I have red clay soil, though 5+ years of mulching with lots of oak leaves every fall has resulted in a few inches of really nice soil. I also use woodchips as they're available from trees I have to cut down, trees that fall down, and even chipdrop, an app that delivers woodchips for free.
This is awesome. We just started our own food forest series, following our new project. We are currently in 6b, but I lived in PA for many years and love it there. Beautiful property and plants. We are hoping to grow similar things. Great video
Looking incredible brother! Glad to have found the channel, I'll be looking forward to seeing more! Oregon Grape is super awesome, the berries have a big seed to spit out, and are very sour but very tasty and good for cooking. They are from the barberry family and the roots of the Oregon Grape contain Berberine which is a potent anti microbial an excellent traditional medicine. The roots also make a delicious sweet tea flavor and can be used to make a yellow dye! One of my favorite native forages here in Oregon :)
I grew up in the Virgin Islands then lived in Florida for too many years. I just moved to Pennsylvania, and I don't recognize ANY of the plants or what I need to grow. I'm a Permaculture design certificate graduate. My last house sold in part because the folks could see the value of the plants (four kinds of mangoes, 5 kinds of bananas, perennial sweet potato, etc). Feeling a bit lost here, and this video made me take great heart as I look at the winter yard of a house I bought with zero trees, some grass and two shrubs right where I want a kitchen garden. THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! I'll watch again with pen in hand to take notes on the plants. Also, my house is higher than my yard. Super helpful!
I've bought most of my plants at the following nurseries, all of which have nice websites that show you which zones all their plants will grow in: Stark Brothers, Raintree Nursery, One Green World, Ison's.
@@nitanice I mean you’ll never get bannas but the plant will grow outside fine with a lot of mulch and near the house with it wrapped in plastic also pawpaws are tropicalish fruit native to Florida and Pennsylvania and are extremely cold hardy.
Ah, and your perennial garlic comment reminded me that a few pieces of tumeric and ginger that I had left in the fridge for a long time had started to sprout. Seems like many plants will come back if undisturbed(maybe we don't grow the roots thick enough).
Im glad I.could inspire you.. I decided a couple years ago to step up my game after watching a few other folks on TH-cam. If you've never watched his channel, check out James Prigioni. What he's done is pretty tremendous, and in a relatively small space.
Flying dragon affirms something I had assumed a while back. Your selection seems great. Also, check fungal polysaccharides and what polysaccharides can do for cold tolerance. I'm trying to figure out multiples users for the propagation of living coral in moats around clay soil for pH diversity and the effect that the limestone creating, oxygenating, water filtering coral might have on the environment.
Incredible garden. Is your honeysuckle native or Japanese? In I Diana the single lobed leaf variety is invasive but there are native multi-lobed honey suckle. You varieties are incredible I can't believe you have passion fruit! Yum! Do you replant it annually or is this it's first year. Do you hope it will overwinter? How do you decide the shape and placement of your swales? I'm just starting my food forest and I get stuck when it comes to placement and shapes... Advice? I'm gonna check your other videos out. I'm in zone 6a also so I'm intrigued!
Hi Eleanor. Good luck building your food forest. It becomes an obsession. :) My honeysuckle is native. It tries to grow up many of the trees surrounding my property and each year I cut out several vines that manage to grow up those trees. 3 years ago, in the spirit of the food forest (which is basically working WITH nature to build abundance) I decided to transplant 3 of these honeysuckles in places I could enjoy them and also easily control them...2 are used to create the overhead arch at the entrance to the main garden and 1 is used to grow up into my deck railing. It smells so good but does require constant pruning to control it so it should be planted somewhere you pass by often so you can easily control it without going out of your way. My Maypop passion fruit vine was planted last spring. It gave as a few not quite ripe passion fruits last fall and then it has come back strong this year. It didnt "pop" out of the ground until mid-may so we werent sure it was going to come back but true to it's name, it came on strong with several volunteer vines that come up through rhizomes as far as 5 feet from the original vine, which also came back. I've left 3 of the vines growing this year. I expect lots of Maypop passion fruits this year. Even the unripe ones we had last year were a tasty little surprise. Regarding where to put swales, first start by observing your property during different times of day, when the rain is falling super hard, during flood stages, etc. While you're taking time to observe your property over a few weeks or longer, watch some TH-cam videos about Permaculture Swales. There are some great videos out there. I dug mine by hand and used a crude tool I built to help me keep the swales level. Swales work incredibly well and if you have the time and foresight, definitely figure out how to incorporate them into your design.
