Monthly Food Forest Tours! Let's create a food forest together!

oh yeah and i found one nearby to one i made
made by a moose it looks like
but they chose to make it in an area of dense brush.... shade already there....

Thanks M.!

That's a good idea about the shade. I've thought about trying to plant trees there to help shade and reduce evaporation, hopefully that will help!

That's really neat about the animals making one, its amazing the natural instincts they have.

Quick post so I don't lose track of the thread.  Will come back later and view the videos.  Thanks Steve.

Thanks Ruth!

This video is part 4 of the weekly food forest tour for 2/23/20.



I originally was going to dig a pool in between the larger cherry trees. Then I decided to make it bigger, and then I decided I needed to focus on some other pools in more strategic locations first, that I could use the dirt to put around nearby fruit trees in more wet areas. I started digging the outline of this pool, which will probably be one of the larger ones, and dug about one half of the outline of its shape.

It will probably connect to the ditches located around each of the mounds of both cherry trees. At the point where these ditches connect to the pool, I'll probably make a little mound, so that the water will fill up the ditch around the trees first and then overflow excess water into the pools.

Late winter has been a great time of the year to locate potential areas for the pools. The weather is cool and rainfall is usually high here this time of year, and as a result the water level is usually at its highest. Natural puddles can form in these really wet areas where the water drains to and pools up. I'm trying to get the outlines dug and maybe the first layer of soil dug out for the pools during this time of year, then later in the year when the rains and water level drop enough, they can be dug out deeper. When I dug out just the first few inches of soil recently, the pool filled up overnight. It makes it a little harder to dig when it's underwater.

I'm excited to create a lot more of these pools very soon!

This video is part 5 of the weekly food forest tour for 2/23/20.



One reason I'm waiting until the weather warms up a little to pull over the little apple tree with two main shoots, is that it could probably be pulled over now, but it would most likely pull the main trunk over with it. By waiting until the weather's a little warmer, it will be easier to pull the side shoot down and keep the main shoot vertical.

One of the blueberries from my other video about getting free blueberries from existing bushes is about 4 feet tall and has a few flower buds. It looks really happy in it's new home where it was recently transplanted to a few months ago. I'll post those videos below.

One of the European plums looks like it has a few flower buds. If they are flowers I'll pick them off since the tree is so young.

I show how far some of the blueberries were originally planted from the fruit trees. With the fruit trees being so small, having the blueberries pretty close to the young fruit trees will help shade the ground and minimize undesirable plants coming up, and will also make the most use of the existing growing space. As the tree grows and its canopy expands, the blueberry will also expand and will send out suckers to increase its size.

The apple tree with the big red leaves is still keeping its leaves. It must think it's a perennial!

This video is Part 6 of the weekly food forest tour for 2/23/20.



A few of the blueberries and other fruit trees have some deer damage, so I pruned off the damaged wood back to a healthy bud.

Sometimes damaged blueberries will have hollow wood. I like to remove this back to healthy solid wood. The hollow wood can allow water to pool inside of the blueberry stems and may cause issues later.

This is really helpful, Steve. We've had that very weird weather, too. It's really good to be able to see what other people's plantings look like so I know mine aren't in as bad of a shape as I thought.

Thanks Diane!

This video is Part 7 of the weekly food forest tour for 2/23/20.



Unlike fruit trees, I leave young blueberries that are a few feet tall to produce some berries. Especially if there are smaller blueberries nearby, the larger blueberries can be allowed to produce a crop which will slightly slow down their growth so the younger bushes can catch up.

The blooming plum tree smells so good, I wish I could share the smell with y'all!

One of my larger apple trees had some small branches growing from near the base of the trunk. I'm pretty sure that two of them are definitely part of the named variety, and the other two may be the variety or possibly the rootstock. I wounded the branches and piled the dirt up around them, so hopefully they will root during this growing season and I can root them and have a few own root apple trees!

I may turn a fallen over plum tree into a plum bush!