Your biggest forest garden lessons?

Hello fellow Permies!

In the spirit of crowd sourcing wisdom, gathered from our collective mistakes, I pose to you the following question: What is, or what are your biggest forest garden mistakes lessons that made you wiser?

I'll start!

1. Planting fruit trees untprotected on a former pasture on a vacation home property and being away lots.
This is how my permaculture practice begun. Living in suburban Netherlands, vacations on the French countryside. Bouncing with excitement I planted five fruit trees, blessed them with my joy and went away.
The deer were grateful. The gophers found lovely nesting sites. The elements tested the rusticity of those trees.

Sepp Holzer has a recipe for protective goo one can smear on tree trunks to deter deer. I made my own version (sinde I didn't have the determination to make bone-goo) out of tar, sand, cow poop and ashes. It worked really well.

The gophers. We tried solar-sonar thingies that "would deter gophers". I believe they threw a technoparty. We tried sticks in the ground with empty plastic bottles rattling in the wind. Better, but ugly. What worked? Human urine. The older and masculiner the donor, the better. It's a win-win really; the trees get nitrogen, gophers get deterred and masculine individuals somehow enjoy peeing in the wild. Great!

Thus remain the elements. The only cure herein is for the (over) Enthusiastic Gardener to pace themselves and to educate themselves. There are loads of different varieties of fruit trees and nut trees, and the local nurseries will probably have the best varieties for your area; sun, wind, rain, elevation, soil.

2. Fast forward eleven years (!) and I had moved to a new place with an old orchard (reasons.).
I decided to get sheep to mow the grass, since there was a serious risk of vipers and ticks lurking in the tall grass and we had more pressing things to do than mowing.
After an intense selfeducation period online (thank you for the advice here!) I decided to go for Ouessant sheep. They were small, so light on the soil, and 'rustic'. I love rusticity.
What I failed to notice, was that they also are a somewhat primitive race. So they love browsing. On the edges of the hedge and on ...tree bark.
After all the juicy tall grass had been mowed, the sheep peacefully shifted to peeling off bark from the fruit trees. It took me a while (1,5 days to be exact) to notice what was going on in my otherwise so peaceful orchard.
In the big hurry to fix the problem I wrapped wire fencing around the trees. I now remember again the deer deterring goo - the reason to write this post - which I'll apply as soon as we've made a system to keep the ram at bay whenever I want to work in the orchard. Never a dull moment, huh?

So, what are your forest garden lessons? I'd love to read about them!

Love the topic. I have caged my newest fruit tree. I have a small herd of deer living in my north pasture. I have never heard of Sepp's bone goo. A quick search yielded ... nothing. Could you elaborate? Gophers aren't a problem. But I have 10 new fruit trees coming in March.

I wish I had pruned the trees and kept them a more manageable size. You can order 5’ plastic tree wraps and they will protect trees from deer browse and rubs.

Info on Sepps bone sauce can be found in this thread: https://permies.com/t/1805/Sepp-Holzer-recipe-animals-trees

I learned that I probably should have taken the permaculture design course, not only the master gardening course. I did find and use a garden planner program for the design, but by then we had already started planting, and we should have waited.
I have learned to work with the critters instead of against them. Gophers eat anything I don’t wrap in metal nets, so I wrap most of it, and plant crops I don’t mind them eating.
I have learned to do more research before I buy plants. Last time, I bought a cold hardy banana, only to realize 2 years later, that it’s an ornamental plant, so out it goes.
I have learned that if I want to keep my own fruits and berries, I need to provide food and water for birds and insects. Especially during migration season. Goldfinches, will eat a lot just before they migrate. But if I have plenty of seeds, grains and water set out for them, they will more or less leave my stuff alone.
I have learned that even though we added a 6” layer of compost and partly composted mulch, all over the food forest garden, we still need more. The gophers has spend the last year, pulling it down and mixing it without native soil (sand and clay). We have increased our compost production, but will probably have to buy more anyway.
I also learned to be patient. Often you see a plant gone or partly eaten, and think that’s it, another dead plant to toss. I have learned that isn’t always the case. Very often, they will come back eventually 6 to 18 months later.
I have learned to work with the wildlife, instead of against it.
I have also learned that passion fruit vines, need a heavy duty trellis. We just lost both of our passion fruits, because the trellis collapsed and damaged the roots.

I planted several fruit trees in an unmowed field full of tall "weeds."  I thought I'd done a great thing making 6' tall cages for them to keep deer away while also keeping rabbits away.  Imagine my surprise when one little tree got girdled over the winter, and others severely nibbled around the bases.  Mice!  I'd had no idea they ate the bark of young trees!  So the next year, on went the plastic wrap-around protectors (which was not easy to do reaching through the cages which were buried about 6-8" into the ground...)

