We've been vegetable gardeners for many years starting plants each Spring from seeds in our greenhouse. We continue growing throughout the growing season in our greenhouse and various garden beds in our backyard. Over the years, plants we have grown include many varieties of tomatoes, lettuces, spinaches, garlics, onions, scallions peppers, eggplants, melons, squashes, corns, asparagus, herbs, cabbages, Brussel sprouts, carrots, cucumbers, and a few others I have probably left off this list.



We love vegetable gardening, but we've been looking for a new challenge to add into our love for growing food.

A few months back, while surfing gardening channels on YouTube, we came across The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni. (https://www.youtube.com/channe...) James' videos chronicle the food forest he started in his New Jersey backyard about 8 years ago. Becoming more familiar with James' videos and reading more about food forests, we decided to start our own, and so we set off on this road in recently with pretty much a blank slate in the field behind our house.



I would love to discuss this topic with anyone interested here at the NGA Forums....

If you would like to read more about our fledgling food forest, I have started a website that will act as a "journal" as we attempt to build our food forest: https://ourpafoodforest.com/

Edit - May 21, 2022: I no longer have the website mentioned above. It was just taking too much of my time to do it justice. Now, I make postings in this thread instead.

A week, but no takers...
OK
If you come across this thread at some point and would like to discuss food forests, you can respond here or at the website in my signature.
Happy growing!

Wow! I am surprised nobody else has commented. Don't give up. It's only been a week and many people are just enjoying summer instead of being here online. I would love to discuss your food forest with you. I am Jane and I have made it into the top 10 gardeners list for my country several times although there are only 63,000 people here. I have pomegranates, onions, potatoes, kale, and more! I want to give you a tip. Try to make a jungle garden for fruit with a canopy of peaches, pears, apples, cherries, hardy nectarines, pecans, walnuts, and Chicago hardy fig. the forest under-story layer can be small and medium sized fruit trees like mulberry and blueberry and other tall shrubbery and small trees. the forest floor can have smallest things like potatoes and tomatoes. Also throw in some vines like grape and even consider bulbs like onion and turnip. Maybe consider grower burdock root. Don't forget to leave a few sunny clearings so you can grow things that like sun but can't grow taller than your fruit forest canopy. Try permaculture and composting and watch some videos on Terra Preta and try to recreate it. Even add a pond and grow aquatic veggies. There is a world of endless possibilities and your garden will feed your family for generations. Remember to be resourceful and patient. much love from the mid-Atlantic archipelago of Bahariterra.

Thanks for the encouragement, @JaneLee. We are forging ahead. I started a personal website to document our progress...even though we just started. https://ourpafoodforest.com

Edit - May 21, 2022: I no longer have the website mentioned above. It was just taking too much of my time to do it justice. Now, I make postings in this thread instead.

Progress Report: Just thought I would post an update. As of today we have planted 8 fruit trees and 12 berry bushes. We have 3 more berry bushes to plant at this point, and then I think we will hold off on more plants until the Fall. Our next effort will be to start the fencing. We moved the welded wire fencing down into the field. Tomorrow, we'll haul the 65 T Posts down to the field as well. It's a slow process while we try to balance it with our home business, vegetable gardens, splitting firewood for this coming winter, and general yard maintenance. Moving ahead!

We finished planting the rest of the berry bushes today, and spread more wood chips over cardboard/contractor's paper. It was a good day!

Progress continues. We did some tree cutting around the perimeter of non-fruit trees, and tackled the ash tree on the left that had been lying on the ground for over a year. More chips put down. It may not look like it, but that's about 15 cubic yards of chips put down so far.

Inspiring! It sounds like you have a chipper.

It's grand, beautiful, perfectly tended and may appear to be way too much work for many of us.

Keep up the fabulous work, Jim. We can all admire it.

purpleinopp said:Inspiring! It sounds like you have a chipper.

No. We get all of our chips from our firewood guy and the guy who does tree work for us when we can't do it ourselves.

Even better!

I just added two new posts about fruit tree covers (https://ourpafoodforest.com/ne...) and getting rid of some dead ash trees that were threaten our new food forest (https://ourpafoodforest.com/fe...).

Edit - May 21, 2022: I no longer have the website mentioned above. It was just taking too much of my time to do it justice. Now, I make postings in this thread instead.

Now that we are in the busy season for our business, we haven't been able to get as much work done in the food forest area as we would like to, but we did get the pergola built and added more wood chips at the top of the hill.

Beautifully done!

It does look nice. May I ask how you will keep the wood chips at the top of the hill? I am on a grade that is not as steep but every hard rain washes the wood chips further south. I use them between raised beds for the walkway but am "stumped" as to keeping them in place.

Alot of work. Why is it called a food forest and not a garden?

pod said:It does look nice. May I ask how you will keep the wood chips at the top of the hill? I am on a grade that is not as steep but every hard rain washes the wood chips further south. I use them between raised beds for the walkway but am "stumped" as to keeping them in place.

I think they will be deep enough not to wash away, about 10 inches deep up there. They are also wood chips from a wood chipper on the hill, so they are much larger than the finer chips we have been using below or regular garden mulch.

gardenglory said:Alot of work. Why is it called a food forest and not a garden?

Another name for a food forest is a forest garden. Both terms are used interchangeably.

Im not getting where the word forest comes into play. It looks like a great garden. I did look up food forest in fl and some things came up with people growing native plants literally in the forest. Im all for growing your own food no matter what you call where you grow it.

Take a look here, Pam... a brief explanation. https://ourpafoodforest.com/wh...

Ours is only a few months old. And, like any forest, will take years to look like a forest with all the seven layers of plantings.

Here's a good video...



And, you can see more videos here... https://www.youtube.com/result...