Help Me Design My Backyard Forest Garden!

I final have a bit of land and am eager to get started on my backyard forest garden! I have a little under a tenth of an acre to start with, and I want to start with fruit plants since they take longer to establish. Details as follows.

Location: Southwest Virginia in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Zone 7.

Area: A little under a tenth of an acre on a north-facing lot, about a third of which is perpetually shaded. The yard is surrounded by a chicken wire fence about 3’ high (but it does nothing to stop the deer, voles, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, and other animals that may target my plants).

Sunlight: The bottom third of the yard gets virtually no sun, but the top two-thirds get abundant sun most of the day.

Soil: Has not been formerly tested, but based on personal observation, regional trends, and weed indicators the soil is poorly draining, acidic, clay soil. The northern side of the yard where I want to plant the fruit is the lowest part of the yard and may have more drainage issues than the rest of the yard. But it also gets the most sun.

Resources and limitations: Limited budget due to current lack of income. No compost bin established yet (but soon!). Collected loads of leaf litter and an assortment of wood logs and branches from my neighbors. Have small worm compost bin. Saved a ton of cardboard from my move here. Car-free household.

Immediate Goals:
• Install privacy barrier on the north side, potentially using a fruit hedge.
• Establish fruit trees and shrubs as soon as possible.
• Control excessive mosquito population, potentially through the use of a wildlife pond.

Potential Fruit Plants I am Considering:
• Centennial Apple tree
• Combo Dwarf Plum tree*
• Combo Dwarf Cherry tree*
• Makedonia Red Pomegranate shrub
• Legacy Blueberry shrub
• Oneal Southern Highbush shrub
• Cherry Red Currant shrub
• Sweet Scarlet Goumi shrub
I picked these based on personal interest, self-fertility, size, climate hardiness, and availability at local nursery (aside from the combo trees, which would be from further away). Beyond these factors, I know very little about how successful they’d be under the conditions in my yard. I also have a dwarf patio peach tree and a hibiscus tree  in pots that where gifted to me. I would like to replant them in the backyard.

Tentative Plan: Sheet mulch the planting areas using what I have on hand plus some commercial compost from the hardware store before the year ends. Plant fruit shrubs and trees next spring. Possibly sow some nitrogen fixing ground and root crops nearby.

Quandaries:
• Will my soil be ready to support the perennial fruits I want to plant by next spring?
• Would I, a novice gardener who has no experience with perennials, be taking on too much by trying to plant so many things at once?
• To lime or not to lime for the trees? Or gypsum or not to gypsum? I am operating on the assumption that the soil is relatively acidic, but I will get hard numbers soon. Would simply increasing organic material boost microbial activity enough to overcome potential pH issues for the trees or are industrial amendments a must?
• What else should I do to ensure success?

Nice yard! If you are really hard up for cash, and you need a way to build up your soil, start with the chickens! Instead of a coop, have you considered a mobile chicken system? They will do a lot of work for you. You can probably start selling eggs to your neighbors or offsetting your grocery bill to buy other stuff. Planting herbs like thyme and oregano, and greens from seeds can be super cheap and chickens love them. Southern States sells deer mix, which has stuff like clover and turnips, and kale. I bet chickens would enjoy this mix as well. Any root tubers that form would help break up the clay and add organic material.

You have interesting challenges and opportunities!

The highly shaded area would be a good location for a compost pile, a mushroom growing area, or shade tolerant wildflowers. While most wildflowers are not edible, they will attract pollinators to the food garden and help create a healthy ecosystem.

With so much of your land shaded, be careful of putting in too many trees that will shade things even more. Focus on dwarf fruit trees, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and small nut trees.

Be sure to leave enough sunny area for a vegetable garden.

For low areas prone to wetness, put in raised beds for vegetables or berries, or a raised mound for small trees. You want the top 6 inches or so of growing soil to be able to drain well even when the larger area around it has standing water.

Check out David the Good's book on Grocery Row Garden. He is experimenting with a system that mixes perennial fruit trees with row crops.

Brent Bowden wrote:Nice yard! If you are really hard up for cash, and you need a way to build up your soil, start with the chickens! Instead of a coop, have you considered a mobile chicken system? They will do a lot of work for you. You can probably start selling eggs to your neighbors or offsetting your grocery bill to buy other stuff. Planting herbs like thyme and oregano, and greens from seeds can be super cheap and chickens love them. Southern States sells deer mix, which has stuff like clover and turnips, and kale. I bet chickens would enjoy this mix as well. Any root tubers that form would help break up the clay and add organic material.

Thanks! I am still on the fence about chickens. I don't know if I cam ready to handle them, but I know they would be a great addition to the ecosystem I want to foster. I think root tubers are a great idea.

Cathy James wrote:You have interesting challenges and opportunities!

The highly shaded area would be a good location for a compost pile, a mushroom growing area, or shade tolerant wildflowers. While most wildflowers are not edible, they will attract pollinators to the food garden and help create a healthy ecosystem.

With so much of your land shaded, be careful of putting in too many trees that will shade things even more. Focus on dwarf fruit trees, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and small nut trees.

Be sure to leave enough sunny area for a vegetable garden.

For low areas prone to wetness, put in raised beds for vegetables or berries, or a raised mound for small trees. You want the top 6 inches or so of growing soil to be able to drain well even when the larger area around it has standing water.

Check out David the Good's book on Grocery Row Garden. He is experimenting with a system that mixes perennial fruit trees with row crops.

Thanks for the advice and recommendations! I got a shady wildflower seed mix that I am eager to try, and I definitely want to add mushrooms in the future.

Since my low, wet area is to the north, that is where I planned to plant most of the trees and shrubs. That way their shadows will most fall north and outside the yard. But, of course, that leaves the drainage problem. Raised mounds seems like an excellent solution.

The nursery I planned to buy from is having a sale this weekend, so I decided I will buy my fruit hedge plants now and hope the ground won't be too frozen to plant them when they arrive.  My soil pH appears to be around 5.99, but my albeit limited research suggests that all the shrubs I am planning can tolerate soil that acidic.

I've started sheet mulching the hedge bed. I cut back the vines that had taken over the area and worked in a soil amendment with organic matter and gypsum called "Claybreaker" that I hope will improve drainage. I lightly sprinkled food scraps on top in hopes of encouraging worms and other life to further loosen and enrich the soil and topped with cardboard. Then I added a thick layer of fallen leaves I collected and topped with a light sprinkling of compost followed by wood chips.

I think the food scraps and compost layers were a little too light since I had a limited amount for the coverage area. Hopefully it will still work well.