We also have squirrels, the smaller version of which are horribly destructive to anything remotely edible.  We've relocated many, but we have to drive them a ways to get them to a place where they won't damage other people's properties.  The larger, "normal" squirrels mainly eat the black walnuts that are all over the property.

I tried interplanting around the trees to create guilds, but the established "weeds" have mostly prevailed while my plantings struggled.  If I had had more time to baby them they may have done better and survived to landrace... but I was a caregiver which took up much of my time.   My garlic was the only thing that survived aside from the fruit trees, although the bulbs were small from that area.  A volunteer grape vine planted itself at the base of one small apple tree, so I let it stay and I try to keep it pruned so it doesn't smother the tree.   I added several baby nut trees to my food forest area, but none of them survived a full year.  

We have moles and voles.  I tried the mole-chaser windmill contraption from Lehman's, which worked for a few years until the bearings rusted out.  And they (or something else) ate my saffron crocus bulbs each year before they could bloom anyway.  If I try those again, I will put each bulb in a hardware cloth cage, or perhaps create a raised bed with hardware cloth under several inches of soil.  But that too will eventually rust away leaving them unprotected.  A feral cat ate some of our moles and mice, as well as some baby bunnies, but I haven't seen it this winter.   I grew potatoes just fine though, so moles must not like potatoes.  Sweet potato vines got decimated by grasshoppers within one 24 hour period, so no harvest from them at all.  

I think what I most need to do is give more attention to my wanna-be food forest plantings during spring, summer and fall.  Weeding was my most-neglected task; I did fairly well with watering.  We do live downwind from a conventional farm field, so things tend to grow slow and small here, I'm guessing from the spray drift.  Aside from planting downwind of a buffer of tall weeds, there isn't much I can do about that.

Probably I have nothing to say to help you. My 'forest garden' exists of a few different fruit trees and berry bushes in my front and back yard. I called it my 'miniature permaculture food forest', but according to the 'rules' here it can not be called a 'food forest' because it is much too small.

There are no gophers or deer here, not even rabbits! The animals most seen in my garden are neighbours' house-cats, and because of the polyculture of mostly perannial plants covering the soil, they are no problem. (only problem: I wasn't able to grow catnip/cat mint, because the cats destroy it). Probably rats and mice do live here, but they hide. And there are all kinds of insects.

The gardens aren't large. Each one (both front and back) is about 8x8 meters. All fruit trees and bushes are planted by me. When we came to live here the back yard was all concrete tiles and the front yard mostly paved, with a narrow border. In 2014 I started studying permaculture to know how to make my garden 'lush and edible'. Most trees and berry bushes I planted in 2015.

In the front yard I applied permaculture design principles. The trees are all on one side so they will not shade other plants, but catch plenty of sunshine themselves. On the sunny side of the trees is a sort of 'herb spiral' with Mediterranean herbs. And there are raspberries (wherever they want to grow) and red currants. On the other side of the garden (shaded by a hedge) are the shade-loving plants and there's a tiny pond. In the middle of the garden is the rhubarb on a sort-of 'hugel'. That 'hugel' is also my 'rain garden', where all rain water from the roof 'flows' (it sinks in the sandy soil).

The back yard is a little chaotic. It was all sand (because there were tiles). During the years I did my best to add organic matter without buying it. Compost of kitchen scraps and fallen leaves is now the top layer. But still very sandy. And it's shady there too. In this time of year (winter) sun reaches only a corner in the back (if the sun isn't hidden by clouds).

But there is one apple tree, that started bearing apples two years ago. There's a cherry tree too, that gave two cherries last year (they taste good!) and there are blackberries and raspberries. The blackberry grows very well, I need to do a lot of pruning not to let it cover all of the garden!
In the most sunny corner there are strawberries and they do okay too.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Probably I have nothing to say to help you. My 'forest garden' exists of a few different fruit trees and berry bushes in my front and back yard. I called it my 'miniature permaculture food forest', but according to the 'rules' here it can not be called a 'food forest' because it is much too small.

You call it what you like! If it has planting layers and you can harvest food from it, then I don't see why it can't be a food forest - and certainly it is a forest garden!

There are probably a few things I would do slightly differently in my tree field - it's getting a bit food foresty in places now. I would prepare the soil better. No dig is all very well, but compacted silt can be a bit tough on trees. The areas where the soil was better has been much easier to establish.
Be patient, sometimes the plants will make their own communities and move to where they are happy. I'm finding raspberries are a good pioneer species here for example!
Make life easier by planting more of plants that will like your climate and ground conditions. That might mean changing the way you think about food a bit - what native plants have a history of food use in your area?
Chop and drop is your friend - biomass will feed the plants you want and smother most of the plants you don't.
I think groundcover is the most challenging - this needs attention if I don't want to end up with nettles and couchgrass as a ground layer!

