessary to fulfill a specific purpose in your food forest. Think about ecological functions needed throughout the garden, such as food production, gathering and retaining specific nutrients, beneficial insect nectar plants, and ground cover for weed control.

Create a spreadsheet with each of these categories, do the research, and list all the plants you want. Now, suppose there is a desired species that won’t work on your site. In that case, you can always find an ecological equivalent, i.e., an ecologically similar species that fills a similar community niche in comparable habitats.

For this, you can use climate-analogous species. Based on the climate classification of your site, you can find almost identical climates across the globe, and then, by researching plants in those areas, find all kinds of interesting species you didn’t know you could grow.

However, growing plant species that aren’t native to your bioregion can work against the natural tendencies of your site. You can make things easier on yourself and focus only on what works. Here’s what I mean…

Based on the inspection of your local forest in step 1, you’ll know what species grow best in your area. These native and naturalized species are part of the already functioning and thriving ecosystem. All you need to do now is imitate that ecosystem on your site but use the more productive variants of these species.

Be sure to include these plants in your master list!

3d. Create guilds from your master list of plants

Image source: https://www.theresiliencyinstitute.net/

This is the very core of forest gardening. You want to create effective polycultures that share the resources and mutually support themselves. But how can you choose the right combination of plants? Here are just a few of the recommendations from Edible Forest Gardens.

You can build your guild based on what you know or guess about plants, their species niche, and how they interact. In this way, you can also create novel plant combinations through your experiments.

You can create a random mixture. A lot of people will select a group of interesting plants and throw them together and see what happens. However, while sporadically it’s ok to spice things up, if the whole garden is like this, it will probably result in failure.

You can also try to emulate a habitat and use a model ecosystem as a template for design, incorporating species directly from the model habitat. This model habitat could be your local forest.

This is, of course, the easiest way to win. Here, you’re not inventing anything new. Instead, you’re copying what already works in nature. All you need to do is observe how the native plants grow in relation to one another and imitate that in your food forest.

Not sure where to start? Here are 5 guild examples.Download my free PDF with Apple, Walnut, Peach, Medlar, and Oak guilds that you can copy and recreate in your food forest.

 

3e. Do a patch design – define your planting areas and plant spacing

Design your patches one by one; a patch could be a row, a contour, or a grouping of plants in one area. However you decide to tackle the patch design, the most important aspect is deciding on the planting distance.

If you followed the design process and started your design by choosing the overall layout, you should already have an idea of the distances between the patches. Now let’s look at how to space the plants within the patch.

The easiest way to determine this spacing is by using the ‘crown touching rule’ and placing the individual trees a crown’s diameter apart. For this, you’ll have to find the information on the size of the individual mature trees’ crowns and use that as your guide.

Usually, the biggest mistake people make is overly-dense spacing where tree crowns interlock. This is OK when you’re planting a screen or hedge, but otherwise, this will stress the plants and limit their growth.

In his book, Creating Forest Gardens, Martin Crawford recommends adding 30-50% more distance around each woody plant if you want more sunlight for understory plants. Also, you want to plant wider than the ‘crown touching’ distance when soil conditions are limiting to reduce competition between plants for limited resources.

STEP 4. Prepare the Future Food Forest Site

Food forest beginnings
Improving the soil on my site one patch at a time. Hugel swale seeded with mixture of red clover/perennial rye cover crop.

4a. Adapt your site if necessary

If you’re not starting from scratch with a bare field, the chances are there is something already growing there, and you’ll need to adapt your site accordingly. This means clearing unwanted vegetation and leaving whatever you find useful. You can use any available biomass for mulch, compost, wood chips, firewood, and mushroom inoculation….

For example, I will leave some naturalized plums and use a wood chipper to create mulch from the trees and branches I don’t need, plus I’ll also use the wood for my hugel beds.

4b. Shape the earth to your advantage and optimize water retention

After you have cleared the vegetation, you can start the earthworks to optimize water retention on your site. This involves shaping the earth to promote water infiltration, distribution, and storage.

Effectively, what you want to do first is to slow, spread, and sink the water as it falls from the sky into the soil. The soil is the cheapest place to store water and is the largest storage resource available on most sites. To do this, you can use two famous techniques: keyline plowing/subsoiling and swales on the contour. 

