Alan Carter

Congratulations to the winners! If you weren't lucky enough, you can also get a lot of information on perennial vegetables and forest gardening in cool climates on my website at www.foodforest.garden.

Anne Halpin wrote:Hi Alan, welcome! I am excited to check out your book! Living in the Pacific NW, sometimes it feels like my neighborhood is a food forest, especially this time of year,  as apples, pears, quince, and plums line the streets and their fruit falls like manna! It is magical. My morning walks become a smorgasbord with ‘free’ boxes abound. In my very small yard, I’m making the shift from annual vegetable garden to edible perennials, mostly in the form of dwarf fruit trees, berries, herbs, etc. It’s such a small space though, I don’t think it could ever be considered a forest, unless perhaps if one was a gnome

Hi Anne. Thanks Your neighbourhood sounds wonderful. And your garden might not be considered a forest, but it definitely sounds like a forest garden. A forest garden is about mimicking a natural forest in the diversity and relationships of its plants, not its height!

Hi Cherry. I'd be surprised if you couldn't plant citrus in autumn, but I'm in the cool temperature zone and no citrus grow here, so I don't have much experience with them. Maybe someone else can help?

Lorinne Anderson wrote:I would be concerned that the straw enclosed in chicken wire around the trunk might provide a "perfect" home for rodents - with your tree as breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This is my "gut" talking - no experience with this way of insulating a tree; but I do know a lot about mice/rats/voles...and I fear they would LOVE this set up.

Indeed. Here voles sometimes learn that they can chew their way into the plastic tubes that trees are often planted in. Once in they get a warm, dry home with built-in food!

Brian Guetzlaff wrote:Welcome!  Out of curiosity, does the book address what to do with smaller spaces?  We're on a lot that's about 1/6 acre (so not a lot of room).  Many thanks!

Hi Brian.Thanks :) The book is specifically aimed at small spaces, which is what the In Your Garden part of the title is getting at. My garden is only twenty metres by ten. I actually think that forest gardening is better suited to small to mid sized spaces than large ones since the gardener is so integral to them. I like the Indonesian term for them, which means home garden rather than forest garden

You're quite right, most forest gardens are top heavy in sugary fruits, many of which then have more fruit added to preserve them! It really needn't be this way, since the edible part of most perennials is the young shoot, which is usually more palatable and nutritious than the mature leaves.

The big problem with carbs is not the carbohydrates themselves but the ratio of easily digested carbohydrates to soluble fibre. The fibre is needed to feed our gut biome and it has been systematically removed from modern diets. In a forest garden diet it comes built in.

If your post wins my book you'll get a list of hundreds of perennial vegetables suitable for a cool climate, but if not you can get the same information in a less systematic format on my website at www.foodforest.garden.

We have two forest-garden-ish community gardens near me in Aberdeen. I say 'ish' because one lacks a productive tree layer, being surrounded already by large trees and a building, and the other lacks a productive ground layer because of the issues you mention with dogs. However, I think they both prove the principle that forest gardens work well as community gardens. For me they actually work better than annual ones as they are more resilient and the food is easier to share out equitably since it takes less work to grow it but more work to pick it. They have a combined area of maybe 100 square metres (pure guess) and could easily be managed by 2 people.

It looks like a Daubenton's kale, which grows to make a mound the best part of a metre high and across. Its shoots will arch over and root at the tip, at which it becomes a bit of a sprawling mess. I wouldn't let it do that, but deliberately pot up a new cutting every few years as individual plants only live 5-6 year in my garden. They'll take a moderate amount of shade - 2 hours of full sun should be enough. I find them more pest-resistant than other kales, but you do seem to have a problem there! I'd pick off the caterpillars until it gets established, when it should be more resistant. It might be that they do better in a pest-predator-rich forest garden than in a pot. I've never netted mine and they do sometimes get hammered by pigeons in hard winters, but they always recover and I feel that their need is greater than mine at that point.

https://www.foodforest.garden/2012/10/12/daubentons-kale-growing-and-cooking/

I'm glad you've found the blog helpful: good luck winning the book!

I'll edit for three main reasons.

Dietary balance. I like to keep a diverse diet, balanced between different food groups. If the output of the garden is tending too much to fruit, or leaves, or whatever, I'll reduce that set of plants to make more space for something I'd like more of.

Concluded experiments. I don't like to say 'failed' experiments, but having tested some plants it's time for them to come out or be relocated. Some over-aggressive species end up in pots. Or the plant might not thrive, or I might not like it. Temperate forest gardening is still very much an experimental adventure, and you need to test things in your own garden and kitchen. I am fairly slow to completely get rid of a plant, as a new growing or cooking technique has often turned a disappointing plant into a stalwart after many years of experiments. To an extent I let the garden self-edit. When I get a new plant I'll usually plant it in a few different spots in the garden. Usually I'll then thin (or the plants will self-thin) to the place where it does best - although with some 'spready' pants there is an argument for thinning them to where they do worst!

Density. If self-seeded plants are coming up too thickly or it turns out I've planted something too close, I'll thin. Overcrowded plants are usually less productive of the parts you want than well-spaced ones.

There are some things you can do to create a favourable microclimate, such as planting on south facing slopes or next to rocks and bodies of water for frost sensitive plants. But it sounds like you are doing these things already. Are you sure you have exhausted all the possibilities of your hardier trees before putting so much effort into planting things that don't grow there naturally? For me New Hampshire is in the far south, so everything in my book should grow well for you, and more besides. Remember that trees aren't just about fruit, but include nuts like hazels and butternuts, salads like lindens, shoots like harigiri, koshiabura and toon, spices like Sechuan pepper and saps like sugar maple - and that a forest garden isn't just the trees. I get over a hundred species from my small garden without doing anything especially fancy for tender plants.