Plenty of mistakes were made and still being made

I should note that we are first time homeowners as well. There is still a lot to learn, so I am trying to cut myself some slack.

1. One was not mowing or scything the lawn at all which led to the electric fence malfunction and tick plus vole issues getting worse. We now have a scythe and a manual push mower and keep the grass lightly trimmed (still not short by any standards).

2. Second one was not being more proactive with the bears and squirrels. One year, they ate every single apple (and one of the cubs gnawed on the tree limb). Electric fence malfunction made this problem worse.

3. Another was trying to create a closed loop system too soon, not importing amendments. Considering our soil quality (leached), this is not an option yet.

4. Another was a classic, too many fruit/nut trees at times too close together and some in less than optimal spots. With that being said, I am still glad we got the trees going early. We had to move some around even.

5. Same theme here, jumping in and starting big projects. I.e. starting to landrace a vegetable that we never grew or even tasted. Looking back, one should master the basics first.

My biggest mistake was starting with too large an area.  I would recommend people start with a really small area that is easy to keep on top of until it is fully established.  If not, it's very easy to end up with some trees surrounded by grass.

Trace Oswald wrote:I would recommend people start with a really small area that is easy to keep on top of until it is fully established.  If not, it's very easy to end up with some trees surrounded by grass.

...or freekishly tall goldenrod and giant ragweed.

One could take this topic two ways. 1) The garden consists of forest and, 2) The garden is IN the forest. We do both.

#1 Is 160 acres of timber consisting of Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir and Oregon Oak. That 'garden' tree maintenance consists of wild fire maintenance like upkeeping the understory cleaned. And dealing with dead standing and fallen never ends and it's mainly the PPine. Don't go off on bugs here. The lesson is we will never get finished with the place - so we eat the dinosaur one bite at a time. And we have planted some fruit trees. After 8 years half are still alive but just don't throw fruit. They have a tough life. We don't live in plains. The elevation and weather patterns change profoundly in 1/4 mile.

#2 We have an official garden where we plant tomatoes and all the other stuff. Every year during the normal drought season the word goes out through the forest because we have the only green ANYTHING for miles, so they invade like... well I don't want to get political. You ought to see our garden - it looks like a prison complex - all sides and the top with chicken wire and 2' up the sides with 1/4" welded fabric. It only takes the field mice to eat one bite out of every maturing fruit to make a mess. And still some ground squirrels get into the garden. We will use wounded fruit - it's still better than Safeway.

So if I have anything to suggest for a forest vege garden is it's going to be a continual us against them thing. I'm sorry to say the hungry forest critters will win - every time. They spend their whole life defeating your best efforts. And their are way more of them than you. Seriously, what else would they do, they're hungry.

For the garden of a forest: A good chainsaw, a commercial lopper, equipment stronger than any logs you have to pull and a LOT of time.

Jr Hill wrote:One could take this topic two ways. 1) The garden consists of forest and, 2) The garden is IN the forest. We do both.

So if I have anything to suggest for a forest vege garden is it's going to be a continual us against them thing. I'm sorry to say the hungry forest critters will win - every time.  

Hello Jr Hill,

I can't look into your situation, but my suggestion would be to try to win the battle with abundance.
Is it possible to establish an edible hedge of Thorny Things along the perimeter of your _______ ( insert here all that you want to protect) ?

Here in France the hedges around fields and meadows normally consist of hazelwood (nuts), bramble (thorns+berries), hawthorn (t+b), blackthorn (t+b), elderberry (berries) and rowan (berries). You can look for species that naturally occur on forest edges in your surroundings and maybe plant a hedge with edibles and thorns that deters / slows down the forest friends.
Good luck with your foresty garden!

Critters show up wherever a good food system is in place, in my experience.  In every climate and encironment.  In some the pressure is worse, like in deserts, where total containment of food is needed to preserve it unless you have an actual farm with acres and acres to spare.   If there is enough other stuff for them to eat, you get to harvest stuff.   Otherwise, one could take the view that the problem is the solution and eat the critters...  which are more nutritious than plants anyhow.     I suspect this is how the Native peoples managed the forest systems...plant or otherwise just encourage the stuff that feeds animals and people both, and you get to harvest a lot of animals.  Everyone wins.  