Following this, you want to have a way to capture as much water as reasonably possible and store it for dry periods. You can do this by digging ponds that store the water and diversion drains that collect and distribute that water when necessary across the site.

Whether you use one or both of these strategies depends on your site conditions: climate, terrain, soil, your context…One question on everybody’s mind is whether or not to swale it. For assistance, I would encourage you to look at this cheat sheet by Ben Falk if you’re in two minds about doing swales on your site.

4c. Set up infrastructure and put down irrigation, pathways, and fencing

Following the earthworks, begin with the most difficult, important, or permanent elements of the food forest.

Start by putting down pathways throughout your site. They are important as they define and protect your different growing zones from compaction. You want to minimize compaction in the areas you’ll be planting soon after, and having clearly defined pathways keep you on track (pun intended).

A well-built pathway can also act as hard surface runoff and collect the water you can connect with the other water elements you built in the previous step. Integrate rather than segregate!

Fencing the site is the next important thing. I can’t recommend building a main perimeter fence and enclosing your whole site strongly enough. Importantly, there are security issues and protection from theft or trespassing. Moreover, I hear a lot of people regretting not doing this type of fence first to ensure that their trees get protection from wildlife.

You don’t want those deer, coyotes, kangaroos, sheep, or rabbits nibbling on your seedlings.

Finally, if necessary, put down irrigation and install water tanks – you can’t overdo it when it comes to ensuring enough water during a drought.

4d. Build up your soil and improve the soil structure

It will come as a surprise to many, but improving the soil first rather than planting straight away saves time. This is because waiting for a year and simply conditioning the soil during that time and planting in year two yields better results than planting immediately.

To improve the soil in this transitional period before planting, you can add soil amendments such as compost, compost tea, and fertilizers, or use cover crops to improve the soil fertility so that your plants get a decent head start. However, there is a caveat to this soil building…

Ideally, food forest soils contain a fungal presence ten times higher than bacteria. So you should aim to recreate those conditions.

In the beginning, you’ll probably start from a bare field, and you want to nudge your soil towards fungi domination continually. You can do this by inoculating the soil with fungi or cover cropping with green manure crops – Michael from the Holistic Orchard recommends red or crimson clover in preference as these two nitrogen-fixing legumes have a stronger affinity for mycorrhizal fungi. Finally, you want to spread woody mulch everywhere to feed the fungi in the soil.

For more info about improving the soil in your food forest, read my Definitive Guide to Building Deep Rich Soils by Imitating Nature.

STEP 5. Source the Plants and Start Planting Your Food Forest

food forest plants
Here I’m taking some Juniperus communis cuttings in my local forest. I’m sourcing plants the cheap way.

5a. Start a nursery or buy plants

Now that all the preparation work is complete, you can start planting. You have two options depending on the budget: grow your own trees (and shrubs, of course) or acquire young ones.

If you’re on a tight budget, I suggest growing most of your trees. Actually, regardless of your budget, you shouldn’t stray from learning how to grow your own trees. This is one of the most important skills you can have as a permaculturist, and the chances are that sometimes the type of trees you’ll need won’t even be available to buy.

Growing your trees is like printing your own money. It’s actually quite simple, and you don’t even need that much space. You can read about it in my post on ‘How to set up a Small Permaculture Nursery and Grow 1000s of Trees by yourself’ and start your nursery today.

Another option is to buy young trees from nurseries. However, the trees will be more expensive, already grafted, and probably already one or two years old. If you have the budget and don’t have time to grow your own trees or wait, this is how to get an instant orchard without the hassle of setting up a nursery.

5b. Phase your project and plant in stages

Planting a food forest can take place in stages or all at once. However, being honest, you’re unlikely to do it all in one go. More realistically, you’ll plant your food forest in stages over several years. You’ll know where to plant as long as you know the outline of your rows or patches. After this, it’s only a matter of slowly filling the space with plants.

Establishing stages normally involves planting hedges and/or canopy trees in the first year or two, then later shrubs and a ground cover layer. Here is a recommendation from Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden book:

Windbreak/hedges and edges>>Canopy layer including N fixers>>Shrub layer including N fixers>>Perennial/ground cover layer>>annuals, biennial, and climbers. 

