Food forest planning

I discovered Pinterest.  Oh my WORD how that little piece of the internet sucks a day away...I could stay there all day.

So anyway, times are a-changing and, in my opinion, the need to understand, at least at a basic level, the importance of being able to sustain yourself and to know how possible it is to do so even in a tiny apartment in the heart of the city.  I am amazed on a daily basis of the awesome ideas and inventions people have to compact gardens to the point that they can fit inside a kitchen cupboard...its just brilliant and so exciting.

I have been planning my yard for the summer.  Space is not as much of a concern for me and as such I want to make the most of it to grow a substantial amount of foodstuffs.  I want this for our own use of course, to can and put away for winter, but also to have plenty of surplus to share with others.

In the immortal words of Kimya Dawson:

"Grandma said to me

If you only have one bean

And you meet someone with no bean

You should give them half your bean

Cause you will be less hungry

If you eat just half a bean

Than if you eat a whole bean in front of somebody with no bean."

Yeah.  That's awesome. 

So I discussed in my last post, growing new salad from your old salad.  I have several of those little terrariums growing on my windowsill.  I found that if I want a nice salad daily, I really need to keep more than one box growing.   On the bright side, I haven't been lacking in my green leafy vegetables through this winter and I haven't consumed nearly the amount of pesticides and growth hormones as usual simply because I have grown new from the old so many times.  No third eye for me THIS year.  Anyway, vertical planting is a search term you need to check out on Pinterest.  You can do it anywhere and if you don't have a window with light, they make some epic grow lights that clip/stick/hang/prop up anywhere you need it.  I even found a vertical garden hanging on the INSIDE of a pantry door filled with wonderful greens and herbs, set up with a grow light mounted inside the cupboard on a timer.  when you shut the door, the plants were getting the light they needed and growing wonderfully without being right out in the middle of the room.  Brilliant. 

I then started looking at fruit and nut trees.  While they will take some time to become established on the property, they are perfect examples of sustainable food.  If you live in the Northwoods like me and think your options are limited to apples, you are SO wrong!!!  There is a company called Jungs here in Wisconsin that supply gardeners with all kinds of fruits and vegetable plants, including a variety of fruit trees that are hardy enough to survive these winters.  Pears, walnuts, pecans, peaches, currents, paw paw, even a kiwi that can grow in zone 5!  The whole discovery made me excited enough to start planning a food forest.  If your not sure what that is, it is something that a bit of space is needed.  basically a landscaping technique that makes for a beautiful garden area, but instead of ornamental flowers and shrubs, each level of this garden is an edible contributor, dual duty as a food source for family and farm, but also planted in such a way that each level protects its own from pests.  An example would be, an apple tree.  In the first five years or so, you really aren't going to have much of a crop and when you do, it will be limited enough that you will want to protect that crop from deer.  A good deterrent would be yarrow or echinacea.  Both are medicinal plants that will be a usable benefit to your food forest, but will also add a visual beauty as well as deter animals from your new trees.  This is not to say that it will stop pests completely, as any natural deterrent will prove, if they are hungry enough, they will come.  However, its all part of the idea of the food forest to naturally accomplish sustainability without alienating the wildlife around you.  Of course, as your forest grows and your trees produce more and more, you will ultimately end up with more than you can handle.  When that happens, taking the extra away from the garden area and sharing with the wildlife is perfectly acceptable.  If you have any animals like chickens, pigs, horses, etc.,  they will be pretty excited to help you out with your extras too, especially if you manage to store some away to use as treats through the winter.  

Okay, this is getting long, but I wanted to show you all one more thing I discovered.  One of the parts of having a garden is the endless time spent bent over picking your harvest, especially little things like peas and beans.  While looking into my food forest, I saw that one of the levels are vines and climbers and they are managed on trellises and archways.  not only is this awesomely beautiful, but you aren't bent over picking.  everything is right there at eye level and extremely reachable.  awesome idea, but having grown up with apple trees, you will find that the bigger the tree, the more difficult it is to harvest all of your food.   On the Jungs website, they offer these apple trees that grow straight up, like a pole with no branches that you can keep pruned down to a manageable 5-8 feet tall, however, I saw this technique that can be used on any young tree (even ornamentals) called espalier that, through careful pruning and tying, over the course of a few years, you can train your trees into any shape, keeping the height under control without compromising production.  It's really beautiful and like the bean archway I noted above, it can make for a pretty awesome gardening aid.  anything that makes having a garden easier and more convenient, i think, will be beneficial in getting more people to want to try it for themselves.  Despite the fact this is the age of convenience, that 7-11 won't be there for ever...Just look at how awesome you can have it no matter where you are!  To know that organic and unaltered food can be enjoyed by anyone at any time without an exorbitant price tag?  AWESOME!  That's how it should be!  There's no excuse to be hungry in this country!  We all have the power to harness this.  I can't wait to share it with as many people as I can.  Epic!

Google:  Food forest, vertical gardening, indoor gardening, and espalier.