No, they're not in pots. They're against a south facing wall that heats up pretty significantly during the day. They were planted this spring so its a test to see if they make it through the winter. If my figs planted in the same location are any indication, I think they'll survive. I didnt protect my figs at all last winter and they all survived and thrived.
I'm in the same zone. Was wondering what you do with the leaves in the fall of the year. I have 3 probably 100 year old oaks on my 1 1/2 acre property plus forest on the outside perimeter so you can imagine leaves are a issue
I have a bagger for my riding mower and instead of raking I mow the leaves throughout the fall season and use them as mulch wherever needed. It's great...no raking and the chopped leaves are an amazing mulch. I have 3, 30 year old oaks...lots of free mulch.
That seems like a lot of trees in too small of an area, but I guess if you like pruning, you can probably make it work. A lot of trees can be planted closer together and still be productive if they are pruned. have you ever considered doing an Espalier on a tree? I've always thought it looked cool.
I haven't seriously considered doing an espalier on a tree though I'm starting to realize I may never be able to grow Apricots since their flowers seem to always die from frost, so your comment has made me rethink how I grow my Apricots...maybe I can espalier them on my south facing wall...
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden Another thing to consider is that you can drape an anti-frost blanket over a shorter, flatter, espalliered tree to protect the flowers because often the frost moisture crawls along the surface of the ground for some reason. I guess the fence or trellis might get in the way. You can even go a step further and do an espalier in a big pot and bring it in each night. Good luck. I hope I helped and didn't seem pushy.
Thank you Sleepy. So far my fertilizing efforts have been limited to spreading compost and chicken manure I create on site, and also comfrey tea. Since my food forest is relatively new, I've still been doing lots of planting but I rarely weed. I use cardboard and mulch (from anything I can create on site, like leaves, grass clippings, etc.) Instead of weeding. For example, if there's a spot with lots of weeds, instead of weeding, I put some wet cardboard down and mulch on top of it, maybe even taking that opportunity to also sprinkle some seeds I want to grow there, like lettuce, arugula, radishes, etc....This upcoming year should be much more pruning and mulching (versus planting) as the forest matures.
Wonderfully diverse planting--thanks for bringing all the permaculture joy on this cold day in January! What are you saying at around 7:27 that sounds like "Walnettia?" Not familiar with it.
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden Thanks for the reply. Fascinating plant but I'm unfortunately a zone colder than you and would need to find the perfect microclimate for it. Did you end up with berries, and if so, what did you think of them?
I did get berries but they were not very flavorful. I think of it as a plant that adds to the diversity of the garden and happens to be edible, but it's not a plant we will likely eat from very often. We have so many other delicious berries and fruits.
Thank you. I have the following types of blackberries: - wild, native blackberries - thornless blackberries (don't know the variety becuase they were given to me) - Prime Ark 45 - Boysenberry - Marionberry I've gotten most of my trees, berries, and other plants from Raintree Nursery, Stark Brothers, One Green World
I actually don't worry about rabbits...I have so many edible ground covers planted that although they eat some of my lettuce and swiss chard, they don't even make a dent. I protect some of my berries and fruit from birds, but generally speaking, wildlife is welcome in our garden. This year we actually have several baby rabbits growing up in our fenced in garden...their parents are gone and they are nice little garden friends for my kids when we go out to pick berries. Our main garden has a fence around it for deer and I have so much other edible stuff planted outside our fence throughout our yard, in 10+ years a deer has never jumped our little 4 foot garden fence.
