Food Forest Strategy for High Yields | Experimental Permaculture

In this video, I outline my experimental strategy in how I am approaching the creation of 3 food forest inspired projects on our permaculture growing site in zone 8, UK. Huw's Soft Fruit Collection: directplants.c...
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[@ohio_gardener]

Years ago when I planted the fruit tree orchard I broadcast Red Clover seeds over the grass between the trees. It quickly established and became the predominant plants. It not only added beauty to the area and attracted many pollinators, but it added nitrogen to the soil to feed the fruit trees.

[@Isaacmantx]

And, red clover is an extremely competitive grower that can suppress unwanted grasses and weeds as well.

[@TheRosangela9369]

Take a shovel and take a look into the soil, there are many of workers, good worms!

[@HuwRichards]

Time for me to get red clover seeds! Already grows really well on the other side of the field too - thanks!

[@Sandwichking-hikes]

I started a food forest from a dense forest regeneration and the hardest part is clearing trees for light to new plantings.

[@barbarafritchie2000]

I started my food forest a few years ago with my fruit orchard. Just planted 3 Hazel Nut trees yesterday. I’m happy I decided to go this way.

[@MellyoftheSpring]

My near future plans include hazelnuts, which look like they will be a great fit for my growing conditions. They're such a lovely nut! ❤ Good luck with yours 💚

[@johnlord8337]

If you have the HUW-n out area of the grass meadow for an orchard, then consider removing all the grass within and outside of the drip zone of that tree. Then plant productive options of comfrey, alfalfa (extremely deep rooted plant pulling up minerals to surface tree roots), nitrogen-fixing clover (or pea vetch) crop cover keeping the under-soil cool and moist for the tree (as well as flowers for bees, butterflies, and flies) for pollination, edible hostas/mints/basil/thyme/sage/oregano/lavender herbals keeping bugs away but pollinators close. Also consider planting chives/garlic/onions/scallions/shallots within the depleted drip zone of the tree (where no roots and rootlets have previously eaten up all of the nutrients in that area). One can then chop-and-drop clover, pea vetch, comfrey, herbals ... while the edible hostas/chives/garlic/ onions/scallions/shallots keep away the slugs, snails, ants, crawly bugs and beetles. One "can" translocate edible mushroom spores, and have the drip line interior of mushrooms, pulling in colloidal minerals to the tree, while sharing sugars wit the mushroom.

[@PermacultureHomestead]

i appreciate that you admit you have been critical, i also appreciate that you are seeing how permaculture CAN feed people w/ small changes. In our climate we start harvesting in February and dont stop harvesting until Oct/Nov, Smart planning in the right climate can generate food w/ very little inputs

[@jeanwatson189]

Hi Huw, I think the modified hedgerow is a good idea in your situation. I'm in temperate SE Australia, and even here with our much higher light levels we don't plant food forests up densely. I think most permies actually plan their "food forest" as a perennial system of mixed, useful plants that tends to vary from about 1/4 densely planted on the south side (in the Southern Hemisphere) through about 1/2 the area made up of a mosaic of guilds and clearings, to 1/4 low plantings on the north side to allow plenty of light in. So it's hardly a forest! And yes, many people do use annual cover crops/living mulches/wildflowers which they chop and drop as the groundcover layer is filled in. Many practitioners here regard bees as an integral part of the forest garden system, and some also cultivate mushrooms such a shiitake in the shady understorey, as it's a good way to make use of those lower-light areas.

[@johnytwo]

Oh, just an hour ago I wanted to search the Tap o' Noth videos, but forgot the name and did not really know how for gods sake I am gonna find their channel again! And here you go mentioning them. Thanks!

[@floriswou]

The 7 layers are totally possible in your climate, although the density of the upper layers will be much less in comparison with warmer climates. The placements of the upper layers are more placed on the shady side to create shelter and sun traps, rather than growing over the entire site :)

[@ecocentrichomestead6783]

"There's no such thing as a system where you put in no effort and get high yields" My opinion exactly. And one thing I have against many proponents of "permaculture". The desire for high yield with less effort has resulted in the fossil fuel large machinery driven agriculture that poisons everything in sight. Permaculture needs humans to become one with nature. Neither lording over it or standing back and watching things grow.

[@jeppeleth3888]

One person can put a lot of effort into a project with a passion to learn and connect with nature. Some things might seem like a lot of effort to one person but is a dream job for another person. Ultimately the building of strong comunities with a focus on doing what serves you, codependace, sharing and respecting natural world in the process. All freedom to all the people. And animals, and plant, and fungi, ..............

[@HuwRichards]

Nicely put! Being at one with nature, that is precisely it, working with rather than against or even not at all! See ourselves as a key component of the system.

[@HuwRichards]

Exactly!

