This is a major change to how I would manage a new food forest
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2024
- When I started in permaculture, reading all the books, listening to podcasts, watching movies and youtube, I came up with strategies on how to start my food forest. Now that I'm ~7 years into this, these are some ways that I would have changed the way I started my food forest. These tips can be great if you are just getting started.
Keep in mind, we're probably about 10 years away from major disruptions to live. Climate change, economy, end of oil, energy scarcity, refugee crisis, food scarcity, and more. Starting a food forest now, you still have time to secure major resilience in your life, and your family's future.
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I had a groundhog who dug a nest under a footing of the breezeway on my house and setup camp right outside my garden and food forest. My food forest is a nice mix of cover crops and native species. The groundhog left all my corn and squash alone and spent his time in the food forest eating grasses and plant seeds.
I have garden rats. We share the garden. They don't like tomatoes nor flowers they don't like the taste of. But they like Sweetrasses. I saw how they PLANT sweetgrasses in my pots, that are useless to them. They bring the grass, eat all the seeds but three to four an ear and dig them in. This is NOT reserve, since they eat most ot it. Its active seeding. I don't know if all rats do that, but some years ago the old-she rat watched me seeding my pots in the glasshouse and probably wondered why I was digging in only 3-4 corns a pot, when it didn't pay digging them up again. She must have realized how planting works.
The house we bought has a female groundhog nest under an old mulberry, and being it's steward has been a joy. Every spring we watch a new generation. I'll add my carrots were also safe. Give them enough calories on the ground and they are pretty chill. Fun fact, sometimes they climb trees if it's full of enough food.
Happy to see a permaculturist who is learning by actually watching their system mature and not being wedded to a certain orthodoxy, like wood chips everywhere, all the time. I see the same thing kind of happening in the no-till movement where folks are starting to lean towards adapting that philosophy to their particular environment and mixing in some till, some minimum till, but not necessarily no till ever no matter what. You cannot put nature in a neat little box - a lot of these things we come up with that are human constructs trying to mimic or understand nature must take into consideration the wildness and adaptability of nature itself.
Haha well, not to throw shade at other permaculture youtubers, but one reason for that is I actually DO IT. It's hard to learn lessons from doing it when you don't really DO permaculture, you just make videos about it.
I like how as you evolve you acknowledge what you've said in the past and how and why your thinking has changed. It helps viewers figure out the context in which you are giving advice and gauge whether their context is close enough to yours that your advice would be likely to work for them. I asked you a couple years ago about refreshing wood chip mulch on beds where you had strawberries as a ground cover without smothering them, and this video gives me a different take than your original answer did. I like that we can grow and learn together.
You nailed it! So much we learn along the way as theory becomes practice for your individual purpose. Good advice 7 years ago. Better advice 7 years later. That's growth.
100%!! I'm more focused on learning and less so on hubris and ego.
Love your videos, love you. Here in the Southern California high desert I am using thick wood chips and doing what I can to build soil. With 14 trees in and more to come I will begin planting native flowering plants, native cow grass, and maybe some vegetables. After a year of spreading wood chips I can see the benefits of lowering my watering and nourishing my trees. I also see compost building under the chips. It’s been great. I am looking at repeating my food forest project at my church. As a way to serve my community. Sourcing the wood chips is my biggest hurdle. I am moving forward as God provides and directs.
Love this 😀
I find the grass has really been helping with erosion control too this year with all the rain we've been getting!
Another great video, thank you! I've been watching for 3+ years now and you've really inspired a big change in my life that I will be forever grateful for! You are an amazing human❤
Much love!
I have grass throughout my garden so this kinda plays into the reason I keep the grass. It has its purpose just as in nature. As I'm learning the function of different biology, actinomycetes found on grass is a check and balance on the surface. Also grass is my main source of nitrogen for thermal composting. The best part of growing is discovering that things can be done different. Sharing that info helps the community thrive. 👍🏽
@@Ni-dk7ni I also like to walk bear foot when in the garden. Spiritual grounding.
Hooray for other grass supporters! In the Chihuahua man-made desert I celebrate every green blade of grass that I manage and they are green only when we get rain and where I have watered. Grass makes up a significant volume of my chicken feed. I don't have access to wood chips and if I made my own it would be from mezquite, catclaw...and that's the equivalent to throwing down wooden nails all over the place. I do use cardboard and sawdust from a broom handle manufacturer. If I mow the prickly weeds (tumble weed, bulls horn) I end up with grasses. I don't see grasses affecting my trees half as much as people claim but I don't have high expectations for new trees. The grasses and weeds shade the soil and young trees from blistering sun. Ants take grass clipping underground and grow fungi and this is very useful in oxidised landscapes. I also grow my vegetables in small trenches hidden from sight by long grass and sprawling pumpkin plants.
