Martin Crawford : A.R.T forest garden

[@djschenker2848]

Still one of the best food forest info sources, thank you Martin for your practical wisdom for peace on earth 🕊🕊🌳🌳⛲⛲

[@TheWoodlandOrchard]

I'm enjoying transitioning my orchard to a food forest, coppice and woodland garden. Love every second I spend in it. Martin is an inspiration.

[@auraajah3072]

Is amazing agricultural

[@TheNightshadePrince]

That’s not true forest gardens were common in ancient times by Celtic tribes and they never went away they just became less popular as the grain of the Celtics no longer acorns but barley and wheat. The native Americans also had forest gardens the ones in California would practice controlled burns of the Forrest to stop forest fires. Please look into the history of things before saying they are new. :)

[@SanderBessels]

Can forest gardens be commercial? Well, the point is that you needs some human input, especially in terms of harvesting and some maintenance like cutting some plants back to give others more space. You can ask customers not to pay with money for the products, but with services like bringing in some valuable waste. Human pee an poo, or some other biologically valuable waste for instance. A forest garden should preferably not be maintained by a single farmer needing an income, but by a community profiting from the output and delivering the input. If people own the land that they get their food from, they will connect with nature much better and see their impact and dependency directly in front of their eyes. And it’s much more enjoyable to “shop” directly from nature than to shop from a supermarket with all the advertisements and plastics.

[@williammcduff6531]

Actually the forest leaves, etc....is sufficient waste to regenerate the soil and the microorganisms without exterior inputs. But agree doing some chop and drop of excess growth will keep it more productive and accessible.

[@SanderBessels]

@@williammcduff6531 Of course it depends on the specific plants you have, but I guess that when you harvest a lot (which is the goal, right?) you also need to bring in some nutrients. You can work with nitrogen fixing plants and every plant fixes carbon, but I have no idea how it works with phosphor and minerals in the long run. I suppose that either animal droppings or human droppings are needed at least in a low quantity to keep the balance in the long run. Naïvely, I would expect that you need to return roughly the same amount as you harvest. And you also want your vegetables and fruits to contain iron, calcium, magnesium, etc. in healthy quantities, right?

[@trinaka]

There's no need to add any thing other than your plants.