Forest Gardening

[Odsox]

I read Herbalholly's thread on her proposed garden and GA suggestion of a forest garden, so rather than hijack the thread I thought I would ask the question here .... why would you want to intentionally plant a forest garden if you intend to grow vegetables ?
I can see the attraction of a low maintenance nature reserve area, but not for serious food gardening ... what vegetable thrives in deep shade arid soil.

My garden has a shelter belt surrounding the fruit and veg growing area and now that it's matured I am constantly cutting it back.
Mainly my orchard is the one that suffers most with the apple trees noticeably leaning away from the shelter bushes that are about 15 feet away. Ideally as far as I'm concerned they should be a lot further away but I don't have enough land.
As for underplanting amongst trees ... why ? And how do you dig amongst the roots of a mature tree ?
With most people on here complaining about lack of water, why plant lettuces under trees that are constantly sucking hundreds gallons of water out of the surrounding soil every day. That and the lack of daylight seems to me to be a recipe for failure for most vegetable plants.
If you're unlucky enough to have mature trees that overshadow your veg garden that you can't do anything about, then by all means make the most of a bad job, but why would you intentionally do it ?
Or am I missing something ?

[grahamhobbs]

I also have tried to understand forest gardening. To me, conventional vegetables do not grow in temperate forests and if they have to compete in such conditions they are unlikely to be that edible. So it seems that you either have to drastically change your eating habits or you have a clearing where you grow conventional vegetables.

I have seen amateur attempts that have failed rapidly after the first year, but I am interested how they can really work without as I say having to completely change your diet or by making a 'conventional' growing area within the forest for your conventional vegetables.

[Green Aura]

Where we live, Tony, conventional vegetables don't grow brilliantly. We've not had resounding success with anything except spinach, kale and onions - carrots and beetroot don't seem to do much and there's no point at all in growing beans, the high winds mean they just don't set. We don't intend to stop growing veg in our raised beds, which will be moved to the back of the house (less sunny but more sheltered) but we're trying to work with the conditions instead of trying to bend them to our will (and failing).

A forest garden will mean the introduction of trees to a widely deforested area, provide shade for the house in summer, let light in in the winter, provide plenty of food - albeit of a different nature than conventional crops - all year round, some fuel, dye plants, composting materials and medicinal plants and will be infinitely more attractive than the huge, flat expanse of grass interspersed with the raised beds and failing veg that we have now. Plus we're both allergic to cutting it! I'm really looking forward to trying all the different perennial edible plants that we've never grown before.

I've struggled with the garden since I moved up here and I think this will offer the best solution. It's going to be a huge job but I'm really looking forward to it. The only downside was the cost of the books I bought to teach me how to do it properly (£97 for two!!!! - still it's cheaper than doing a course and I'll always have them to hand). We've been buying trees, shrubs and other plants since last autumn.

The other, and important, factor is that after the first couple of years it will (hopefully if all goes according to plan) be largely self-sustaining - Robert Hart the bloke who started it all was still getting a daily harvest from his forest garden up to his death at the age of 87. We're not getting any younger you know

[Millymollymandy]

Brilliant question Tony and one I was wondering when I read about it! If anyone has ever tried to plant anything amongst the roots of trees they'd know what you (and I) are talking about.

A bit of shade is different, however as I have a plum tree shading a small part of the veg patch I know from experience that anything planted or sown in that part shade will be much smaller or take much longer to mature than the rest in full sun. It's good for lettuce in high summer though!

[Green Aura]

The main point (which OH has just reminded me of) is that you're not doing lots of digging amongst tree roots - probably 90% of the plants are perennial and more correctly we're talking about forest edge gardening - we only have 1/4 acre and about 12 trees so we're not talking deep dark conifer woods. All of those are, in some part edible - nuts, fruit, pine, birch etc.

We already have a windbreak hedge, that we planted when we first arrived, round the garden which, apart from some holly, is also edible - rose, hazel, beech, birch, blackthorn, amelanchier and sea buckthorn.

The shrubs are all fruit (to which I'm hoping to add some fuchsia ) and then the underplanting are all perennials and are anything from ferns to daylilies - all chosen for where they best grow from full sun to full shade. There are some root veg like JAs, oca and suchlike which can spread as they see fit. They down get too far because the other established plants. For the first couple of years it will need tending to stop rampant plants taking over but once they find their feet (or roots) it becomes quite balanced without one thing taking over too much.

Plants for a Future gives loads of information re suitable plants.

And you're right Graham we are looking at making changes to our diet - it would seem we can't grow many conventional veg all year round even with a polytunnel, there's just not enough light here in the winter to grow much (maybe that's why neeps and tatties are so popular ). Perennials will help with that to some extent. And water, which can be a huge issue for some is definitely not a problem up here - but we will be fixing waterbutts to all the downpipes round the house (just in case ) we should be able to fill quite a few. Watering, in this system is done by leaky pipe method rather than hose pipe of watering can so is more economical anyway.