Happy New Year! This was so invigorating to watch because where I live, it's hard to find a source of wood chips and then to find a place to store them adds a whole other layer of difficulty! This past year, I got lots of leaves that I swept up from my neighbors' properties and used those to top off a lot of my beds. Some I chopped up, but others I left whole where I just needed some sort of growth suppressant. It was much easier to deal with than chips. In the veg. garden, I did chop them up. I was shocked at how much moisture they provided--although it was a bad year to test that idea! As a weed blocker, they are amazing. I will never not do this in my beds! Out front, I couldn't get in there and pull them out to chop them. I have strawberries as my ground cover layer, so I'll be interested to see how they fend. Everything else is higher than the layer of leaves, so I'm not too concerned about that. I don't think I have to worry about it being anaerobic, but time will tell. They're not so deep that I worry...when all is said and done, come spring, they should be compacted down to maybe 1/2" or a centimeter.
I, too, have a lot of grass left on the property, and it is a relief to know that it is serving a purpose other than looking pretty. On your advice, I got lots of clover and sprinkled it throughout the yard. Because of all the rain, it's hard to know how much it will help it in times of drought, although the beginning of the season was dry and it was very lush and moist still. I did see lots of bunnies munching away contentedly in the lawn area, which I love to see. Lots of poo at the end of winter, which is also great. All of my little bushes and trees are also caged on your advice. Some I got to a little late, and in fact, there was some chewing...I thought to myself, "Damn, Keith was right again!" and proceeded to get cages on!
Happy new year! Glad to hear it's all working out! And not only that, but that you are doing it, watching it, questioning it, and coming to your own conclusions about it. Great scientific method!
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for saving me some work in the future :)
People should check out Jim Kovaleski, has an amazing market garden, fed with just grass mulch. Edit: I kept living pathways in my garden and in year one I noticed rabbits preferred grass to even my lettuce. It was seen as a lush strip of green compared to one plant surrounded by mulch I think.
6:46 wanna talk about those bigfoot noises? 👀😂
Thanks for the tips!
LOL I missed a spot! If you ever notice little jumps in my videos, it's usually because the dogs are being crazy and barking at squirrels.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy honestly, it added a little bit of comedic character to the video! Those comedic moments of gold are free real estate so use them. Id love to see you joke around with us some more, even accidently 🤣
Two great pearls of wisdom, thanks Keith. Wholeheartedly agree with wood chips as a transitional tool, and not a design feature - and also with the 3 year timeline to get your ground covered.
🍻 Mike
I’m starting a new food forest, not very big in my lot.
I built swales on contour that are only about 1ft deep, but about 3ft wide.
I first planted my trees on the mounds, and then realized that most CZcamsrs do it wrong and it needed to be planted in the lower part of the mound, almost behind it.
Then I’m seeding clover as a starting ground cover, along with native grasses.
I’m also planting support trees about 10ft from each production tree, mainly mimosas and honey locusts.
Then I learned about nutrient accumulators and decided that I will plant some Lupine.
I’m also planting some flowers for insects, like lavender, chamomile, the clover, sunflowers…
I know this is not a whole lot of biodiversity, but for a starter to see what happens I hope it’s a good start for someone like me new to permaculture.
I’m in East Texas BTW, pretty hot and humid climate.
Could you guys point to any holes that I might be leaving?
A smaller sized food forest more then a larger sized one more then anything needs to effectively utilize the space it has. It sounds like you are only planning on utilizing 3 layers so far, a flower layer, a tree layer, and a ground cover layer. Ideally, there are 7 layers in a food forest, 1. Canopy (tall trees), 2. Sub-canopy, (smaller trees, semi dwarf fruits), 3. Shrubs, 4. Herbaceous layer, (so like the flowers you have), 5. Ground cover, 6. Root crops, and 7. Climbers (vines). I would recommend focusing on beneficial (and delicious) plants in the realm of shrubs, bushes, and herbs to fill your mid-story out once the trees are up. I have no idea what plants fit these in your area, so I unfortunately cant recommend any plants. Nitrogen fixers are your golden ticket and are the heavy lifters especially early on in these types of systems, so look out for any and all you can grow in your area (even the ones people warn you against... sometimes the most aggressive plants are exactly the ones you want in permaculture). Welcome to the wonderful world of permaculture and food forests! Sounds like you are off to a great start
You nailed it. You are avoiding mistakes that even I made when I started (trees on the swale berm, etc). They are so much better in the interswale area downhill more.
Great post, nothing really to add, keep it up!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy wow thank you so much for getting back to me! Do you happen to know of any chat where people help each other out with permaculture questions?
Perhaps it’s something that could be done?