I find it curious that most people's "lessons learned" seem to involve rampaging mammals.  Deer, bears (?!), rabbits, gophers, mice, squirrels, etc.  That has not been my problem at all.  But then mine is a suburban homestead.  With a few exceptions, those types of animal pests have been a non-factor in establishing my food forest, so I can't comment much there.

I do have one tree (out of dozens!) that the squirrels hit hard and deprive me of fruit: they eat all of the flower buds on one European pear tree, but don't seem to touch anything else.  And just this year I am establishing a deer fence around my annual veggies and a few tree starts.  But this has only been a problem since recent nearby development flushed deer out and one has taken up permanent residence on my property.  Prior, they would only occasionally pass through.  Even my new resident deer (and her fawn, so cute!) only hit a very few of my plantings.  But what they do hit, they annihilate.

Here is what I have learnt:

Don't believe the happy horseshit some permies will sell you about living the easy life through permaculture.  ANY type of gardening or forestry is a lot of work!  A well established and well designed permaculture system should be less work, but it is still work.  Be prepared to put in the hours.

Don't believe the descriptions nurseries use to sell you plants and trees.  These are invariably optimistic about of what conditions plants will tolerate.  If it says "this plant grows in Zones 3-9," you should read "Zones 4-8."  It may survive in those most extreme ends of the zone range, but it won't thrive and it may well not fruit.  And if it says "this plant prefers shade or partial shade," you should read "may tolerate some shade, but will be happier in sun."  Excepting ferns, perhaps, all plants want sun!  Tolerating shade isn't the same thing as thriving in shade, and it is certainly not the same thing as fruiting prolifically in shade.

This part about shade is particularly relevant to us permies, who like to plant densely and to interplant things with trees and bushes.  Which segues into...

Don't believe the permaculture books and be tempted to plant too densely.  Remember, many of those books were written in the tropics.  If you live in the temperate latitudes of the world, including most of North America, there are simply not as many photons per cubic foot of vertical growing space here as in the tropics.  We aren't going to achieve a seven-layer food forest, so be satisfied with three or maybe four layers spread out over a larger area.

On a similar note, remember that many "bushes" will grow 15 feet tall, or more, if left to their own devices.  Trying to fit these into an idealized permaculture layer system is difficult.  They will need to be spaced out, as they won't realistically serve as "understory" to anything but full-sized trees, which many of our fruit tree cultivars are not.

Remember to afford plenty of time for your system to establish.  Be patient.  In my forest, many of the trees have taken much longer to grow and/or become productive than I had suspected based on nursery descriptions and the stories of other permies.  I believe this is because they had a hard start in life.  I have observed on my own and other properties that trees getting a hard start in life can sulk for years and years before fully recovering.

In my case, my beginning soil was very poor and the site very exposed.  Things have greatly improved, but in those early years I should have brought in even more soil supplementation/amendments/mulch than I did, and watered a whole lot more than I did.  Among the benefits of a mature food forest is that it makes a lot of its own mulch and requires little if any watering.  Most years I don't water anything but new transplants.  But this takes a long time to realize; don't think you can get away with such laissez-faire tactics from the start.

Or, another variation on the "be patient" theme... Geoff Lawton's Establishing a Food Forest the Permaculture Way (excellent 2008 video) recommends the first generation of plantings should be 90% (if I remember) support species: plants, trees, and bushes that make mulch, fix nitrogen, and grow fast to stabilize bare soil.  These are pioneer species, so they will better tolerate the poor conditions you may well be starting out with.  These are gradually chopped back and thinned out, and THEN you plant most of your productive species, which will themselves eventually comprise 90% of the mix.

I did not do this.  When I started out, I hadn't even heard the word "permaculture."  So I ended up doing a lot of things backwards: planting productive species and then later planting support species; putting trees in the ground and then later fitting them into a cohesive design, or rather fitting a cohesive design around the existing trees and features.  I don't recommend doing it my way; do it Geoff Lawton's way ; )

Keralee Roberts wrote:Otherwise, one could take the view that the problem is the solution and eat the critters...  which are more nutritious than plants anyhow.  I suspect this is how the Native peoples managed the forest systems...plant or otherwise just encourage the stuff that feeds animals and people both, and you get to harvest a lot of animals.  Everyone wins.

An excellent and very accurate anthropological point.  Native peoples, at least here in the Americas, manipulated their environment extensively for the mutual benefit of themselves and many other species.  It is a myth that they lived without impacting the land.  It is just that European colonizers failed to recognize, or at least failed to appreciate, native styles of land management.  European farmers were focused on crop management.  But instead of managing crops, the natives managed ecosystems.  (At least for the most part; I am sure I must be forgiven for generalizing whole continents worth of cultures and practices into one model.)  

