Forest Garden Before and After
Sunday, April 28, 2019 was exciting. We'd just gotten a load of wood chips to start mulching the forest garden.
After reading, listening, and learning about permaculture, homesteading, and gardening for a year or two, I finally got my paws on the wood chips I'd been hearing wonders about. I could finally be doing things right! It could finally look like a proper forest!
Look at all that! There's six fruit trees, three blueberry bushes, three or four blackberry bushes, a dozen or so strawberries, a goji plant, and like ten comfrey plants in that space! It's all young, so as it grows it'll fill that space nicely and we'll be getting a nice harvest here in a couple years when things are established. That'll be awesome!
One day shortly after that, I was performing my regular ritual of sitting on my ass looking at the garden when I remembered I hadn't planted like half of the seeds I'd bought. Where could I plant them?I didn't want to go to the north side of the yard; it just wasn't as integrated and fun. And there's no chickens over there. I couldn't go to the middle of the yard; that's where Melissa has claimed as a place for the kids. I couldn't go to the front yard; there's a busy street there and Melissa wants grass out there. Why grass of all things? I don't have a cow or sheep. But whatever.
I got to thinking and wondering where in a perennial forest was there space for annuals. Mostly based on how fun it was to sit there in my perennial garden. As soon as that notion entered my mind, I became immediately aware of the small, sunny, pasture-like patches all around the edge of my garden space. At the edges? What kind of weird unnatural system uses the edges? What a transformation when I saw that.
Now that looks like a forest!
Here we are, three months after those sunny micropastures became so obvious to me. Look at the difference those annuals made! Now we're talking food production! Those big lilly pad leaves are my squash. Those things turned out to be a huge mistake that I've fallen madly and evangelically in love with. I think we'll have nearly three hundred pounds of squash to eat from those. There's corn there too, and some kind of pole beans to climb up them. There's watermelon, honeydew melon, Israel melon, and cantelope in there. As well as a third generation of green beans, planted from pods we left on earlier plantings. That really took our little food forest up a notch. Or six. And that's not to mention the tomatoes that the chickens planted for us. Or the grains that sprouted from chicken scratch. From scratch you came, and to scratch you shall return! Now that's some regeneration. A little bit of annual cropping, and we're gonna have food to share and food for the chickens!
That's how Regenerative Permaculture works. It's not agriculture. We're not tending fields. We're establishing and manipulating an ecosystem that can support community.
Oh, and here's the boys playing in the same spot last July:
Woah, eh? I think it's working.
All action for the good of all.
Nate.
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You should have one of those animated photos that quickly change between the three stages of the garden. That will be really stunning!
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I think @riverflows is the one to talk to about that. She's the gif queen. Only thing I'm good at is sitting around watching chickens.
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That is really impressive, Nate! What a transformation! If only you had a goat to mow all that grass in the front...
I know. 😭
So much I can't do!!! Oh, I want a couple sheep and a couple kunekune pigs to put out front. I'd never mow again and I'd have free food!!! Instead of paying for dumb gas and getting all sweaty and sunsick, I'd get paid in MEAT!
Someone tell my wife all this. She'd get to keep her shitty grass and it'd get even better! Ugh.
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That is incredible, Nate! What a huge change! And how are you going to eat 300# of squash!!!??
LOL
With lots of help!
They store on a shelf for up to five months. We'll probably keep one for every other week of winter. I bet it'd be great with some pork! Oh, I'm drooling now.
I'm already paving the way to pawn some off on friends. And it's also free chicken food!!! Natural abundance. I can't stop being inspired by SQUASH!
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nate!!!!!!! dude!!!!!!!!!!!! this is soooooooo inspiring!!!!!! just WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :))))
I get to sit in it! Right there! I could probably sit and observe the squash growing. I can't even describe it man.
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Wow such an incredible transformation. I do hope Melissa overcomes her grass fetish.
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Unlikely lol.
I keep looking for ways to let her keep the damn grass and also grow some kind of anything. I think I'll plant a giant swath of sunflowers. Those are her favorite, and they'll attract GOBS of birds and bugs. And the chooks can eat the seeds. All the winning.
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It was YOU and this post that I was pondering yesterday about food forests! Sweet.
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What were you pondering? :)
Did you know the Amazon rainforest was managed intensively by natives who cultivated it to be their sustenance? It's a food forest.
The old forests in the east US were also tended and planted by native people as a perennial food system.
Food forests aren't new, they're the future! The world's forests didn't just support people. People supported them! And manipulated the natural way of things to be more hospitable. We're made to be part of this world. We're not alien.
I think the Hmong people are close to your part of the world, right? They're an ancient horticultural society that did the same thing. Yeah, all these people had small grain crops, usually corn or another larger grain, but their primary food was from the forest, either from the plants they supported or from the other animals that enjoyed their systems. They're part of the ecosystem, not separate beings.
People are taught that we're a cancer or a virus on the earth, and it's allowing us to accept that and continue our path of destruction. "That's just our nature," they say. NO! It's not our nature. We're part of this earth, and we've strayed from our nature. But nature is forgiving, and gives us plenty of ways to recover.
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Yes, the Hmong are just "up the road" so to speak, more along Thailand's northern borders than the west, and much of that forest is being slashed for dreaded chinese corn.
I was pondering the planting of annual things vs perennial, and had your "food forest" in my thoughts, having just curated your post earlier. I asked our Karen host about why he had not planted more vegetables, per say, under the trees, and he had a very fixed idea that they are "hard, regular, daily work" vs the things he has chosen & planted which need next to no care, ever. It was really a pondering about how the planting is informed by our ideas of "work" and the local cuisine... you may recall my monitor lizard post and the fact that the Karen eat almost no veggies since they have been habituated out of it by the impermanence of civil war.
T'was a complex ponder. :)
Very complex, as holistic systems are. That's why there's no short comments when talking about permaculture 🤣
I wouldn't say my garden requires daily care. I'm incredibly laid back, letting things go where they want and do what they want, provided they give me food lol Things can be done to minimize the work of gardening. Working on contour and mulching heavily can help minimize the need for watering. Thoughtful application of chickens, quail, or other easily managed birds can decrease pest and weed pressure. Pigs can be used to till and prep the next season's beds, while making bacon and saving you the work of tilling and digging. It's all about using your system to support itself.
It could be more intensive, sure. But I'm not an intensive person. I work hard enough at my regular job to know I don't want to work hard in the garden. Of course, my cultural perspective is going to vary vastly from the Karen. I'm not ravaged and displaced by civil war, I have a store nearby where I can buy most of my food. I don't have a real and pressing need to plant food for my survival.
You're making me wonder if Geoff Lawton has done any work in Asia like you are. This is exactly the kind of project he likes to do on a large cultural scale.
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looking great! and this word choice had me laughing -
love your enthusiasm, happy planting!