@GodExplained I would recommend getting on reddit and going to the permaculture subreddit.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy question for you friend... The trees I'm planting are about 5-6ft tall (1.5-2m). I am hoping I can get away with not doing sheet mulching, but simply seeding everything on top of my existing grasses. I am planting a mix of wildflowers native to my area that I got locally, and also clover. Hopefully, I would have some grass, some clover, some flowers, some deep rooted plants (lupine for example), and then some bushes and the trees. Would this be okay? I really want to try to avoid sheetmulching if possible, but I might be being too stubborn... Thanks for everything
Glad to hear this. I am getting older and my husband has Parkinson’s. Wood chips are becoming too heavy for us to move around. We really enjoy our garden and food forest but have been thinking of ways to keep it sustainable for us.
I raise angora rabbits. Bunny crack is bananas or grapes. Only good for them as a small portion treat.
Thanks for this. I often feel overwhelmed and anxious about what I'm doing. Your videos help to keep me grounded and focused. Blessings to you and your family. Continued success.
Much love ❤️
This past season I got a lot more shrubs and perennials that are getting established and gave them a good layer of wood chips which helped with moisture retention as well as give me a lot of wine caps. Definitely going for a mostly strawberry groundcover in the long term. even when the shrubs cast a bit of shade, the alpine and virginia strawberries dont care that much about some shade. I think i'll still use wood chips in the future, but just in the pathways, to give me those lovely wine caps and turn into some awesome compost to rake up and spread around.
You surprised me when you just showed up in the old man paths. Thank you always for your practical and humble advice.
BOO!
Hope you and everyone watching had a great holiday season. Have a fun and safe new years.
Good advice on the transition that will happen after establishing a garden. I like the tip on rabbits and grass, but I do find they will cross the grass and preferentially harvest lettuce when it’s available!
Yes, there will always be that one thing that they can't resist - lettuce is like crack for rabbits. You can only do so much.
another great function for the grass is chop and drop for the beds itself. jim kovaleski does this in maine, i believe he feeds his gardens exclusively on grass he harvests with a scythe, but lays it on thick
Rabbits love my lawn too. Always mowing my lawn for me and my unfenced garden is untouched.
Good vid:] I agree that wood mulch is over rated and is slow to start breaking down really. I used wood chip mulch for years before I moved to the country. It worked well but even with a free supply from the city dump it was to much work. I now use leaves or weeds or whatever is close and available grass is a non stop supply as well ! I have 30 times the garden now and use less effort per foot by a long shot. My neighbors come and dump there grass and leaves and such it seem to bug them:] free mulch and no compost needed since compost is made on the spot.
Great video Keith, I’ll try to be a little more lenient with the grass in the future… when do you cut down those goldenrods and such on wildflower hill?
And, Go Sabres 😂😉
Yes, totally agree about the wood chips: great to control weeds and build good soil at the beginning, but soil needs plants, native ones (I rescue them from 'development' sites). Also, mulch is impossible to walk on barefoot!
Always good videos! Thank you!🌻
I loved your observation about the grass and the clover. I’ve done exactly what you did i.e. plan a lot of clover in an area where I was getting rabbit damage so take on board your observations thank you PS I really appreciate your knowledge and channel keep it up please😊
Hey K, thanks for another video! I found your channel a few years ago and I've used your journey of learning better permaculture as my own in a lot of ways. You have a great mind and it's been really cool to learn along with you over time. Like starting out learning about pruning nitrogen fixers and "disassociating" roots to then learning more about tree roots and soil microbiology around roots and building a more realistic understanding of what goes on under the soil. You put a lot of thought into this stuff and it has helped me a lot, plus has inspired me. Keep doing what you do, brother!
This means a lot to me, thanks! I'm glad people enjoy honesty rather than ego. I'd rather post my mistakes and lessons learned, than to pretend they never happen!
Good tips. I have fought and lost the battel with grass. Now I either out-compete (wedelia trilobata is one of my favorites) it or just leave it. Thanks for the good work!
I appreciate how you are always learning and not afraid to acknowledge that some past advice might not have been quite as good as you are able to give now. In our situation, I keep adding woodchips because we have limestone rock near the surface covered by a thin layer of very heavy clay which usually dries out in the summer. I am trying to change the clay into clay loam and increase the overall depth of soil and wood chips are one of the tools (in addition to compost).
Love your video!!!! Living in the high desert of New Mexico, our solar radiation is brutal. Using mulch is a necessity to begin your food forest. I will have to examine how things progress as far as continuing to mulch. Hugelkultering has really helped with water retention as well as building swells.
I agree definitely in a harsh environment like high desert NM mulch is needed to get established. Syntropic agroforestry forestry would work well here and is needed to recharge the water supplies and bring the rains. I've seen what Geoff has done all over the world there's no reason we can't green up NM.