[@janjohnson3437]

Linear food forest Huw's way seems to be a well thought out, intelligent and applicable concept. Exactly what permaculture should be. I have an allotment in the North of England and I get frustrated every time I see an article about food forests because it's so impractical in my situation and maybe even at scale in my area. I love that you experiment to see what works rather than repeat theoretical info that probably doesn't work in particular circumstances. I love the honesty and the careful, respectful communication style. 👍👍

[@jeas4980]

When I was fortunate enough to live in the rolling hills of the Rhinelandfalz region of Germany as a child...there was a large hill that was home to a large corn field on the back (I assume south) slope, and sheep grazing in the valley to the east(?), half way down the opposite slope from the corn (north?) it was left "natural" forest which the farmers used to cut branches from to feed the sheep and goats in winter.. that natural forest was brimmed with an enormous hedge of blackberry brambles and further down the valley there were linear orchards of pear and apple trees in a meadow setting... in the valley and up the opposite slope their were fields of grains. There was a thi creek that flowed in the center of the valley and (aside from serving as irrigation for the grain field and sheep pasture) their were strawberries in the marshy areas, then stinging nettles and then raspberries all along the path. In my mind... that's a food forest.... arranging food for people and animals in a system as close to nature as is condusive to actually making use of it. My brother and I would grab a knife and a bucket; starting at our homes plum tree we would fill our buckets all along the path, across the creek and through the orchard and beyond the blackberry hedges and sit in a clearing on that hill and eat our fruit salad while we watched the sheep graze. The absolute best time of my life.

[@TheRosangela9369]

Oh Rheinland-Pfalz, I love it so much!I was born in Berlin and it was Love at first sight, I fell in Love with the Landscape, the villages... I have a Garden in Dörrenbach and 2 tiny woods in Erfweiler

[@jeas4980]

@@TheRosangela9369 Yes, that's it. Rheinland-Pfalz... we lived in the last house, on the last road leaving Schrollbach (I probably spelled that wrong too). It's the most beautiful place I've ever lived.

[@tristanbrownhill8698]

I have planted a linear food forest this year (i prefer food hedge as linear food forest doesnt roll off the tongue 😂). I am using lupins as a nitrogen fixer. Perennial so only plant once, great big flowers for me & pollinators. Nitrogen is fixed in roots so no need to chop drop just let die back. Ive laid down cardboard, bit of fresh horse manure and good covering of woodchip this year. Plan is to only apply woodchip and small amounts of grass clippings to maintain the food forest. Only want to add 'raw' undecomposted mulchs as hope this promotes decomposers in the soil and is just a lot easier and is how a forest works.

[@MellyoftheSpring]

Oh. My. Gosh!!! ❤ I can't thankyou enough for this 10 minutes of brilliance. ✨️💐🌈 Now I know what to do with the little forest and southwest mountain side that I'm slowly, with observation and design still much in the early stages... retiring to. The trail builds/hedgerows/apples etc... the understories. All so workable ideas that I can easily adapt to my terraced farm.

[@AndrewZelenka]

❤love that you explain how your demographics change what it is you can and cannot do. Thanks!

[@CopperIslandHomestead]

David the Good has also done some interesting things with this that he calls Grocery Row Gardening 😊 (Mark Shepherd and Stefan Sobkowiak being his inspiration) I love to see different ways to do this as I figure out how to best make it work in my context. Looking forward to seeing yours develop!

[@floriswou]

I love your focus is going more and more going towards permaculture and food forest systems!

[@one_field]

I think the crucial point about being able to feed your family from the land is to highlight what nutrients you actually need, and plant what best supplies those nutrients. For example, staple carbs. The average person or small family can't grow enough annual grains to harvest and process the bulk carb nutrients they rely on. They can, however, harvest enough chestnuts, pine nuts, monkey puzzle nuts and hazelnuts, along with potatoes, sunchokes, taro or yams, to provide for themselves. A food forest that actually feeds you needs to focus on oily and starchy nuts as the main structural plantings. Hazelnuts are fast return on investment (3-5 years); chestnuts and sweet pit apricots (the pit is used as an almond in climates where almonds can't grow) don't take much longer. Hickory can be simmered for the edible oil, in climates too cold for pecans. Pine nut trees can take ten years but yield well in almost every climate. Chilean monkey puzzle trees are super slow but have tremendous yields of food with no effort at all; they don't need fertilizer, pruning, or special harvesting machinery. Acorns and walnuts and other hard-to-process nuts aren't a great choice for normal family fare but they certainly used to be dietary staples and they're excellent livestock feed. Then there are vines that can grow in the forest without killing the trees. In cold climates, air potatoes are very well behaved and don't strangle trees; they yield huge numbers of aerial tubers that are easy to collect and easy to prepare. Ground nuts (apios americana) and air potatoes both have prolific underground tuber yields, and some ground nuts are being bred to produce their nutritious legume pods in colder climates. Below the vine layer, you can plant your annually dug perennial tubers like taro (yes in many cold regions this will still yield) and potatoes and sunchokes. The perennial root crops can go beside them with your perennial leaf crops like mallow and nettle, chives and perennial onions, etc. The list of potential crops is tremendous. Fruit is a pleasant luxury but not a staple crop, nor nutritionally important (you can get vitamin c and the other minerals and vitamins from leaves of a variety of hardy crops). Many of the popular fruits are labor intensive and greedy for fertilizer, though there are exceptions (like mulberries). It's a bit of a waste to grow a food forest that predominantly yields fruit, and particularly wasteful if you're selecting the needy varieties. If you compare nutrients you can glean from intensive annual crops with a set of those fruit trees, then of course you will conclude that you can't feed yourself from a food forest. It's just not a very good comparison. You're comparing apples to... broad beans, I guess? Lol. But you should rather compare bean crops to chestnuts, or hazelnuts. The yields to labor ratio will be eye opening.

