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Mistakes I've made

I've made a lot of mistakes in building my food forest. That's okay! Failure is often the best teacher. If you look closely you'll see a pattern where mistakes usually come from working against nature in some way. Here are some of the mistakes I've made:

  1. I'm still making mistakes that I've yet to realize and always will. You can't know everything.
  2. In the beginning I didn't know what diseases affect trees locally and I bought trees that aren't appropriate for this environment. Here in Northern Colorado, fireblight is a massive problem and I've lost apple trees to this. Now I only buy apple and pear trees that are thought to be resistant to fireblight.
  3. I bought fruit trees locally in containers in August. Not only were they expensive, but they were badly root bound and thus unlikely to grow to their potential. Now I buy bare-root trees in spring for immediate planting.
  4. I've started and planted sweet potato slips late for various reasons like forgetting about rooting them before planting. So that set me back several weeks on a plant that takes 3-4 months to grow to maturity. The end result was small sweet potatoes; good but not the goal. Sweet potato leaves are healthy and delicious but the plant isn't evolved to live here. The solution has been to switch to sunroots and perennial leafy and herbacious greens like dandelion (prepared by leaching out the bitterness) and stinging nettle.
  5. In 2019 I didn't mulch my raspberries deep enough (or water often enough), leaving them too dry. They fruited but not much. I kept making the same mistake and by 2021 they died. A basic solution is to plant raspberries in a better spot, where the wood chip mulch might protect them. But a better solution is to plant thimbleberries, which are locally-appropriate and actually want to live here.
  6. I've often neglected to pre-dig holes for new fruit trees which created avoidable trouble. So far in 2020 I've been doing a good job pre-digging holes. :-)
  7. When I first started, I only considered cold hardiness for perennials and was not aware of soil pH, water needs, etc. For example I bought blueberries even though they don't survive our alkaline soil, and even though they need more water than our climate provides. (So why are they even for sale locally? That is irresponsible of the local nursery!) Now I almost exclusively plant locally-appropriate perennials. An example alternative to blueberries are serviceberries; several varieties grow well here.
  8. When first getting into small-scale solar, I used "briefcase" style foldable nylon panels. These panels have a very short lifespan and don't have a good use case. Consider normal rigid panels instead, and be aware that solar panels have many possible connector types and you must understand amperage, voltage, charge controllers, cable thickness, and other variables that determine whether you will power your house or set it on fire.