High Density Food Forest Pruning + Design (15 month syntropic system)

Diving into the details of this mid summer intervention.
This video covers:
- Row orientation and layout
- Species selection
- Mexican Sunflower and Tree Lucerne pruning
- Biomass organising
- Moving ecological succession forward
- Planting things from seed into a young food forest

[@TimmehNovak]

Great work dude! So awesome you’re sharing your extensive knowledge!

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Thanks mate! Feels good to make the info available to people

[@Kevin-Cruz]

Mother Nature loves to humble us Agroforesters with those surprise frosts!! Love the video man, always a pleasure to see pumping systems while it's cold and dry here in FL :)

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Haha you’re absolutely right about the humbling nature of this work (especially in these marginal climates!) Glad we’re in opposite hemispheres, because I’ll be watching your pumping systems when it’s cold and dark here too haha

[@vincentput]

Must be stressful these surprise frosts in Southern US states lately. Makes it difficult for species selection I imagine. We have a similar problem in Eastern Belgium. Winters are milder in general nowadays only mild frost and a week or two of snow mostly. But in feb/march you get 12 degrees celcius weather and everything goes in to spring mode. And then boom march/april a few late frosts hit hard. Also summers are getting like 10 degrees celcius hotter than usual and a lot drier. Challenging!

[@kinderhomeschoolingYT]

I love watching your work! What do you do about the leaf curl on the peaches? Also if your support species are half a metre apart, how far apart are your crop-bearing trees like peaches and sapote? Thank you!

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

I don't do anything about leaf-curl, other than remove the leaves with visible damage early in the season. I'm always planting new peach seeds (direct down) in the agroforestry rows (they only take 3-4 years to begin fruiting) - The idea is I'll find genetics that aren't as badly affected by the leaf curl. And support species are 50cm apart, but between those are LOTS of dense seedlings popping up (again, direct sown) so it's hard to give numbers on the edible species density. They're popping up everywhere along the midline haha

[@edugarciamartinez626]

Great job! could you tell me the distance between rows?

[@olafentamaraj.1811]

Thanks for the video! I see you're using acacia (Robinia), i have loads of them growing, but i just despise those thorns! Do you really just throw them onto the ground?

[@mykibanez7767]

What is your spacing between rows?

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

3-4m

[@mcmac1814]

Yes, pruning is a pleasure! Just some questions about frost and bananas: How many days and degrees below zero Celsius do you have per year? Will bananas produce fruits even if burned each year by frost? Thanks! Great and inspiring work!

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Frost and bananas! On average (the last few years) we've got around 3-4 frosts that go below zero. Bananas will produce fruit in these conditions, but quality will be greatly impacted depending on if the bunch is ripening in winter vs spring/summer. The improving microclimate should continue to keep frost off the bananas as time goes on - fingers crossed!

[@bhoom2tika]

Great video bro thanks , vegetative growth is awesome but what about fruit production ?

[@acasas28]

Do Mexican sunflowers act like other sunflowers where they an allelopathic chemical -- one that inhibits the growth of plants in the area?

[@matthewphares4588]

Why not stack up the green fertilizer in the alley ways to smother out the grass? The water will run off into the tree lines if the mulch is built up enough.

[@househasfruits7090]

U should use sweet potato for ground cover in the walking paths

[@robertling9872]

Thanks for sharing your beautiful forest garden.

[@oldmanfigs]

Why is there never allot of food in these food forests?

[@MarviRafaelMontecillo]

do you have low strata medium succession support species? i wonder what happens when all the bananas and trees grow higher. also do you think this design is possible for a larger farm, say 8 hectares? i dont know if the labor reuirement becomes too much?

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Scale depends on management type - Manual labor, machinery etc

[@deanhoward7534]

Nice work bro, that's coming along nicely. I'm still keen to get over to see your patch and have a yarn, just been too busy. Once banana planting season is done I will give you a call. Can't agree more with planting everything you can, then thin to waste. Just makes sense. Especially tree Lucerne

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Thanks mate, yeah absolutely come out for a visit! Just shoot me a message sometime and we'll make it happen. Be great to swap some plants

[@LLanfri]

Really thought-provoking video! Thank you, keep up the nice work 🤙🏼

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Thank you mate!! Glad you enjoyed it

[@Lukes__foodforest]

Be great if you did a video on ether here or Insta about keeping your tools sharp as that can be a real skill.

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Great idea 👍

[@ddachilles1]

Hello Byron, just discovered your channel. I like your system very much. What's the goal behind your system? Having focus on fruit trees?

[@MateoKupstysChica]

Byron, thanks for the vid. Now, here you show us a row that is designed to go from east to west. But on another video, you say it should go from north to west, so that independent from the season, light will be better distributed. What is then the best alignment of the row? east-west or south-north?

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

North-South is optimal. My examples of east-west rows are only oriented that way because that’s how this place was originally set up. Doing it from scratch I wouldn’t ever go E/W

[@BenedictNoel]

​@@byron.in.new.zealandhow would you position your Mexican sun flowers if you were planting north to south, would it be on the west side to catch the afternoon sun?

[@gaza1677]

Do you irrigate ?? What are your commercial crops??

[@ShemBoothSpain]

Really great energy and video, love it

[@megm.c4026]

Nice!! Hope you fared ok in cyclone.

[@kevinhenson942]

Looks beautiful man

[@humanbeingnotahumandoing1]

Thank you so much for that video, so inspiring to see u sharing what u've learned on ur way. And so many cricket sounds it's amazing how alive this place seems, much love

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Thanks mate! Glad you enjoyed 🙏 And yeah the cicadas are certainly a sound of summer haha

[@Crina-LudmilaCristeaAuthor]

Great!

[@cacosta6294]

Any problema with disease in your fruit trees , ir pests ?

[@byron.in.new.zealand]

Citrus borer in some of the more established areas and leaf curl in a number of the peaches