This isn't something I've just latched onto - I first discovered Ken Fern's work back in the 90's (a lot later than many) and it's always intrigued me and has been growing and biting at me for years- we did have a small area back down in our old house but didn't have the chance to see how it went because we moved up here.

[Odsox]

Yes I understand what you're experiencing Maggie as our situations are pretty much the same. When I first moved here I tried overwintering broad beans and thought they might do well considering no frost, but they just got blasted out of the ground .. totally disappeared one night. That was before the shelter belt I had planted had grown tall enough.
So yes, I fully understand shelter belts as I certainly couldn't grow anything without mine, but still don't understand the logic behind Forest Gardening.
Although we have very similar plots Maggie, it seems we are trying to solve our problems in two totally different ways. Me with a (now) mature shelter belt surrounding half an acre which contains all my growing areas and is calm inside even when a gale is blowing, and more importantly SUNNY inside ... well sometimes anyway when it doesn't rain, and which allows me to grow all the "conventional" vegetables that I've eaten all my life.
Then there's you, that from what I understand are also planting a shelter belt, but intend to grow edible plants WITHIN the belt itself, but having to select only those vegetables that would put up with dry shady conditions.
I'm not knocking it, I just don't get it and it seems all wrong. All the references I've read from Googling paints a glowing picture of sustainability, but in my experience there is very little symbiosis in nature but mostly competition for the available resources, or to put it another way ... nothing, not even brambles or nettles will grow under my shelter belt trees, just bare earth.
So I wish you the very best of luck Maggie, I think you are very brave, and I hope you will report back in a few years time and prove me utterly wrong.

[boboff]

I have an established wood of around 4 acres, and we get blackberries, & wild garlic, I wanted to run pigs through it but the council put a TPO on it!

I can see the sence but the long term nature of it would frighten me, best of luck to you all.

[grahamhobbs]

Green Aura, I think it is great you are trying this. Conventional veg growing is demanding and obviously in your situation even more demanding. I knew people back in the 90's, deeply into permaculture, who attempted it. At the time I was intrigued but cynical because at that time they were trying to grow fairly conventional food crops including tree fruit and soft fruit with vegetables. It seemed great for the first year or two, then the rasberries and other thugs started taking over and they where impossible to deal with as everything was entangled with everything else.
As you say things have developed since then and alternative crops are now available. I know there a few 'working' forest gardens in this country now where people are living off the crops. I suppose now I'm intrigued but cynical, not whether it will work, but as to how palatable the diet is. Guess anything would be better than only potatoes and neeps. Please give us regular updates, I for one will follow them with great interest.

Came across this video http://www.youtube.com/user/perennialsolutions. It shows a small 'forest garden' but in the background you can catch glimpses of probably more conventional cultivation.

These are 2 videos of Robert Hart's garden http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBShBeC1 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU-C3GUT ... re=related They give a very good explanation and principles of forest gardening (with clearings for conventional veg).

[frozenthunderbolt]

Yes I understand what you're experiencing Maggie as our situations are pretty much the same. When I first moved here I tried overwintering broad beans and thought they might do well considering no frost, but they just got blasted out of the ground .. totally disappeared one night. That was before the shelter belt I had planted had grown tall enough.
So yes, I fully understand shelter belts as I certainly couldn't grow anything without mine, but still don't understand the logic behind Forest Gardening.
Although we have very similar plots Maggie, it seems we are trying to solve our problems in two totally different ways. Me with a (now) mature shelter belt surrounding half an acre which contains all my growing areas and is calm inside even when a gale is blowing, and more importantly SUNNY inside ... well sometimes anyway when it doesn't rain, and which allows me to grow all the "conventional" vegetables that I've eaten all my life.
Then there's you, that from what I understand are also planting a shelter belt, but intend to grow edible plants WITHIN the belt itself, but having to select only those vegetables that would put up with dry shady conditions.
I'm not knocking it, I just don't get it and it seems all wrong. All the references I've read from Googling paints a glowing picture of sustainability, but in my experience there is very little symbiosis in nature but mostly competition for the available resources, or to put it another way ... nothing, not even brambles or nettles will grow under my shelter belt trees, just bare earth.
So I wish you the very best of luck Maggie, I think you are very brave, and I hope you will report back in a few years time and prove me utterly wrong.

Forests are by nature multi-level affairs. Think of forest gardening as filling each ecological niche at each height with useful/edible plants rather than conventional ones. You might have top-story of pecans with pinion pine under that, then blueberries to utilize the semi-shade and acidity from the pine needles. your pine would be inoculated with an edible fungus and under the blueberries you would look to have some kind of a shade tolerant herbal ground cover, or possibly strawberries. In some regions you could add to this by growing and intensively feed grenadilla - passion-fruit up the pecan as an annual/biennial before cutting and composting after fruiting

The idea (as i understand it) is not to try to get the same yields as intensively cultivated beds of single species but to have a diversity of differnt plants that can feed and benefit you, local wildlife, and at times each other.