Depending on your layout, you can add annual veggie production. At least, in the beginning, there will be a lot of light and space available for you to use to grow your beyond-organic vegetables.

5c. Finally, put your plants in the ground

I won’t go into detail here on how you should be planting. For a step-by-step guide, refer to my other post.

In short, make sure you dig a large enough planting hole, spread the roots, sprinkle in mycorrhizal inoculant, or dip the roots in a mycorrhizal root dip if required, and refill the hole with the soil you took out.

In almost every instance, you should use sheet mulch after planting to control the weeds. Unless the soil is very poor, do not add extra materials. Most importantly, don’t forget to mulch with the right type of material. Since you’ll be growing woody perennials, you must feed the soil biology (fungi) with woody mulch.

Take Action! (Get Your Free Food Forest Starter Pack)

Creating a food forest is a multi-stage process; you don’t have to go through all the steps outlined above in the exact order. The idea behind this post is to give you a framework for planning and planting your first trees. Aftercare and maintenance will be the subject of another post.

So these were the steps I followed when creating my food forest. I’ve been growing my food forest for a couple of years now. Still, honestly, it’s an ongoing and never-ending project as I always like to expand to more land, plant more plants, and experiment with different plant combinations. With every new patch of land, I follow these exact steps.

I want you to do the same thing and start creating that low-maintenance food abundance today, so I’m giving several bonus resources to help.

In the bonus section:

I’ve documented the exact workflow I use to create food forests and packaged it into a Food Forest Starter Pack for you. It includes the following resources:

  • First, I distilled this 5000-word article you’ve just read into an easy-to-follow checklist to make it simple when you get to the implementation stage
  • Second, I’ve made a site survey checklist that you can use as a quick reference when starting with a new patch of land.
  • Third, I’ve included a short tutorial on the exact design steps I used when planning the layout for my food forest.
  • Lastly, I created a PDF with 5 temperate climate guild examples you can copy and recreate in your food forest.

Grow 3-5X More Food with Less Maintenance Compared to Conventional Gardening (Click Here to Get My Free Food Forest Starter Pack).

 

 

Soil Building – How to Make Deep Rich Soils by Imitating Nature

by papprentice 34 Comments


Soil building is one of the most important aspects of regenerative land stewardship.

If you are into permaculture or regenerative agriculture, you’ll know that everything revolves around healthy soil. Soil rich in nutrients, organic matter, and beneficial microorganisms supports healthy plant growth, which, in turn, supports a thriving ecosystem.

In short, everything starts with healthy soil.

Want to improve your soil the permaculture way?

Skip the guesswork and use this FREE “Soil Building Checklist” as your reference (Click here to get the checklist).

In this post, I’ll try to demystify the process of soil building the permaculture way entails and how you can apply it on your land.

This topic is very close to my heart because when I started with my property, I was disappointed to find out that my soil was shallow, compacted, alkaline, and sometimes waterlogged for months. I had ambitious goals for annual gardens, food forests, and perennial grasslands.

After delving deeper into the topic, I realized that my only two options are importing good soil (not feasible) or improving the soil I already have. The latter offers me the chance to regenerate the soil and learn more about soil biology, so I’ve embraced the soil-building challenge head-on.

In my research, I discovered something fascinating: there are more microorganisms in a teaspoonful of healthy soil than there are people in the world. And when we add in earthworms, nematodes, and other soil life, we can see that there is much more to soil than we realize looking down from above.

We in permaculture should try to replicate this kind of biological richness in our food-growing systems. But what I’ve learned is that emulating a grassland is different than emulating a forest, and for this reason, you first have to be clear on which ecosystem you’re trying to copy. Here is why.

Ecological succession as a model for improving the soil

soil building succession

Ecological succession is a process of change in the species’ structure over time. The established species influence the soil composition and alter it over time.

As you can see from my sketches above, there is a significant difference in soil found in the bare field than in the forest.

The weight of fungi in forest soils is much greater than that of bacteria. In grasslands, however, there is an equal distribution of the two. In agricultural soils that are routinely tilled, in contrast, the weight of fungi is less than that of bacteria.

