Edible Forest Gardening

Concepts

(in no particular order)

site preparation : Particularly in areas with 'poor' or compacted soil - often the results of previous agricultural monocropping. This will include anything you aim to accomplish prior to planting out your forest garden BUT should also be considered seriously if the healthy establishement of a young forest garden is in question. This practice can greatly improve the health of your forest garden as well as its inherent yield capacities. It will also minimize future work - if you simply plant your forest garden without attention to its soil quality you are creating unnecessary competition...both for scarce nutrients and with a pre-existing 'weed' seed bank.

Most poor soils can be improved by adding organic materials and/or breaking up hard-panned and compacted soils with deep-reaching perennial root systems. However, it is also beneficial to work with beneficial annuals. For example, Yellow Sweet Clover (Melilotus officinalis) is an introduced annual or biennial whose root system extends as far down as 20 feet . In this manner, the plant can serve as both a soil stabilizer and a dynamic accumulator during the early years of a young forest garden. This plant is often used in organic agriculture rotations as a cover crop. It can also be used in combination with a fast-growing grain crop for livestock feed over winter months. This past season, at Mark Shepard's New Forest Farm we covered an acre with millet and yellow sweet clover. The results: the livestock (3 holstein bull calves) received a healthy 3-5 round bales of millet/clover and the yellow sweet clover will grow back in spring adding soil stability during southwest Wisconsin's rainy springs. Ideally, one could feed 3-5 heads of livestock by performing this strategy on 2 to 3 acres. Back to the forest garden...

It should be noted that to correctly determine a given site's desired dynamic accumulators a series of soil tests and subsoil tests should be considered. Regardless, one ought to consider growing swaths of 'mulch plants'. i.e.,stinging nettle, comfrey, sorrels and docks, vetches etc that will uptake trace elements. These patches can be harvested and mulched or composted - either in a compost pile or in a fermented compost tea.

An interesting idea I have considered lately is the dual combination of composted 'weeds' in tea form (i.e. nettle, comfrey et al) with coppice-able dynamic accumulator trees (basswoods, birches, hickories, black walnut et al). In this manner one could create a fermented and slightly aged mulch material - a layer of organic materials providing many functions in a forest garden.

For detailed analysis on species lists applicable to this concept see Appendices 2 and 3 in Dave Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens - Volume 2, Design and Practice pp. 524-536