A principle land management tool they used was fire.  Burning back closed-canopy forests, they created more open savannah lands, or else they created intermixed patches of forest and cleared land.  By doing this, they made room for their own annual plantings.  But also, the forest regrowth brought in the animals they hunted.  Permies will recognize here the intentional harnessing of ecological succession stages.

When I think about it, this was also a benefit of the old European practice of coppice woodland management.  By intermixing patches of forest in various stages of growth and re-growth, coppice woodsmen maintained more productive woodlands compared to virgin old-growth forests.  The goal was to make the woodlands more economically productive, but in the process they were also made more ecologically productive, which fact I'm sure many a woodsman recognized through experience.  Strange that the Europeans did not see the parallel in the native systems they encountered here.

I see parallels between what many of you have written about and our experience.  Like some we started with way more energy than knowledge.  We planted apple trees into land that had been tilled and cropped for who knows how many years.  While I learned about succession in school, it didn't occur to me that it needed to apply rather than just being the way it would happen naturally.

The next lesson learned was to protect young fruit trees.  At our acreage, prime suspects include white-tailed deer, white-tailed jackrabbits, and voles (not necessarily in order of destructiveness).  We also need to strike a balance between coddling our plants and letting them get tough.

We've had a lot of insect pressure, particularly crickets, flea beetles, and grasshoppers.  We started gardening before observing and understanding what the needs of the land were.  We are still working on it, but need to attract more animal diversity into the mix, ideally those that will eat these six-legged voracious eaters.  On more than one occasion I've thought about talking to pet stores about whether they'd be interested if I trapped some crickets since they are sold for reptile food.  Hmm...just thinking about it, I should see if there's a local reptile society or club and I could cut out a middleman.  It isn't really about an income stream, but turning an issue into a mutual benefit.  Another thing on my to-do list is to earn a badge bit for creating reptile habitat.  I've learned there are more snake species here than I was aware of (I thought just red-sided garter snakes), so I got stones from a friend whose neighbour has rock piles...all it took was the fuel to drive out and a morning of time and I got a visit in at the same time.

Back to the energy versus knowledge, our first fruit plantings (apple, cherry, currant) in the early years were made with excitement about growing some of our own fruit before I really knew anything but annual growing.  Having spent a summer as a landscape labourer, I was comfortable with installation and maintenance, but didn't put in the prep work to get the land ready for woody plants that would bear food.  

I'm slowly getting around to patience, understanding that a lot of things we do takes a year or two to see how things are working out.  Planting a tree, it may survive initially, but if it doesn't thrive, it could be a long time, if ever, before it is happy and bears food.  The currants and cherries we grow, as more shrubby plants have done OK and we've had some good productive years.  The Saskatoon berries (bare root seedlings) were mowed to the ground the first year and have struggled since.  We've slowly been adding more support species and diversity and improving the soil, but it's a slog.

I wish we had started to pay attention to the likes of Stefan Sobkowiak on YouTube earlier as well as taking a PDC years before I did.  I can't change the past, so have to continue to learn and move forward.  I like how Stefan lays out some of his lessons learned and is quite pragmatic.  While his growing zone is milder than here, I believe there is a lot I can learn and I need to find analogs to what someone like him does that will grow in our area.

Another lesson on over-exuberance - in 2023, we placed a large order for bare-root plants and perennial starts (including sunchoke and asparagus).  That spring we continued to purchase and propagate things.  In the end, we had over 400 new plants to get in the ground.  We were too slow and too little too late for many of them.  While some have survived, we lost a lot of plant material.  First, we had more plants than we could get into the ground in a reasonable time.  Then, we had difficulty getting enough water to them (in late May we went from a cool spring to hot and dry and couldn't keep up).  We just didn't have a plan / system in place to be able to get them the attention they needed to survive, let alone thrive.  In other words, we bit off more than we could chew.  The principle of slow and simple solutions wasn't followed.

Perhaps more importantly, I need the humility to recognize I'm still learning and don't necessarily know enough to always be able to do things as they could (and perhaps should) be.

Matthew Nistico wrote:  I have observed on my own and other properties that trees getting a hard start in life can sulk for years and years before fully recovering.

If you need food fast, waiting for this recovery could be a big issue. However, with the more extreme weather my area has been experiencing, what you're identifying as "sulking" could be the plant realizing it needs to conserve resources and explore its environment cautiously, because slow growth could mean the difference between life and death.