But how does this apply to me, you may ask? 

Suppose you are trying to create a healthy pasture, a self-fertilizing food forest, or even just a productive annual garden. In that case, you must simulate the conditions where the intended plants are found initially.

So, let’s look at the three most common situations you’ll face on your farm: annual gardens, grasslands, and food forests, and see what steps you can take to bring your soil to life.

Want to improve your soil the permaculture way?

Skip the guesswork and use this FREE “Soil Building Checklist” as your reference (Click here to get the checklist).

How to Make Rich Soil Scenario 1: Annual Gardens/Market Gardens

soil buiding scenario 1

Annual plants colonize bare soil following a disturbance. As they wither and die at the end of their growing season, their remains fall on the ground and act as mulch that bacteria and earthworms feed upon.

This cycle repeats itself annually, with organic matter building and creating humus. Here is what to do in your soil building efforts to replicate these conditions.

  • Don’t disturb the subsoil and encourage biological tillage

As seen in nature, to establish annuals, you have to intervene mechanically to prepare beds for crop planting and establishment. However, you don’t want to till deep as you don’t want to disturb the soil structure.

The undisturbed subsoil lets earthworms dig their tunnels and provides aeration and drainage while their excretions bind together soil crumbs. They are essential in healthy soil structure and replace mechanical with biological tillage.

If you don’t compromise earthworms, microbes, and other soil organisms through soil inversion, they can perform much of the tillage needed to create and maintain loose, fertile soils.

However, suppose your soils are biologically dead. In that case, those microbes have to come from somewhere. That is why we sometimes need to feed the soil with biologically-active decomposed organic matter rich in beneficial microbes – the compost.

  • Bring your soil to life with compost

Good compost supplies both the organic matter for soil building and the fertilizer for the crops; most importantly, it’s packed with soil organisms that trigger biological activity. It inoculates your soil with microbes that will digest nutrients present in the soil and feed your plants.

Compost is the key ingredient for building and maintaining healthy soil. Because of its unique characteristics, compost cannot simply be replaced with manure, natural fertilizers, or green manure. If you’ve just moved to a new garden and want productivity, compost will rapidly make your soils fertile.

  • Maintain organic matter with mulch

Once you have your soil biology working for you, you need to feed it so it can feed your plants. There are several ways to maintain soil organic matter in your annual garden, and one of the easiest is using lawn grass clippings, leaves, straw or cover crops, and, of course, compost.

The mulch is then left on the surface to decompose. Adding this layer of organic matter and spreading it is, in effect, ‘composting in place’, where the garden beds become large composting areas. 

Then by the actions of earthworms, bacteria, fungi, and insects, the organic matter is slowly broken down and released into the soil, providing nutrients to the garden.

While all this sounds great, if you are running a market garden operation, this practice is restrictive and somewhat impractical. Here is what JM Fortier in his book The Market Gardener has to say: “Based on my experience, direct seeding into crop residues, mulch, or crimped down cover crops is not straightforward, causing unpredictable germination rates – a nightmare for any commercial grower.” Something we should bear in mind.

  • Use crop rotation to mimic diversity

With crop rotation, you can mimic the diversity of annual plants growing on a bare field. Differing root systems among plants penetrate the soil to different depths, improving its structure.

By ensuring crop diversity and alternating crops, you allow the soil to keep producing without being drained of its nutrients while eliminating a number of diseases and harmful insects that often occur when one species is continuously cropped.

How to Make Rich Soil Scenario 2: Grasslands – Pasture/Cropland

soil building scenario 2

As we move in succession, the perennial grasses are slowly taking over.

Big herbivores are roaming in herds feeding off these grasses, trampling them down, and fertilizing the soils. Over long periods of time, organic matter builds up, and now we have fungi and mycelium with bacteria equally represented.

Here’s what your soil building efforts should involve.

  • Don’t disturb the soil – ensure the lowest level of mechanical disturbance possible

Unless you need to repair the compacted soil, poor drainage, or do some initial tillage to sow the perennial cover, you should aim for no till, no compaction, and the lowest possible mechanical disturbance.

Make your tillage minimal!