[@bpm7210]

Um you need a channel and some videos,sir. Awesome information!

[@TheWildlandersOffGrid]

In our food forest which you can see on our channel we have some different problems. So as, you mention we have, very high and long levels of light, so in April we have 12 hours but this year it was like a hot English summer and by may it went up to 32 some days and builds up to 42 even 44 in July, so it's about shade creation, removing open ground with perennials etc AND managing water etc....

[@CairnOfDunnCroftPermaculture]

Fantastic stuff. I tend to use the food forest concept in a similar way, here. We have extensive shelterbelt plantings. Where we run pathways through the shelterbelts, they're lined with productive species. Very similar to James's linear food forests.

[@tristyquesadilla]

Interesting. A lot to think about for this little urban gardener.

[@jenniwilliams3089]

Thank you for this.... I have been wondering for a long time how a food forest can work in the UK.... I am planning swathes of trees, fenced in in 4m wide sections so goats and horses can graze around them also... regen ag type set up but I want food in there... for people, animals and wildlife, and you've given me some good ideas to add in to my planting!

[@yolliemorph]

Thanks for all the tips for the UK, year 1 for us so am grateful for all design help

[@alexanderockenden2564]

Good vid brother, I think I’ve come to similar conclusions as you. Our young “food forest” near Tregaron is actually looking like a very diverse, partially-wild orchard / wildflower meadow more than a true dense forest. We’ve got 3 layers: fruit / nut canopy, berry / perennial vegetable understory, and some mildly productive ground cover (in the works). For maintenance we’ve just been heavily mulching and occasionally scything directly around the plantings. We’ll do pruning on the domesticated grafted fruit trees once they’re bigger. And then we’re planning to do a limited grazing of Ducks through it once it’s established as well. Hopefully that’ll provide a good yield relative to labor input.

[@cygnusatratus]

Hello Huw, I'm sure you're aware of the works of Patrick Whitefield, so I'm just adding this info for other temperate climate growers. Patrick Whitefield was one of the leading permaculture teachers in the UK and Europe and his books "How to grow a forest garden" and "the Earth Care Manual" really tackle the problem of transfering permaculture from it's tropical and subtropical origins to our temperate climate. By all means, read all the "original" permie authors, but if you're anywhere else than the tropics, add Mr Whitefield to your reading list!

[@xjarheadjohnson]

For a good temperate zone Food Forest example, see Midwest Permaculture.

[@candacelandon4117]

Have you looked at Mark Shepherd's approach? It's similar to this, but lower effort. I don't know that it would suit you, because I think you're oriented towards the higher input/higher control model of growing food, but it might be of interest to your audience?

[@HuwRichards]

Absolutely love his work! Eventually I would like to adopt some of his techniques when working on an even larger scale, and I think his work is some of the most important work out there

[@j.b.4340]

Brilliant. I do something similar, but it’s not well thought out

[@pathofthewarlord6192]

I want to learn about how the annual plants (like carrots, corn, cabbage) "spread" or "expand" and what kinds of plants are the best to plant together in a middle european climate with pretty cold winters.

[@4115steve]

have you considered composting clover? I'm sure you know bee's love clover, it's edible, it fixes nitrogen, it's drought tolerant, and its easy to clear for new plants. For all those reasongs I let it seed in my yard so it takes over.

[@billyjoethegardenvarietysh9264]

Hello! Serious question, is there sites to buy that specific scythe? It’s amazing and I WANT one!!!

[@PlantRelated]

Love your videos and your books. Cant wait for your new book to come out 5/14/24!

[@TheRosangela9369]

Thank you so much!