Former owners of my land watered everything constantly during the summer drought. It took me years to wean trees off that regime, but part of that included me accepting smaller fruit and sometimes reduced quantities of fruit from some trees, depending on exactly what weird weather hit when. For example I have 2 apple trees of different varieties on a slope beside the house. Last spring we had both some unexpected cold weather, and a significant outbreak of tent caterpillars. The north tree bloomed before the cold snap and did well. The south tree bloomed just enough later that it hit the cold snap and between the caterpillars damaging the blooms and a lack of active pollinators, we got about 1/4 of the usual apple production.

Certainly your suggestions about planting support plants first, and improving soil are an excellent approach, but we all have great hindsight and I would rather people make mistakes by planting stuff, than wait until they think everything's perfect!

Derek Thille wrote: Another lesson on over-exuberance - in 2023, we placed a large order for bare-root plants and perennial starts (including sunchoke and asparagus).  That spring we continued to purchase and propagate things.  In the end, we had over 400 new plants to get in the ground.  We were too slow and too little too late for many of them.  While some have survived, we lost a lot of plant material.  First, we had more plants than we could get into the ground in a reasonable time.  Then, we had difficulty getting enough water to them (in late May we went from a cool spring to hot and dry and couldn't keep up).  We just didn't have a plan / system in place to be able to get them the attention they needed to survive, let alone thrive.  In other words, we bit off more than we could chew.  The principle of slow and simple solutions wasn't followed.

Thankfully, I'm doing better at that one.

One thing I've done is have a couple of protected "nursery" areas. When I think I'm getting ahead of myself, plants are left in pots where they're easy to water and where I walk past frequently. Better that they wait until the next window of opportunity, than being tortured and left to die.

I also try to start cuttings/layerings of plants I really want to keep, in case I have messed up and planted a tree in a spot it simply won't tolerate. Sometimes the most simple hints from here on permies can make the difference. (Example: Goji berries really like basic soil and a little top dressing of wood ash makes them much happier plants!)

Derek Thille wrote:I

Another lesson on over-exuberance - in 2023, we placed a large order for bare-root plants and perennial starts (including sunchoke and asparagus).  That spring we continued to purchase and propagate things.  In the end, we had over 400 new plants to get in the ground.  We were too slow and too little too late for many of them.  While some have survived, we lost a lot of plant material.  First, we had more plants than we could get into the ground in a reasonable time.  Then, we had difficulty getting enough water to them (in late May we went from a cool spring to hot and dry and couldn't keep up).  We just didn't have a plan / system in place to be able to get them the attention they needed to survive, let alone thrive.  In other words, we bit off more than we could chew.  The principle of slow and simple solutions wasn't followed.

I know this all too well! Big lesson for me too as I am only one person and seem to have a knack for being awesome at both buying "all the things" (haha) and also starting plants from seed "oh these basil seeds are old so let's just plant them all and see what happens" (ended up with hundreds of basil plants). I think I planted 500 plants one year and that or more in bulbs another earlier time (because I don't learn the lessons well.

Now I'm onto a new property and I'm going to go slowly, starting a new business and remodeling a house at the same time means I'm keeping myself somewhat in check, but on a call with my sister today I mentioned that I wouldn't start that many plants this year "only 20-50" and for her, that seemed like a lot. lol Compared to 500+ the last time I started plants it seems like nothing to me.

Matthew Nistico wrote:
Don't believe the descriptions nurseries use to sell you plants and trees.  These are invariably optimistic about of what conditions plants will tolerate.  If it says "this plant grows in Zones 3-9," you should read "Zones 4-8."  It may survive in those most extreme ends of the zone range, but it won't thrive and it may well not fruit.  And if it says "this plant prefers shade or partial shade," you should read "may tolerate some shade, but will be happier in sun."  Excepting ferns, perhaps, all plants want sun!  Tolerating shade isn't the same thing as thriving in shade, and it is certainly not the same thing as fruiting prolifically in shade.

So TRUE! Learned this the hard way, was an expensive lesson. Also, related... don't believe whatever the official stance is on your growing zone. Online right now I can find my state chart looks very different from the what my state looks like on the official USA chart. Also, I learned to be more conservative. If I'm zone 5... I try to plant mostly zone 4 and only zone 5 when I can have things more protected or have created microclimates. You sometimes get freak weather.

Also, learned that "full sun" doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Full sun at my dad's house in zone 8 in the high desert on the west coast is way different than "full sun" in a northern climate in a colder zone. Ditto with part shade. Part shade may work for a plant at my dad's house, but I need it be full sun in my northern climate.

I have really had fun discovering where plants originated from and this helps me to figure out how to give them what they need (or whether or not I can actually accomplish that) and most especially for me who tends to move a lot... I'm conscious of trying to plant things that can adapt to punishment by anyone that comes after me.