Here the goal is the same as with an annual garden, enabling the biological tillage but also taking advantage of the mycorrhizal fungi, which form symbiotic relationships with the roots, extending the plant’s root network. 

They also prevent pathogens and improve water use efficiency and absorption of other nutrients. 

  • Always keep your soil covered with perennial cover crops

If we look at perennial native ranges, we can see they are permanently covered. 

So the first step to rebuilding soil structure and health of grassland is to get it under perennial cover, which then acts like armor for the soil. 

Bare soil is detrimental to its health, and you only find bare soil in catastrophic events or where humans have imposed their will upon it.

Cover crops are planted specifically to build and hold soil and to smother weeds. They range from long-growing perennials to short-term green manures, but the aim is the same: a solid cover of plants. Their leaves will protect the soil from hammering rains, and eventually, their residue carpets the surface with nutritious, humus-building matter. 

Want to improve your soil the permaculture way?

Skip the guesswork and use this FREE “Soil Building Checklist” as your reference (Click here to get the checklist).

  • Plant diverse perennial cover crops

Once again, if you look at native perennial ecosystems, we can see diversity. 

Rather than resorting to one or two species of cover crops, they should be seeded as multi-species combinations, through doing so, you are mimicking what nature does. 

You optimize solar energy collection as different plants have differently shaped leaves. Because the roots penetrate varying depths, the mycorrhizal fungi can deliver moisture and nutrients from the other areas of the soil profile.

You can design your cover crops to address your specific concerns:

  • Protecting the soil as living mulches
  • Adding organic matter as green manure
  • Boosting fertility with N fixing legumes
  • Dealing with compaction

Even if you are using your grassland to grow cash crops, you can maximize your profits by mixing cover crops. Cover crops can be sown before, with, or after the cash crop, so you always have something growing.

  • Planned disturbance in a form of animal impact and planned grazing

In nature, soils are formed in conjunction with herbivores. In this case, through large herds of herbivores moving across the planes, but also by other local wildlife; rabbits, grasshoppers, and other insects. All of them are taking this forage, the biomass, and endlessly recycling it.

Animals are an integral part of a healthy ecosystem. But how can they help you to build healthy soil?

A prime example of building soil with big herbivores is the holistic planned grazing practice conducted by Allan Savory and others like Greg Judy. They use high-density animal herds that graze a paddock for one day before being moved to the next paddock. Joel Salatin has a similar technique and a grazing plan with a high-density herd impact and ample recovery time.

The goal is for animals to consume a third of the grass in the paddock and trample the rest into the soil to feed earthworms and soil microbes, thus replicating the natural herds of large grazers coevolved with grasses.

How to Make Rich Soil Scenario 3: Food Forests/Permaculture Orchards

Martin Crawford's garden 150dpi

With time almost every ecosystem will eventually end up forest-like.

In a forest, organic matter in the form of fallen leaves, twigs and branches, and dying plants are all deposited on the forest floor, where they are decomposed into rich humus by the action of fungi and other organisms.

Fungal fabrics, the mycelium, run through the top few inches and act as interfaces between plant roots and nutrients, bringing distant nutrients and moisture to the host plant and extending the absorption zone well beyond the root structure.

No tree could reach maturity without this symbiotic relationship.

Food forests are actually younger versions of mature forests. In his book Creating Forest Gardens, Martin Crawford explains- “A food forest is a forest modeled on the structure of young natural woodland, and it often contains nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs, which are pioneer species, establishing quickly and improving soil and environmental conditions for other trees to follow.”

If you are starting from scratch, let’s see what soil building activities you should focus on to transform a bare land into a food forest.

  • Improve your soil with green manures and transitional ground-covers

Preparing the soil before planting offers certain advantages. A year of cover cropping and woody mulching offers a chance to build organic matter, correct fertility imbalances, and, most importantly, accelerate fungal dominance.

Fruit trees generally prefer high-quality soil, so it is vital to achieve a good layer of humus and try to use as much biomass as possible on the soil.

Following the initial tillage or sheet mulching, existing grasses will generally be ready for cover crops, preferably red or crimson clover, as these two nitrogen-fixing legumes have a stronger affinity for mycorrhizal fungi.

