Cameron Green wrote:Good Morning! I purchased an off grid property in the Oachita Mountains of Oklahoma. I'm hoping to find people who have created food forests in my area. I have watched countless videos but i am having problems finding information regarding my specific area. around 18 inches of precip annually, hot summers, currently a yellow pine / oak forest with very little shrub/small plant growth and a lot of leaf litter on the ground.
Thank you!
First off I'd like to welcome you to the aera and let you know that we get a whole lot more than just 18" of rain fall around here. Just this last spring we had enough to completely fill my water troughs in a single week, usually around 30-40 inches annually,
That being said however we also get long spells without rain and I have seen several of the ponds come close to completely drying out so you will have to store and treat your water if you plan to collect rainwater for your property. As for a well... good luck, they don't seem to be very successful most of the time here but there are some successful ones. As for the leaf litter, it is one of the only things that protect the little bit of natural soil on the surface from washing down to the valley floors and exposing the rocks so I personally try not to remove it if it can be avoided.
I have a small 7.5ish acre place just south of McAlester and I have found that preparing a Simi raised bed situation for any exposed garden areas, I use mine for my vine plants like watermellon, and lining the bottom of it with clay can greatly improve your water retention in the garden as our sandstone mountains have a tendency to absorb a lot of the water and can make it inaccessible to your garden during the droughts we get in the summer. Another commonly used method around here is tub gardening. As I'm sure you have learned by now we have a lot of cattle ranches around here and most of the ranchers put out mineral tubs for their cows, as a result there are plenty of empty tubs laying around that you can obtain (usually for free) as well as plenty of nitrogen Rich fertilizer which when mixed with that precious natural top soil can produce some very healthy vegetable plants.as well as mellons. And if you like okra then your in for a treat as it thrives around here. I have actually found myself planting to much for my son and I to consume my first year out here on our land and had such an abundance of it that I was selling boxes full to the local grocery store every few days . My personal list of staples consist of okra, bell peppers, tomatoes, Onion, squash, zucchini, corn, cabbage, lettuce, Jalapenos,and green chili. In addition we grow watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew. I also have several herbs like basil, parsley and oregano to name a few. I have a few apple trees and plum trees that while a little tricky to get up to size because of the extreme heat and cold we get ( I bought mine as saplings that were already producing a few pieces of fruit and grew them in tubs for the first couple of years so I could move them indoors as needed till they were big enough to deal with it before I transplanted them to the ground but still cover/wrap them when it's really bad out) They are now quite healthy and provide me with enough fruit to keep me happy every year. Also we have lots of persimmons trees and blackberrie bushes that grow wild around here so I make lots of jelly every year except when we get a late freeze, when those happen we don't really get much fruit from the wild ones. I hope this information helps you as you build a successful garden in the forest on your place and I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor posted here next year.
P.S. I don't have any pictures of my setup right now or I would share but here are a couple pics from our trials at the place we stayed down here before we bought our own land.
The por cantaloupe plant we had in the middle ran dry several times whilst still providing us with 10 mellons that year. I learned that I needed to line the bottom of my Mellon beds with clay before laying my soil so the soil didn't dry up so quickly.
As for pests the only thing I found to be a real problem was the fire ants were eating my okra and although I haven't really found a permanent solution I did learn that if you spray the plants with a mixture of dawn and water it seems to kill off any ants on the plants and no others were found on the treated areas for the rest of the growth but new buds would have to be sprayed as the flowers came into full bloom to keep them safe...cheep trick and it washed right off after harvesting without affecting the food.
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