A few ideas: Seascape strawberries as a ground cover (they fruit all year). Raspberries (they fruit twice per year and spread quickly but can be easily controlled). Choose a few dwarf fruit trees based on what fruits you like most. I have all semi dwarf trees which definitely require annual (usually semi-annual) pruning). Garlic chives are a must. They self seed, spread and are delicious. Arugula, Lettuce, and Cilantro (because they give you lots of seeds which you can simply spread, lay some light mulch over, and watch them grow again)
A few minutes of work most days and a few hours of work some days. This is my hobby and so I dont really consider it work. The key is consistency. One of my mottos is 'always be planting'. If you're planting something each week during the spring / summer, that's 26 new perennials a year...think of it that way. :)
They've been in the ground 2 full growing seasons now, planted the prior fall as a bare root plant. Growing well, 2+ feet per year but about 80% of the leaves get eaten by Japanese beetles each year...I don't mind that so much though since it keeps most of the beetles off some of our other plants, like our raspberries.
It’s so nice! I hope you do a tour this year when everything is taking off. I’d love to see the progress!
Thank you. I sure will.
This makes me so happy. Would love to visit this. I'm in Royersford and I struggle with my soil despite how much i feel it, compost, etc...
I have red clay soil, though 5+ years of mulching with lots of oak leaves every fall has resulted in a few inches of really nice soil. I also use woodchips as they're available from trees I have to cut down, trees that fall down, and even chipdrop, an app that delivers woodchips for free.
you might not be struggling as much as you think. year one plants are stunted and wilt, year 2 they crawl, year 3 they explode.
Looking for the land I will use to create my food forest. This is amazingly helpful. Thank you very much for sharing.
Good video, The weed under the Gala apple tree looks like Wild Lettuce...natures morphine.
This is awesome. We just started our own food forest series, following our new project. We are currently in 6b, but I lived in PA for many years and love it there. Beautiful property and plants. We are hoping to grow similar things. Great video
Food Forest looks great
What variety and beautiful layout! Got some good ideas from this. Thanks!
Looking incredible brother!
Glad to have found the channel, I'll be looking forward to seeing more!
Oregon Grape is super awesome, the berries have a big seed to spit out, and are very sour but very tasty and good for cooking.
They are from the barberry family and the roots of the Oregon Grape contain Berberine which is a potent anti microbial an excellent traditional medicine. The roots also make a delicious sweet tea flavor and can be used to make a yellow dye!
One of my favorite native forages here in Oregon :)
I grew up in the Virgin Islands then lived in Florida for too many years. I just moved to Pennsylvania, and I don't recognize ANY of the plants or what I need to grow. I'm a Permaculture design certificate graduate. My last house sold in part because the folks could see the value of the plants (four kinds of mangoes, 5 kinds of bananas, perennial sweet potato, etc). Feeling a bit lost here, and this video made me take great heart as I look at the winter yard of a house I bought with zero trees, some grass and two shrubs right where I want a kitchen garden. THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! I'll watch again with pen in hand to take notes on the plants. Also, my house is higher than my yard. Super helpful!
I've bought most of my plants at the following nurseries, all of which have nice websites that show you which zones all their plants will grow in: Stark Brothers, Raintree Nursery, One Green World, Ison's.
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden Thank you!
Hardy bananas musa basjoo can grow in pennyslvania
@@Youdontknowmeson1324 I did not know that! Thank you so much! I super-appreciate it!
@@nitanice I mean you’ll never get bannas but the plant will grow outside fine with a lot of mulch and near the house with it wrapped in plastic also pawpaws are tropicalish fruit native to Florida and Pennsylvania and are extremely cold hardy.
Love the video! I am in 5B and I am hoping to gain some ideas for what to plant in my community garden/food forest. I appreciate the tour!
6b here and I appreciate the video. I’m just getting started but I’m borrowing a few of your garden ideas (structures and plants). Great work!
Ah, and your perennial garlic comment reminded me that a few pieces of tumeric and ginger that I had left in the fridge for a long time had started to sprout. Seems like many plants will come back if undisturbed(maybe we don't grow the roots thick enough).
Watching from Kenya. Very inspiring. You have so many varieties of fruit trees. Am impressed by the work you have put in. Thank you
Im glad I.could inspire you.. I decided a couple years ago to step up my game after watching a few other folks on TH-cam. If you've never watched his channel, check out James Prigioni. What he's done is pretty tremendous, and in a relatively small space.