Other Legumes and dynamic accumulator plants are also acceptable, and these can even be oversown into existing grasses.

  • Inoculate your soil with mycorrhizal fungi  

Food Forest soils ideally contain a fungal presence ten times higher than bacteria. If you’re starting with a bare field with no fungi present, you can encourage mycorrhizal associations through inoculation with fungi. Here is what Michael Crawford recommends in his book Creating Forest Gardens:

  • Dip exposed roots of seedlings into water enriched with the spore mass of one or more mycorrhizal species. 
  •  Broadcast spores onto the root zones of existing trees and shrubs using spores in a water carrier.
  • Place a little soil from the root zone of proven mushroom-producing trees around seedlings in the nursery or soon after planting.
  •  Inoculate the compost of pot-grown plants with a mixture of dried spores from suitable species.
  •   When planting trees or shrubs, scatter a dry spore mixture into the planting hole.
  •   Use woody mulch to feed the fungi.

Compost, deciduous wood chips, and other woody material can be added on top of the green manure crops. The woody material is what drives the fungal dominance you want for a healthy food forest. 

The goal, plain and simple, is to create what Michael Phillips in Holistic Orchard calls fungal duff – the litter layer where mineralization and humification take place through the action of fungi.

Mulching with wood chips and chopping and dropping woody plant material on the ground helps mycorrhizae thrive. This fungal connection provides the balanced nutrition necessary for a tree to better withstand disease.

  • Create self-sustaining fertility with nitrogen fixing trees and dynamic accumulator plants

The self-fertilizing nature of the food forest comes from using nitrogen-fixing plants and other plants like comfrey that are particularly good at raising nutrients from the subsoil. Through their use, efficient nutrient cycling develops in a forest-like system, maximizing fertility for other plants to grow.

Nitrogen fixers are extremely useful fertility providers in a food forest. Techniques like ‘chop and drop’ mulches, coppicing, and pollarding from these plants, in particular, can release the nutrients they have extracted over time from the earth or air. ‘

Simply having them shed leaves on the ground can improve fertility. There are many nitrogen-fixing plants at each level of the food forest, and I recommend reading Martin Crawford’s book for a comprehensive list.

Want to improve your soil the permaculture way?

Skip the guesswork and use this FREE “Soil Building Checklist” as your reference (Click here to get the checklist).

Take Action! (Get your free Soil Building Checklist)

With each scenario outlined above, you strive for the highest percentage of organic matter in your soil and provide habitats for a high diversity of soil food web organisms. 

In an annual garden, this would be geared toward bacteria, and in a forest garden, more toward mycorrhizal fungi. 

The easiest way to know your plants’ needs is to ask yourself: “Where did the plant grow natively, Field or Forest?

Depending on the type of system you wish to achieve, bring animals into the system in any way you can. They help with organic matter and nutrient cycling: earthworms, herbivores, and poultry all are integral to system health.

And always remember nature is our greatest teacher. Working in harmony with nature is always the best way to proceed, so whatever you plan to do, ask yourself: “What would nature do? How would this system I’m trying to set up look naturally? And then adapt it to your circumstances.

Hope this helps in your endeavors. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Want to improve your soil the permaculture way?

Skip the guesswork and use this FREE “Soil Building Checklist” as your reference (Click here to get the checklist).

How to Choose the Most Suitable Plants for Your Food Forest

by papprentice Leave a Comment

When it comes to growing plants in your food forest you always have two choices:

Option 1. Adapt the plants to your site conditions; OR

Option 2. Adapt your site conditions to the plants.

The option of adapting your site conditions to the plants is definitely one where you’ll need to continuously put extra effort into taking care of your plants in order for them to grow and produce an abundance of crops.

For example, if you want to grow blueberries in an arid climate, in a shallow alkaline soil, you’ll need to lower the soil’s pH, build soil depth (or create mounds), provide continuous irrigation… the blueberry plant is not adapted to these types of site conditions, so it needs help to grow.

Sometimes this additional effort might be worth the trouble, but more often than not, you’ll discover, after a few years of stunted growth, that you need to replace your plants with something different. That is, if the plants don’t die on you in year 1 and save you time…

To make growing your food forest easier on you, and your wallet, you’ll want to adapt the plants to your site conditions. This is the option where you’ll have lower inputs, perform less maintenance and where the plants will thrive almost on their own.

