Ulla Bisgaard

No, we don’t grow pistachios only pecans and cashews. Also, the cashew tree isn’t producing yet. That will take a few more years.
Since we can grow food all year round, a lot of my fruit and berry decisions, are based on being able to have fresh fruit/berries all year round. The cashew tree was added, because it produce a dual crop. It produces an apple like fruit (very popular in Asia) and then a nut underneath the fruit, so you get two delicious crops from one tree. A lot of research and calculations has gone into building this. This year we planted 2 sapote trees, a Surinam cherry and a fuerte avocado. We already have a has avocado which fruits 6 months of the year. The fuerte will cover the second half of the year. The sapote was picked both because we love the flavor, it cover a time of the year, when we don’t get a lot of fruit, and it’s a money crop. Each of the fruits sells for 10 to 20 dollars each, here in San Diego.

It sounds like you have a great garden.
My food forest is 3300 square feet big, and was started 10 years ago. You can see it from start (dirt)  to finished here: Building a food forest on the edge of the desert

After we finished the main work there, I started a new topic where I also include my raised bed garden and what else we do here on the homestead. We have 22 raised beds, chickens, ducks and rabbits. While the forest garden is in the front of the house, most of the raised beds are in the back, together with our livestock. Here is a link to that topic. Southern California homestead stories
Together those two gardens produce over 2000 pounds of vegetables, fruits, berries, herbs and grains each year. I spend a lot of time out there, especially in the forest garden, because we have lots of seating and a nice area for yoga and meditation. I always felt outside my extended family because I can’t draw or make sculptures. When I said so to my daughter, she pointed to the garden and said “you are an artist, you have the biggest art installation in the neighborhood”. She is right. I love the riot of colors, smells, sounds and  textures there, and I love how it’s constantly changing.
Fruit trees were supposed to only be in the forest garden, but I ran out of room, so we have started planting some between the swales. I have also added arbors, so I guess I am trying to build a second installation LOL.

Barbara Simoes wrote:I didn't mean to make it sound like it's coming in in droves; it's not, but let's just say, I'm vigilant and am always patrolling and on the lookout for invaders. I have blackberries from a neighbor's place that the birds love planting here, sumac that sprouts up to six feet before I see it from the same neighbor....My best advice would be to plant some well-behaved impenetrable perennial on the outside borders.  My personal favorite is hosta but I know some people who love comfrey. I like the hosta because the root becomes a solid mass, it's easy to divide: one plant can become ten very soon, it's well-behaved in that it doesn't run or spread horribly, it's a good height for a border, it's got sweet flowers that the bees love and it's easy enough to dig out as proven by the number of times I do that to divide plants.  
I really think that you could save yourself money and not have to bother with the landscaping cloth, especially if you plan to put wood chips over them--the wood chips will start to break down and create "soil" which is all it takes for something to grow there. The roots will puncture through the cloth and then every year you will be weeding the holes made--ask me how I know!  If you use landscaping cloth, you want to keep the top surface clean.  If there is a bit of dirt or soil, seeds and roots will find it.  I used it both in my vegetable garden and where I have my blueberries.  I used to weed and leave the weeds on top of the landscaping cloth.  Of course, they would start to break down, create soil, and the next thing I knew, I had crabgrass and all sorts of "lovelies" growing there.  My advice would be to either go with just cardboard with chips, or landscaping cloth, but not both unless everything is under the cloth.

It will be hard planting around one of the beds, since my tangerine are too close. I usually have borage growing around beds, since they love it there, and I don’t want comfrey to take over. I keep my comfrey in a raised bed instead. I will look into the hostas. I think my husband will like that better than getting wood chips, and I will love the colors.
I actually also need to prune my blackberries, and my raspberries. We are cleaning up the area behind my blackberries, since we have rats nesting in there.
Anyway, in the rest of the food forest, it’s not a problem. I have lots of perennials and self seeding wildflowers, plus I always end up adding new flowers. I also have vegetables and herbs growing among the flowers. I planned to make this bottom layer of the forest, a place for foraging, and that’s what it is now. I love picking flowers and herbs there. I got so much calendula last year. I filled a 1/2 gallon jar with them. I use calendula oil in a salve I use for my hands, and my son for his psoriasis. I got some really big diakon last year too.

Barbara Simoes wrote:Yes, it will come through. It will travel great distances, too.  One of my gardens is bordered by a town sidewalk  and the perpendicular side by driveway, yet Bermuda grass jumped or came in from beneath the sidewalk...yikes!

I am pretty sure, that’s how it got into the beds. In the beginning we only had a little growing beside the walkway. Ohh well, we are doing that was suggested. Double layer of landscape fabric with a layer of cardboard on top. We made sure, that the landscape fabric extends 20” around the bed, and we will add wood chips or mulch on top of that.
Now we are just hoping it will last, because it has been a lot of work removing the beds, cleaning up and refilling them. We have one filled, and are filling the second one tomorrow. We will probably have to do it again at some point, but hopefully it won’t be for a while.

Anne Miller wrote:To me as long as the Bermuda cannot see light though it is possible for it to spread under that and come up on the other side.

I like to recommend cardboard and wood chips for 6 inches to 12 inches because ... how much light can get through that?  And those will biodegrade.

