posted 10 years ago
If you have access to some soil amendments, mulch, fencing, and irrigation infrastructure, you could also go ahead and start planting your permanent food plants, especially the trees, at the same time as your nurse plants. You may have to pamper them a bit the first few years, but you will be that much further along toward yield. If you have abundant rain and lots of propagation material, you could crowd the nurse plants quite a bit, and then simply thin them later as needed to create space for the food plants, obtaining yields the while as mulch, fodder, fuel, etc.
I would research carefully, and perhaps do some local observation on the species you want to use in quantity as pioneers. Casuarina, for instance, is allelopathic according to some resources.