However, for this to work, you’ll have to choose the right type of plants.

Now, choosing the most suitable plants for your food forest can be a difficult task, primarily because there are so many different factors you need to consider. What’s your climate, what’s your specific soil conditions, what’s your plant hardiness zone, etc.

Although these are all important questions and ones you should always be looking for answers to, there is an easier way; a shortcut let’s say, to help you make this plant selection.

The best part?

It virtually guarantees that you’ll choose the right plants.

I call this “The not-reinventing-the-wheel approach to choosing plants”. With this method, you are using your native ecosystem as a model and, on this basis, selecting plants which are most likely to succeed.

For this, all you need is a notebook and a little bit of skill in recognizing plants.

To better explain this, I’ll give you a real-life example from my farm and we’ll work through this process of making a list together.

So when I go outside on my site, here’s what I see:

It’s a beautiful view but, admiration aside, let’s put our permaculture land assessment hat on and study it more thoroughly. Here’s what you would need to do.

Step 1. Prepare a notebook

You’ll need to write down your insights about the plants into a notebook – this can be hardcopy or digital, the choice is yours. I use a combination of both, i.e., when on the site I put my observations in the hardcopy notebook and, later on at home, I fill out a digital database where I collate all the info.

In the notebook, you should have three columns:

  • First, species name – the observed plant species’ name.
  • Second, layer – the layer it occupies: overstory (canopy layer), understory (shrub layer), herb and ground layer, vines.
  • Third, observed preferences of the plant (sun, soil, location) – the specific microclimate conditions in which it grows.

You can also do this on your computer. Here’s a spreadsheet template for this kind of notebook if you prefer to use a digital one.

Step 2. Observe the native plants in the wild

Now the key to this method is to observe and find wild-growing “useful” plant species of your bioregion, your local area, your site. These are the plant species that are perfectly adapted to your climate and soil conditions. That’s what we’re after.

So every time you go for a walk around your land or anywhere else in nature, take your notebook and keep an eye out for anything interesting. You’re looking for food-producing trees and shrubs, edible and medicinal herbaceous perennials, food-producing ground covers and vines…

Let’s come back to the example from my farm and identify the plant species in the photo.

Now, while recognizing common fruit- and nut-producing plants is relatively easy and straightforward, other plants can be a bit trickier.

If you are having trouble with recognizing plants, you can either:

  • get field guides for your region (they’ll have a list and description of species you can encounter), or
  • take a photo with your smartphone and use online communities or smartphone apps to help you identify the plant.

Step 3. Write down your insights into the notebook

The final step is to note down the info about the plant species you’ve observed.

Write down the species names, the layer they occupy and add some details about the environment you’ve found them in, e.g., waterlogged soil, marshy land, south-facing slope… (everything you write down here we’ll be useful later on).

Okay, so the native ecosystem model method has shown me that the most suitable plants for my food forest are plums, hazelnuts, apples, and dandelions, and, in addition to that, (not clearly seen in the image), thyme, rosehips, elderberry…

These are the plant species I should be planting in my food forest and these are the plants I should be combining into guilds. Absolutely no reinvention of the wheel is necessary.

By using the method I just showed you, you’ll ensure that you end up selecting the best-suited plant species for your food forest. That’s a foundational step in the overall food forest design.

Once you are ready to plant, you will need to find commercial variants of these species in your local nurseries or propagate the wild variants yourself.

Here’s a practical guide on how to propagate trees and shrubs you find in the wild.

Happy growing,

-William

Crisis Gardening: How to prepare your garden beds for planting

by papprentice Leave a Comment

This is the last post in my series on crisis gardening.

So far we covered planning how much to grow, choosing the most suitable location for the crisis garden, and designing a crisis garden layout. Now today we’ll talk about garden bed preparations.

In this guide, I’ll outline my method for preparing garden beds for planting. This is a method I specifically use for rebuilding or sustaining the soil fertility in pre-existing garden beds. The initial garden preparation might differ slightly in that you’ll need to remove the existing vegetation, most likely grass or a lawn, to start a garden bed.

