Food Forest / Forest Garden Tour with Hatchet & Seed - Victoria, BC

In this video, Solara gives a tour of one of our earlier food forest / edible forest garden landscape installations in Victoria, BC.
All on less than 1/10th acre, we have planted:
Tree/Shrub Layer:
- pears, plums, apples, hazelnut, quince, goumi, mulberry, autumn live, Chilean guava, pineapple guava, raspberries, seabuckthorn, currants, blueberries, josta berries
Herbaceous Layer:
- artichoke, cardoon, comfrey, Egyptian walking onions, chives, sweet cicely, lavender, rosemary, yarrow and more..
Ground Cover:
- costal strawberry, clover, winter peas

[@DeesBotanicalBliss]

Edutaining video very well informed now of some edible bushes like the autumn olive I never new of . I can visualize the design from your description. Good job 👍

[@dstap]

fantastic video! very exciting to have 7 years check-up on one of the first sites you guys designed and planted. so fun and so much plant knowledge in your presentation ! thanks for sharing.

[@hatchetnseed]

Thanks Daniel!

[@gardenjoy9371]

Thanks so much for sharing the progress after 7 years. We are in year 3 and we have planted many of the same support species, so it was great to see what might happen to the sizes of the trees in a few years. I also have squirrels and I don't get any ripe hazelnuts from my trees, but I do get small, unripe ones. As soon as I see the first squirrel in the tree, I harvest what I want from the trees. I usually take the bottom half and let the squirrels have the top half. At this stage, you can crack the shells with your teeth and eat the undeveloped, soft nut. It is very nutritious and tastes like hazelnut. I've dried them and roasted them too. I learned this from the gypsy community that lives near me. If I forget to watch for squirrels, I usually have a neighborhood kid eating from the tree at the road one day, which reminds me that it's time to harvest.

[@awkwardbbq8332]

Amazing job!! What a gratifying project.

[@Vepoch]

Love 😍

[@IS-217]

HEY THERE! I just discovered your channel today. You guys do beautiful work and have so much knowledge. What a beautiful property this is thank you for sharing. I have a question about summer pruning. I live in southern Ontario, zone 5 roughly. I have a small urban backyard food forest myself. I have been watching some videos about summer pruning fruit trees and wanted to give it a try this year to help promote more fruit set next year and slow the vigor a bit. I wonder how late would you guess I can do a pruning. I would like to prune but don't want to injure my trees leading into fall / winter. Do you think I can still prune them back some now (September 8). My first frost date where I live is somewhere around early to mid October. Should I leave them (no summer prune). If I leave them alone then should I skip winter prune? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks again for the tour. Beautiful job guys!

[@hatchetnseed]

In your climate, I would summer prune in July mostly, possibly a little bit into August. Also, sometime June shoots removal is a good option to nip back unwanted water sprouts.