Who is growing a food forest?

Dave, your map is a work of art

If I learn how to do a map/drawing and learn how to post it, I will.
I'm not technology savvy.

I have a couple acres. Lots of trees. Mainly bush and a small veg garden. Lots of natural, native medicinal or culinary plants that Mother Nature planted for me.

I'm planning a food forest though.

in our food forests we lost nearly all of our spring blossoms to frost and then we had a horrible drought..but even then with my baby trees, I have discovered I have hazelnuts for the first year in my hazelnut trees (4 out of 6 have nuts) and my medlar I planted this year has a fruit on it,, one but it is a fruit, and my pear blossoms froze, but I have 2 pears on one of my 10 trees..so I'm so pleased that even with the worst possible weather for trees this year, I have some life and some produce..

so amen..I have a producing food forest ..even though mother nature has crapped all over me this year..woo hoo

Brenda Groth wrote:even though mother nature has crapped all over me this year.

She crapped hazelnuts.

I am also on the way....

I hope that some of you will be able to share some information so that I do not do what has already been done (and do more other things!)

Zone 10, aprox 1 acre though I have 4... with a big wild dry zone (pines)
I have been there for a year.
I already have 100 old trees, orange, avocado and mango. Full of pests but alive!
I water and mulch and weed, I still have no hens and little nitrogen fixers. I have some chamaecytisus proliferus, tagasaste in Spanish (hurrah for latin names!), well known in Australia.
I have tea tree and tamarind in pots.
I have some acacia seeds, hope I chose the right varieties... Not easy... I have cajanus cajan seeds too.
I have passion fruit and chayote as vines, and lima beans.
I have also planted neem, ceratonia siliqua, pistacia atlantica...
I put carissa macrocarpa the natal plum in the wetter (hu, less dry!) border as a living fence.
Well I have preakly pears as good fence, fruits and vegatable! I just remove some where needed, and to get some good compost.
I begin to grow some mints and others, and clover, under trees.

I remove all "weeds" that pick or that give more job than depilating! Of course I cannot leave the orchard with no herbs... So I leave all that do not bother me and I look for "interesting weeds"...

And I have a tropical patch in the sunniest place, under a cliff (better than a pile of rocks!)
I also have all the land in terrace, so my use of stones is obvious. I have some grapes for birds and lizards... and they can shade in summer.
I have vetiver plants but need to multiply them before using them for what they are meant.

I will have to slowly replace some trees, as they too much have the same age (60 years for some, 18 for others). I mean that some are ill or not well located, and that I cannot eat that many oranges! And I am on a rich avocado diet...

greg patric: We spend about $40/ month on water.

I am in So Cal as well and spend about $100 a month. That is in the summer - July and august. Is yours water bill all year round that low? How do you do it? - especially with so many pots. They seem to dry out fast......

We spend a little more than that on water July to September, but not too much more. We mulch/top dress our pots too so they stay moist. The raised beds full of trees suck water the fastest right now so that's where the bark is going next (tomorrow).