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Build your own permaculture food forest

Building your own food forest is cheaper and easier than you might guess. Like a lot of things, the hardest part is simply taking the first step. Just jump in! The water is nice. :-)

Erin from Goldifarms

Erin made a fantastic video on starting a permaculture food forest called How I designed my permaculture food forest: A step by step guide. This is the best I've found.

James Prigioni: starting a food forest

James Prigioni made a series of videos on starting a food forest. Also excellent.

Sean from Edible Acres

Sean is about to create a food forest for his neighbor. Follow along, starting with Lawn to Food Forest - 1 - Introduction.

What I did

This is what I initially, naively did to start my food forest and it provided a good foundation for further iteration:

  1. Planted trees and bushes (without researching disease resistance and water needs of plants — oops)
  2. Mulched the entire yard with free wood chips (great success!)
  3. Watered with the hose

You can do this!

What I'm doing differently

After building one food forest, here's what I will do differently from the start when building the next one. As you can see there aren't major changes:

  1. "Plant the rain" with small-scale earthworks
  2. Put down biochar-rich compost
  3. Mulch entire yard with free wood chips
  4. Plant trees, bushes and vines with local-appropriateness including disease resistance and water needs as top criteria
  5. Plants tons of locally-appropriate nitrogen fixers
  6. Plant herb layer plants like strawberries and guild/support plants like new mexico locust next to trees immediately, to eliminate tree root disruption
  7. Make use of roof water runoff as an irrigation source, via downspout extensions
  8. Use drip irrigation and/or make use of 2-way / 4-way Y-valve hose splitters to reduce time spent moving the hose around
  9. Water only as necessary when the trees look thirsty

You can also check out this video from Canadian Permaculture Legacy, Things I do differently now, compared to when I started my permaculture food forest.

Just begin! :-)