Start the forest garden the same week that you get a new piece of ground to steward. Even if you expect temporary residency. I value trees planted ten years ago much more than I value trees yet unplanted.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Start the forest garden the same week that you get a new piece of ground to steward. Even if you expect temporary residency. I value trees planted ten years ago much more than I value trees yet unplanted.

Um. well, yeah. I just bought a month ago and it's snow season so I'm doing the best I can. ;-)

Do you have any suggestions for the northern perimeter? Maybe my question wasn't clear. I'm looking for planting suggestions for the northern perimeter. Thank you! 🙏🏻

I have three lessons, one is to not forget to put hardware cloth around the trunk to avoid winter rodent damage. I also walk around the base of my trees to push clear the snow. Snowshoes make this quick. The second lesson I learned is to pull the fruit off the first year. It's tempting to want to try the fruit, but you'll get a much bigger yield faster. It helps to curb the temptation when there are trees of mixed ages fruiting already. The last tip is to put up raptor perches, bird boxes, and bat houses at the same time you plant your trees, and then plant swaths of buckwheat nearby. The more predators of all sizes you have around the better, because it takes a while to attract them. Even a pile of rocks and a pile of sticks, attracts snakes, which combat rodents.

One other thing...forget about planting vines like grapes or hardy kiwis near fruit or nut trees.   Unless your trees  are 200 years old and gigantic, and you are a fanatical and persistent pruner of vines... Otherwise the vines, if they thrive, will happily  engulf and kill young trees.   This might work in an ancient french apple orchard with tough gnarly big  old trees but its not a great combo with small trees.  
One concord grape 12 feet away has eaten a 15 foot tall cherry tree and half an apple tree, and is aiming for a 13 yo chestnut that has only just started to bear nuts.   I am not much of a pruner, clearly I  need to learn!  
Meanwhile the gives-no-fruits female kiwi (all the males died of course ) has gone bonkers and is trying to eat my entire house.  
I am keeping vines well away from everything else in the future.    They may be one of the ecosystem layers,  but they can be very aggressive.
My yard is very small, I crammed a lot of plants in here and for the most part it has been pretty good, it certainly looks foresty and I do get to eat a large amount of food from it, even when I do almost  nothing, and all sorts of critters appreciate me now, but the vines I will view with caution next time.   My ultimate goal is to achieve what the Native peoples had, a system that makes food for all even when I am long dead and gone.   So far it is mostly working.  

I learned yesterday, that I really need to do more research before I plant a tree. I didn’t know that mulberry trees shoot out long roots, that can damage structures, so it needs to be at least 50’ away from that. Well, I planted one, 10’ away from our septic tank. It was planted 2 year ago, and now we will need to move it further away from the house and septic tank. My husband isn’t happy right now, since it’s not the first time I haven’t done enough research before planting. Hopefully we can get it moved without too many problems.

Lesson for my climate with great diurnal temperature changes, temperature inversion, late frost, southern gentle slope with too much sun.

1. Full sun east of Rockies means half sun at my location.
2. Supposedly my very high quality soil for California standards does not compare to soils in the Midwest. It has almost no organic matter and seems to retard the growth.
3. Planting trees in the hole without soil amendment may work in Illinois or Iowa, but here the tree will be struggling. Now I add at least 30% compost.
4. Trees from nurseries have to be at least 16 mm (5/8") caliper to survive the summer without any shading. Mulching and regular irrigation do not help.
5. Species from the south-eastern sides of continents: South-eastern USA, humid south-eastern China will not work. For example American persimmon or chestnut, Chinese chestnut, Chinese persimmons, Che.
6. Species from seemingly close Mexico will not work either, because they are from tropical part: Mexican hawthorn, Avocado or even peppers and tomatoes.
7. Supposedly adapted local and endemic species also fail - they like to grow on higher elevations, shaded by large rocks and oak trees. On my grass savanna they die. I want to mention one example: Rhus ovata (Sugar sumac). I have read on numerous (obviously copy and paste from the same knowledge source) websites how easy it is to grow, that it only needs occasional water the first summer and so on. Obviously all these advices were California coast-centric. All six that I purchases died very quickly. Of all 12 native plants only one Toyon survived.
8. Local nurseries sell cultivars that are not adapted to my climate.
9. I have wasted several years to find out that dry farming may work only on a few species and with initial watering to help establish the tree. The only two that survived no watering are olives (giving low crop of dwarfed fruits) and pomegranates (no watering = no fruits). Also dry farming may be feasible by the coast where temperatures oscillate around 90 F, there are clouds in summer months and ocean humidity in the air. Some figs that were irrigated, mulched and still died in 2024 summer convinced me even more.
10. Orchard and sheep do not mix well. The animals will destroy trees. It could work with massive and old trees, with no low branches.