[@fungusv375]

Huw on a job i was told to leave grass long, and it was the centre or a lawn. On the growth of grass rate i saw the golden ratio now as a joke i said to the person i was working for maybe i should sow and plant like this now thinking about it. On where the sun travels across it does make a golden ratio so south facing east to west. Midday is the centre . I'll try this out when i get free beds they full of food lol just wondered if you saw similar?

[@maxiemills6982]

I am in a Zone 6 in Spokane Washington but I don't believe this tells the whole story of my local climate. We have hot and dry summers that seem to start and end abruptly. What zone are you in and what is your closest town???

[@miroirdusonge]

Fascinating, thank you for your work. I wish you much success. As a practinioner of permaculture though, one should never leave the ground bare and wounded where earthwork has been performed. Instead, a green manure seed mixture should be spread (i.e. grass and clover for the shown climate) slightly covered with mulch, for protection from birds and to retent moisture for sprouting.

[@ThreeRunHomer]

Very interesting! The food forest permaculture people are very cult-like so I’m sure your experiment will draw “that’s not permaculture” criticism from the true believers. 😄

[@HuwRichards]

It absolutely will, but let them blow off some steam it'll do them good;)

[@Paula_T]

@@HuwRichards Huw, please don't plant an herb spiral.

[@HuwRichards]

@@Paula_T NEVER WILL I EVER PLANT ONE🤣

[@Sky-Child]

Greater good (greater good) Seriously though, why not a herb spiral? Have I missed something?

[@hannamaenpaa8929]

​@@Sky-Child because not even herb spirals are a good solution everywhere. Permaculture is no just a collection of one-size-fits-all gardening hacks. In my location there is zero sense building any extra shade into my garden, since the sun angle is so low, that no herb would really thrive on the shadier parts of the spiral, not to mention the area north of the spiral. That would be more like a religious practice than gardening at that point. In other places it might work really well.

[@arfaabbas]

beAuTiFuL

[@Danielmmo1]

Great ...

[@danielahenze8094]

Thank you very much! ( english language ) Herzlichen Dank! ( deutsche Sprache ) Tack ska du ha! ( svenska språk )

[@kimcarrots]

Our food forest gets looted by wildlife . How do you deal with wildlife?

[@ned1177]

thought uk had a well established food forest but you don't mention it....?

[@ned1177]

also could graze geese instead of scything?

[@benrudolph5582]

5:07 Thank you; I'm not the only one. "Permaculture romanticism" is something bothering me too. Too much gospel, too few showing the episteme data.

[@leannekudahl2432]

You are speaking as someone who grows their food in a cooler climate with higher rainfall. You can find excellent ancient examples of food forests in Morocco that create micro climates for growing annuals and perennials amongst their food forests. I think it would be wise if you are going to speak on this subject to first state that you live in a certain climate zone. I also think that a food forest is about a more consistent yield of many things over a longer period of time ,with lower effort; rather than a high yield of fewer things.

[@danielagrace6574]

Think about Vineyard,Huw..

[@HuwRichards]

One's coming no joke!

[@CamKurst]

Hey Huw

[@Matrịx.101-o2s]

That system that does not exist is called dwc 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♂️ Minimum maintenance ease of care 👌😉

[@ladyb7327]

#12 SemiPerma Culture? lol 🌞💃🌕

[@grossindecency]

One strong wind and you lost ALL your fruit in a linear forest. Just a caution.

[@mattwilson9585]

Jesus Christ Loves You He is OUR SAVIOUR We’re ALL SINNERS and NEED A SAVIOUR Romans 3: 10-12 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: Faith Alone in the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (God) to Forgive your Sins through His blood (By believing in this you have become a new creation in Christ, and have a promise you’ll be with the Lord in your death, but also have the Holy Spirit living in you forever as a guide for you). If you believe, from that moment on to eternity you are saved (No matter how much you sin after). 1 Timothy 2:4-6 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. Hell or Heaven? Matthew 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. Matthew 23:13 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? HELL IS A REAL LOCATION ALL NON CHRISTIANS WILL BE THERE Heaven or Hell? A PRAYER FOR SALVATION THROUGH FAITH “I know that I am a sinner and need your forgiveness. I believe that Christ died for my sins and rose three days later from the grave. Thank you for forgiving my sin on the cross. You alone Jesus is now why I have forgiveness and eternal life. Thank you in Jesus name. Amen.” If you have prayed this with faith you are Forgiven and now in the Body of Christ. Welcome brother or sister. Remember saying a prayer does not save you, having Faith does in Jesus and what He did for you. I encourage you to find a Godly Bible believing church as well. It’s so important. God Bless

[@leavealekalone]

Why do I have a major crush on him 😾❤️‍🩹