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden James Prigioni is our generation's Joel Salatin
I saw one you missed 😆
Flying dragon affirms something I had assumed a while back. Your selection seems great. Also, check fungal polysaccharides and what polysaccharides can do for cold tolerance. I'm trying to figure out multiples users for the propagation of living coral in moats around clay soil for pH diversity and the effect that the limestone creating, oxygenating, water filtering coral might have on the environment.
lmfao at top left corner 11:21
Incredible garden. Is your honeysuckle native or Japanese? In I Diana the single lobed leaf variety is invasive but there are native multi-lobed honey suckle. You varieties are incredible I can't believe you have passion fruit! Yum! Do you replant it annually or is this it's first year. Do you hope it will overwinter? How do you decide the shape and placement of your swales? I'm just starting my food forest and I get stuck when it comes to placement and shapes... Advice? I'm gonna check your other videos out. I'm in zone 6a also so I'm intrigued!
Hi Eleanor. Good luck building your food forest. It becomes an obsession. :) My honeysuckle is native. It tries to grow up many of the trees surrounding my property and each year I cut out several vines that manage to grow up those trees. 3 years ago, in the spirit of the food forest (which is basically working WITH nature to build abundance) I decided to transplant 3 of these honeysuckles in places I could enjoy them and also easily control them...2 are used to create the overhead arch at the entrance to the main garden and 1 is used to grow up into my deck railing. It smells so good but does require constant pruning to control it so it should be planted somewhere you pass by often so you can easily control it without going out of your way.
My Maypop passion fruit vine was planted last spring. It gave as a few not quite ripe passion fruits last fall and then it has come back strong this year. It didnt "pop" out of the ground until mid-may so we werent sure it was going to come back but true to it's name, it came on strong with several volunteer vines that come up through rhizomes as far as 5 feet from the original vine, which also came back. I've left 3 of the vines growing this year. I expect lots of Maypop passion fruits this year. Even the unripe ones we had last year were a tasty little surprise.
Regarding where to put swales, first start by observing your property during different times of day, when the rain is falling super hard, during flood stages, etc. While you're taking time to observe your property over a few weeks or longer, watch some TH-cam videos about Permaculture Swales. There are some great videos out there. I dug mine by hand and used a crude tool I built to help me keep the swales level. Swales work incredibly well and if you have the time and foresight, definitely figure out how to incorporate them into your design.
Well, you know I can't point out every single plant. It would just take too long. 😊
Great video. Yuzu and guava and said to be zone 8 hardy. Do you keep them indoors during cold months? I cannot see if they are in pots.
No, they're not in pots. They're against a south facing wall that heats up pretty significantly during the day. They were planted this spring so its a test to see if they make it through the winter. If my figs planted in the same location are any indication, I think they'll survive. I didnt protect my figs at all last winter and they all survived and thrived.
I'm in the same zone. Was wondering what you do with the leaves in the fall of the year. I have 3 probably 100 year old oaks on my 1 1/2 acre property plus forest on the outside perimeter so you can imagine leaves are a issue
I have a bagger for my riding mower and instead of raking I mow the leaves throughout the fall season and use them as mulch wherever needed. It's great...no raking and the chopped leaves are an amazing mulch. I have 3, 30 year old oaks...lots of free mulch.
That seems like a lot of trees in too small of an area, but I guess if you like pruning, you can probably make it work. A lot of trees can be planted closer together and still be productive if they are pruned.
have you ever considered doing an Espalier on a tree? I've always thought it looked cool.
I haven't seriously considered doing an espalier on a tree though I'm starting to realize I may never be able to grow Apricots since their flowers seem to always die from frost, so your comment has made me rethink how I grow my Apricots...maybe I can espalier them on my south facing wall...
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden Another thing to consider is that you can drape an anti-frost blanket over a shorter, flatter, espalliered tree to protect the flowers because often the frost moisture crawls along the surface of the ground for some reason. I guess the fence or trellis might get in the way.
You can even go a step further and do an espalier in a big pot and bring it in each night.
Good luck. I hope I helped and didn't seem pushy.
wow amazing work I love the variety! how much maintenance are you doing here? fertilizer, weed control stuff like that?