To grow vegetables in your crisis garden and ensure continuous and reliable yields you’ll have to make sure that your soil, in addition to the good structure, has the nutrients the veggies need for their growth. The vegetables are very demanding and perform poorly if the soil fertility is lacking. Also, as they grow, they will deplete nutrients more than most other plants found in nature.

Therefore, managing soil fertility will always be a crucial task in prepping both new and existing garden beds. You’ll have to do this through adding appropriate amendments, organic fertilizers, and compost.

With soil amendments and organic fertilizers, you’ll be able to address certain soil deficiencies and provide plants with readily available micro- and macronutrients. And by adding organic matter you can provide both fuel and a habitat for all soil organisms, and build soil structure as a result.

Okay, so here are the precise steps on how to prepare garden beds for planting.

STEP 1. Remove the existing vegetation

If you are starting from scratch you can do this by removing the sod by hand, sheet mulching, or good old tilling the ground with a shovel or a machine.

I prefer the no-till methods but even if you decide to till the ground, you’ll only have to do it this once to break the ground so to speak, while later on you can do the no-till as you’ll just keep adding compost on top.

In case you already have crops going in your bed, you start by pulling out and clearing all the previous crops. Pull them from the base of the plant and shake off the soil so that you’re not moving soil around. It’s best to keep as much soil intact as you can.

STEP 2. Aerate the soil

Regardless of how you decide to start in step 1, the next step is always to let some air into the soil. For this you can use a broadfork or digging fork to loosen the subsoil on your beds.

So take your broadfork/digging fork and apply pressure with one foot to press the tines into the soil, then pull back on the handles to lift and loosen the lower soil slightly. Raise the tines out of the soil, move 6 in (15 cm) further back, and repeat the sequence until you make a full pass down the bed.

STEP 3. Add appropriate soil amendments/organic fertilizers

Now add soil amendments/fertilizer onto the bed’s surface. Which ones you’ll use depends on the nature of the deficiencies of your soil.

Here are some soil amendments/organic fertilizers you can use:

  • Bonemeal or Phosphate Rock — Slow-release sources of phosphorus, useful for fruiting veggies like tomatoes.
  • Alfalfa Meal — A quick-acting source of nitrogen and some potassium. Also it’s very high in trace minerals.
  • Kelp — Supplies a range of trace nutrients, as well as a dose of plant hormones.
  • Blood meal — A good source of nitrogen.
  • Wood Ash — High in potassium and has an alkaline effect on the soil. Lasts 6 months.
  • Aged Manure — Nutrients are rapidly available to plants; the amount of nutrients will vary widely, depending on the type of animal, the bedding material used for the animal, and how long the manure has been aged.

When in doubt use poultry manure as this will supply the necessary nitrogen for the early stages of the plant growth when they need it the most for fast development. Later on, the compost will take over the job of releasing the rest of the required nutrients for optimum growth.

STEP 4. Mix the amendments/organic fertilizers into the soil

Use simple hand tools to mix the amendments/organic fertilizers into the soil. Here you should work only the top 2 in (5 cm) of the soil. This way you do not disturb the soil structure, and you avoid disturbing dormant weeds and bringing them to the surface to germinate.

Take a rake or a digging fork and mix in your amendments/organic fertilizers into the top of the soil. Pay attention to spreading the amendments/organic fertilizers evenly.

STEP 5. Apply compost

Finally, spread a layer of well-finished compost on the soil. Use a roughly 5-gal bucket (20 l) for every 10 ft (3 m) of 30-inch-wide (0.7 m) bed. For raised beds that would be approximately a bit less than two 5-gal buckets (40 l).

Rake the bed smooth, mix in shallowly, level up as necessary.

Now your beds are ready to plant!


All right, so that was my method of preparing beds for planting – it’s easy and effective and it works. I do this when I’m prepping new beds for planting for the first time, and every time for putting existing beds back to production after a harvest.

For existing raised beds, it takes me some 15 minutes to do the prep and have the bed replenished and ready to be back in production.

If you found this post helpful, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter where I share practical tips like this and other content that’s exclusive to my email list.

Talk soon,

-William

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