This thread seems to indicate that some plants can punch through landscape fabric, I don't know as I have never used it:

https://permies.com/t/114968/Plants-punch-landscape-fabric

I love Bermuda and have never had a problem with my raised beds.

Thank you, I appreciate your help. The reason we have the problem, is that my husband insisted we leave it alone, so he could use it for his rabbits. I warned him it would be a problem, but he didn’t listen. Now he is working hard to fix it. It’s only a problem in that area, the rest of my beds are okay. It is trying to strangle my tangerine and my Barbados cherry, which is in the same area, so wood chips is a good idea.

We have spend the last month going through our seasonal transitions. I harvested 7 pounds of ginger, which I am very proud off. I also got around 60 grubs from the same bed, which was fed to our chickens and ducks.
My husband got a shock the other morning, when we went to fill the chicken water. After unlocking the door, he glanced up and saw a raccoon hanging on the inside of the door, like it was part of a Disney movie. I don’t know who got the biggest shock. He told me, that for the first minute, they just stared at each other before he pulled himself together and took hold of it. It was then relocated back to the national park, it had come from.
Life on a homestead is never boring.
One of our cats brought a live rat into the kitchen and left, but before we could toss it out, our second cat killed and ate it LOL.

The two beds, I have just outside the food forest got infested with Bermuda grass.
We have emptied them and have dug down to get as many of the roots as possible.
One of the tour guests told me, that they had used landscape fabric, and the grass spouted through it.
Does anyone know, if a layer of landscape fabric, will be a thick enough barrier? Is there anything else I can do, or a different material ?
It’s not a big problem in the forest garden, since the wildflowers outcompete it, but I can’t have it in my raised beds.

Christopher Weeks wrote:This was my grandma's house from 1954 until 2019 when she passed away. I think it's the same kind of tree you're talking about. I have very fond memories of climbing in it especially in 1979.

Just looking at the size of it, in your picture and reading the wiki, I think I am going to remove it. It’s too close to the road, and we own the road, so if the roots damage it, we will have to pay for it. I also have a lot of the neighborhood kids visiting, and most of it is poisonous, so I am going to ask my husband to remove it.

Our Homestead sits on 1/2 acre. Because of this, we had to be smart to maximized the food production. Our livestock are chickens, ducks and rabbits, which produce around 500 pounds of meat, and 3000 eggs. I use raised beds for most of my annuals and herbs, since those need extra care. I use tall 4’ beds to maximize space, for sweet potatoes, each of those produce about 250 pounds of sweet potatoes in a season. I grow herbs both in the raised bed garden and in the forest garden. Herbs and spices are cash crops, what I grow this year, has a value over 1000 dollars.
We also have a 3300 square foot food forest garden. Here we grow oranges, lemons, tangerines, 4 kinds of tea, coffee, avocados, guava, plums, peaches, elderberries, apples, Bananas, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, Boisen berries, Surinam cherries, Barbados cherries, tree collards, pecans, cashews, bay leaves, pepper corns, long pepper, sapote, mulberries, strawberries, mushrooms, tomatoes, herbs, edible flowers, pomegranate, prickly pears, rose hips, cassava, onions, garlic, pigeon peas, hibiscus, rock roses, alpine, Natal plums, strawberries, arrow root, shampoo ginger, grain of paradise and probably some I don’t remember.
Using tree guilds and making a food forest maximize the amount of food we can produce in a pretty small area. It’s expensive though, if you don’t want to wait 5 years for the fruit trees to start producing. I started mine 10 years ago, and are still changing things. We have had setbacks where trees and shrubs died, and we had to make changes.
We get around 100 pounds from each of the citrus trees and the peach tree. The plums have just started producing and we got 60 pounds, we only got 30 pounds of avocados, but it was the first time the tree produced even though it was one of the first trees we planted. The Sapote will probably start producing in a couple of years, but the Bananas should start flowering next spring. The cherry trees should start producing in about 3 years, the cashew also in 3 to 5 years and the same with the pomegranate.
Keep in mind that I bought all of my trees mature with large established root systems. The berries started producing a lot faster though.
So, my point is, that you will need a lot more trees to reach your goal, and you will get more out of the space, if you start a Forest garden instead of an orchard. The fruit trees also benefit from the herbs and flowers, since they improve the soil.
You also have to keep in mind, that you will get critters in your garden. Especially rats, are attracted to homesteads because of so much food available and lots of places to breed. You will need to protect  young trees and vegetables from rodents, or you won’t get much out of it. I lost all of my corn this year, to rodents. Next year I am going to try and see if I can spray my corn with chili powder and baking soda, to see if that will help.
I can see you want to have bees too, so you have to make sure you grow flowers for them to feed on. You could remove the grass part, and plant wildflowers instead. This will help you with insects too, and you won’t have to move it lol.
I have several blogs here, where I write about how we started our homestead. It’s in a different area than you, but the principles are the same.

Today I found a tree in the forest garden, that I didn’t plant. How I overlooked it, I don’t know. Research tells me, that it’s a California pepper tree. Now I am in the situation, that I have to decide if it’s a keeper or if I should remove it.
Does anyone have experience with them?
It’s in my forest garden, in the middle of the hedge. I know it’s not the same as regular black pepper, because I am already growing those and they are on a vine.
What do you all think? I have added photos