So I'm quite far from food forest concept, but once the trees grow bigger I will start planting around them as much as I can.

Thing that I regret is setting the irrigation lines going uphill. I did not do it, because I need the water for my garden east of the well. If the main line was going uphill the pressure at the top trees would be better (I use pressure compensating emitters, but still the bottom trees get two times more water than the top ones). Also I could be discing the orchard going along the contour lines, so small berms would be created after each tractor pass. Maybe one day I will add another main line.

Cristobal Cristo wrote:Lesson for my climate with great diurnal temperature changes, temperature inversion, late frost, southern gentle slope with too much sun.

1. Full sun east of Rockies means half sun at my location.
2. Supposedly my very high quality soil for California standards does not compare to soils in the Midwest. It has almost no organic matter and seems to retard the growth.
3. Planting trees in the hole without soil amendment may work in Illinois or Iowa, but here the tree will be struggling. Now I add at least 30% compost.
4. Trees from nurseries have to be at least 16 mm (5/8") caliper to survive the summer without any shading. Mulching and regular irrigation do not help.
5. Species from the south-eastern sides of continents: South-eastern USA, humid south-eastern China will not work. For example American persimmon or chestnut, Chinese chestnut, Chinese persimmons, Che.
6. Species from seemingly close Mexico will not work either, because they are from tropical part: Mexican hawthorn, Avocado or even peppers and tomatoes.
7. Supposedly adapted local and endemic species also fail - they like to grow on higher elevations, shaded by large rocks and oak trees. On my grass savanna they die. I want to mention one example: Rhus ovata (Sugar sumac). I have read on numerous (obviously copy and paste from the same knowledge source) websites how easy it is to grow, that it only needs occasional water the first summer and so on. Obviously all these advices were California coast-centric. All six that I purchases died very quickly. Of all 12 native plants only one Toyon survived.
8. Local nurseries sell cultivars that are not adapted to my climate.
9. I have wasted several years to find out that dry farming may work only on a few species and with initial watering to help establish the tree. The only two that survived no watering are olives (giving low crop of dwarfed fruits) and pomegranates (no watering = no fruits). Also dry farming may be feasible by the coast where temperatures oscillate around 90 F, there are clouds in summer months and ocean humidity in the air. Some figs that were irrigated, mulched and still died in 2024 summer convinced me even more.
10. Orchard and sheep do not mix well. The animals will destroy trees. It could work with massive and old trees, with no low branches.

So I'm quite far from food forest concept, but once the trees grow bigger I will start planting around them as much as I can.

Thing that I regret is setting the irrigation lines going uphill. I did not do it, because I need the water for my garden east of the well. If the main line was going uphill the pressure at the top trees would be better (I use pressure compensating emitters, but still the bottom trees get two times more water than the top ones). Also I could be discing the orchard going along the contour lines, so small berms would be created after each tractor pass. Maybe one day I will add another main line.

I have had a lot of similar experiences, but one sticks out. Two years ago, I added 50 cubic yards of compost to my whole food forest and it has been a game changer. My gophers had continually been digging and mixing the compost into my sand and clay California soil. It was expensive ($900), but my trees and plants are thriving now. If I were you, I would do a big layer of compost, plant clover or other cover crops and wait a year or two before starting to add trees. At this point I would also start creating habitats for snakes, since it takes a while for them to come. After a few years, your soil will be much easier to work with, and a better quality, which will make establishing a food forest garden easier. A good indicator of better soil, will be when you start seeing plants like mallow and nettles growing there.
While you wait, use raised beds to grow perennials and start trees. Once the soil in your forest area has improved, move the perennials and trees from the raised beds into the forest garden. I have had a lot of success with this method, which saves time and money, since you don’t have to buy mature trees. You can start seedlings like elderberries and mulberries from cuttings, which grow very well in your grow zone, but need water. Tree collards I can also recommend starting this way. This way, you will have plenty of things to plant, once you soil quality has improved.
You should also know, that it’s not possible to grow a food forest in California without irrigation, until it has completely matured. At that point, you can cut down on how much water you use, but you will always have to water. Even my prickly pear cactus needs water. While I am much further south than you, we have many of the same challenges. You can read my food forest journey here:Building a food forest on the edge of the desert

Ula,

I already have around 160 fruit trees planted. Some without compost help at a lower part of the slope and they seem to do fine (I don't have comparison to other conditions with the same tree). I started using compost for planting holes after my figs planted this way on a newly reclaimed plot produced fruits the first year. The other ones on the frying pan of the slope did not produce at all and some died.
Could you tell me what area this 50 cu yd of compost was applied to? Knowing it I will have a reference.