[Millymollymandy]

I would have thought woodland gardening was a more suitable name. I looked around my woodland, which has areas of deep shade and dappled light/sun and grassy clearings with more light/sun, and thought what is edible in it? I have peach trees in amongst the more conventional trees but they are pretty spindly growing towards the light - they do have fruit but these never do very well as they are not watered. The hazelnuts only get low light or north/east light and rarely have catkins and then only tiny nuts. Chestnuts would do very well but mine is not a mature tree so the nuts are too small to eat and I probably have to wait another decade or 5 for them. Brambles abound but in the semi shade never produce much in the way of fruit - I pick my blackberries from those in full sun elsewhere. Other than an abundant supply of Jack by the Hedge and some sorrel I don't think there's much there to eat in there. Even the fungi (only when it rains) aren't edible as far as I know apart from some maggoty oyster ones. I would be very hungry if I was reliant on what I could grow in there.

[Green Aura]

You're right MMM, woodland is a far more appropriate description but then I didn't name it

And at first it won't even be that really. You obviously have to plant young trees as far apart as their mature canopies will grow to. So lots of mulch (and supervision) to make sure invaders don't take over is the order of the day. In addition they will "thin out" towards one end to ensure we preserve our view of the cape and for a pond and somewhere to sit in the sun. That's why I described it as more forest edge

Each area will be split into informal beds, divided by paths, which have specific niche. So, for example, more acid-loving plants will be in one area (as we're on limestone they won't be very acid loving )

I'm also hoping that the more sheltered raised beds will produce carrots more happily than at the moment.

Although if this weather doesn't improve I may still be planning this next year (that and OHs workaholic tendencies) - no fear of a hosepipe ban for us this year.

When we get cracking I'll try to take pictures of the stages and do some sort of blog - but no promises I'm really useless at remembering until after the event.

[grahamhobbs]

Going back to Odsox's original question

.... why would you want to intentionally plant a forest garden if you intend to grow vegetables ?
I can see the attraction of a low maintenance nature reserve area, but not for serious food gardening ... what vegetable thrives in deep shade arid soil.

i think the answer is you don't. Forest gardens answers another question, 'how do you get the most out of the land with minimum input'. And the output includes food, herbs and many other natural resources. The idea is to grow things so that they reach a self-sustaining balance with each other with minimum input from man. However, as has been pointed out, the word forest is misleading especially in a temperate region; a forest garden is not a wild forest but essentially a carefully prepared orchard with carefully selected bushes growing between the well spaced larger trees, and smaller plants between the bushes, etc. It is a man made environment. Once established it requires minimal intevention from man to help maintain the balance, a certain amount of cutting back, mulching, etc. It can, in clearings grow more conventional vegetables, trying to minimise the work necessary by heavy mulching (leaf mold and shreddings from the 'forest').

It does not attempt to provide the quantity of food per area of an intense vegetable garden but aims to give, with minimum work or effort, a wide range of foods and other products over a bigger area. This would seem a very good approach on marginal land where intensive growing is not practical.

I now realise that parts of our allotment are a forest garden, beneath our fruit trees we grow soft fruit, artichokes and other perennial vegetables and herbs; and we try to keep this area well mulched. It also receives minimal intervention (some may say it is neglected and the raspberries and the bindweed continue to get the upper hand).

[Green Aura]

Here you go Graham - I found this

Medicinal Uses:
The root of field bindweed, and also a resin made from the root, has agents that increase the flow of bile and its discharge from the body. It is also urine-inducing, laxative and strongly purgative. The dried root contains 4.9% resin. A tea made from the flowers is laxative and is also used in the treatment of fevers and wounds. A cold tea made from the leaves is laxative and is also used as a wash for spider bites or taken internally to reduce excessive menstrual flow.

Other Uses:
The stem is used as a twine for tying up plants etc. It is fairly flexible and strong but not long-lasting. A green dye is obtained from the whole plant.

That's your Bindweed sorted - now what can you do with raspberries

[grahamhobbs]

Thanks but the whole street would have to be permenantly constipated to keep up with the bindweed.

[Green Aura]

The other thing I forgot to mention is that a forest garden will prevent my batty old ma planting radishes!!!! Although I probably won't be able to stop her weeding all my perennials out (Yes Mum you can eat dandelions! ) and of course she won't eat salads made from tilia leaves and nasturtiums (having said that I'm finding it increasingly difficult to get veg of any sort down her - she's not started hiding them yet though - I don't think)