Thank you Sleepy. So far my fertilizing efforts have been limited to spreading compost and chicken manure I create on site, and also comfrey tea. Since my food forest is relatively new, I've still been doing lots of planting but I rarely weed. I use cardboard and mulch (from anything I can create on site, like leaves, grass clippings, etc.) Instead of weeding. For example, if there's a spot with lots of weeds, instead of weeding, I put some wet cardboard down and mulch on top of it, maybe even taking that opportunity to also sprinkle some seeds I want to grow there, like lettuce, arugula, radishes, etc....This upcoming year should be much more pruning and mulching (versus planting) as the forest matures.
Wonderfully diverse planting--thanks for bringing all the permaculture joy on this cold day in January! What are you saying at around 7:27 that sounds like "Walnettia?" Not familiar with it.
Thank you for watching the video. It's a Gualnettya - I bought it from One Green World.
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden Thanks for the reply. Fascinating plant but I'm unfortunately a zone colder than you and would need to find the perfect microclimate for it. Did you end up with berries, and if so, what did you think of them?
I did get berries but they were not very flavorful. I think of it as a plant that adds to the diversity of the garden and happens to be edible, but it's not a plant we will likely eat from very often. We have so many other delicious berries and fruits.
Great channel just subscribed but wish I found this earlier! What kind of blackberries are those? Like where can you get them?
Thank you.
I have the following types of blackberries:
- wild, native blackberries
- thornless blackberries (don't know the variety becuase they were given to me)
- Prime Ark 45
- Boysenberry
- Marionberry
I've gotten most of my trees, berries, and other plants from Raintree Nursery, Stark Brothers, One Green World
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden Thanks so much!!!
Lots of room, very nice, i am in zone 6b and have quince, medlar and cherries trees, tengo to get persimmon to work, howndo tou keep rabbits off?
I actually don't worry about rabbits...I have so many edible ground covers planted that although they eat some of my lettuce and swiss chard, they don't even make a dent. I protect some of my berries and fruit from birds, but generally speaking, wildlife is welcome in our garden. This year we actually have several baby rabbits growing up in our fenced in garden...their parents are gone and they are nice little garden friends for my kids when we go out to pick berries.
Our main garden has a fence around it for deer and I have so much other edible stuff planted outside our fence throughout our yard, in 10+ years a deer has never jumped our little 4 foot garden fence.
Where did you get the Portabella spawn from? I was looking for it but only found King Straphoria and Shiitake smh
I bought all my mushroom supplies from www.fieldforest.net
I have a very small yard. What would you recommend? I live in Gettysburg, PA.
A few ideas:
Seascape strawberries as a ground cover (they fruit all year).
Raspberries (they fruit twice per year and spread quickly but can be easily controlled).
Choose a few dwarf fruit trees based on what fruits you like most. I have all semi dwarf trees which definitely require annual (usually semi-annual) pruning).
Garlic chives are a must. They self seed, spread and are delicious.
Arugula, Lettuce, and Cilantro (because they give you lots of seeds which you can simply spread, lay some light mulch over, and watch them grow again)
I’d love to know how you did all this
A few minutes of work most days and a few hours of work some days. This is my hobby and so I dont really consider it work. The key is consistency. One of my mottos is 'always be planting'. If you're planting something each week during the spring / summer, that's 26 new perennials a year...think of it that way. :)
How are Almond trees doing? I’m in same zone. Thx
They've been in the ground 2 full growing seasons now, planted the prior fall as a bare root plant. Growing well, 2+ feet per year but about 80% of the leaves get eaten by Japanese beetles each year...I don't mind that so much though since it keeps most of the beetles off some of our other plants, like our raspberries.
@@Zone7FoodForestGarden thx, how about Peach trees, What varieties do you have? And are they disease resistant, what would you recommend? Thank you
Are you meaning LOO-pin?
Lupine - en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupinus
@@user-oj2uu8mc9l
Yes, I pronounced it how it was spelled at first, too but it's pronounced LOO-pin.
@@user-oj2uu8mc9l
Google "pronounce lupine".
@@user-oj2uu8mc9l
Another one people often say wrong is clematis. It's CLEM-uh-tis.