This is something I struggle with as I have a traditional orchard I am gradually transitioning to more of a food forest, and part of the strategy is just to leave the grass and other stuff growing wild around the trees simply because I don't have time to carefully plant guilds around every tree. To be honest it looks kind of a mess, and any natural succession happens very slowly, but I still think it's better than mercilessly mowing around every tree, and as time allows I can gradually replace naturally occurring "weeds" with what I want to grow. I think there is some truth in the notion that piling wood chips everywhere (which I don't have access to anyway) might impede that process in a way
They should have an app that takes in some parameters like your top growth, mid growth, sub growth, dirt growth, or leave them blank if those are the ones you want suggestions for. Then you put in your guild's space and the growing zone you're in, then the machine returns a list of plants for each layer, or dealing with a purpose in the guild like nitrogen-fixers, pollinator attractors, etc. Suggestions can filter for native plants, which can probably grow better.
Been thinking about it for ahwile. I feel like a suggestion tool like that would help permaculture alot
@@johnduan8010 Surprised someone hasn't come up with something like this. I guess plant species can be VERY specific to am area so might be hard to compile all that data to give decent suggestions. ChatGPT actually gives some reasonable suggestions but it isn't knowledgeable enough about those specifics!
Have you looked into Syntropic Agriculture? They don't use woodchips there and grasses are an important part of the whole system
Absolutely, I consider SA almost analogous to ecosystems focused permaculture. Different names for basically the same concepts.
Thanks for checking in. Always appreciate your tips hope you had a great holiday season and a happy new year all my best from growing in Portland
Good info! I have a few "weeds" that are smothering out the plants I want but for the most part my food forest beds are doing pretty well and I didn't have chips to start them. Just cardboard and rough compost. I do need to add some more pollinator plants but It is slowly coming along!
Very insightful as always thank you. I'm looking forward to sowing in my ground covers in the next year and seeing even more green around my food forest. Love the intro for this season too!
G'day Keith! Thanks for another thoughtful, informative "infotorial." The perfect time of year to reflect on the progresses [or otherwise!] on our ongoing life journey! Always observing the how's, why's and where fore's on how my little "Eden" is functioning. My biggest enlightenment in 2023 was how beneficial the soil health/food-web is in strengthening my plants resistance to predators and climate induced negatives! Since "feeding" my orchard area with my own totally organic compost - supplemented with my own organically infused bio-char- I have seen a significant increase in fruit production as well as general tree health and growth. An issue I have had, is my Dwarf Nectarine tree and my peach tree ALWAYS have been affected with the dreaded "Curly Leaf" fungal disease! I have winter sprayed with a copper spray program, that has had "some " reduction in the leaf destruction process. This last year, I just worked on improving the natural health of my microclimate and the results were staggering.... the two previously affected trees had a minimal number of twisted "curly" leaves, that I manually removed and disposed of. So, without the use of Lime sulphur or copper sprays my trees were able to [mostly] ward off this fungal attack and produce their best harvest, even though we had good spring rains! Assisting my garden NATURALLY! Happy and healthy New Year to you and your family. 🥰🙏🍀🌻🥰
100%, I agree with this SO MUCH!
🥰🙏💪🍀@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
You have come so far and taken us with you..thanks..love your place..Ontario resident😂❤
❤️
Thanks again.
We really apreciatte your videos
Wood chips are needed in my 1/2 acre yard bcz we get no rain for ~6 months and can't afford to water the entire area. Year 6 of woodchips and about to pile on a ton more. Soil is still heavy clay and will dry to a brick without woodchip cover to hold in moisture. Blackberries are growing up fine thru chips. Fig trees still need supplemental water or figs will turn into mummies. I'm not in the desert but summer sun and heat is brutal on the trees I planted, lost some during drought but planting more. Is food forest even possible here, not ready to give up...yet.
Zone 9b California
Much needed tips. Thank you.
I don't mow my grass ... I have a video tour of my land .. it's from last year tho .. I need to do a new tour this spring
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
🤓🖖
Good video with some great info. Im in the early stages - lots of woodchip, so it's interesting to see how i can transition away from that
Hi Keith, here’s the setup: .4 of an acre of flat, degraded pasture (neighbor goats came to graze for two months during each of the last three summers). We get 12 inches of annual rainfall and are in USDA 6b. We have flood irrigation water rights. Questions:
1. Grass/vegetation is sparse due to goats. Would you sheet mulch food forest strips and then sow ground cover in walking paths or just sheet mulch (cardboard, manure, wood chips) the whole .4 acre and make the whole thing food forest?
2. Can we get to a point where we don’t need irrigation water? I’ve watched your videos on swales and even though we’re mostly flat, I can see the relevance, but still we don’t get much precipitation and have clay-loam soil. We also don’t have structures close by for rain harvesting.
Thank you!! Emily
1. Sounds like a good plan. Keep in mind the goats will have their own ideas of you growing a forest and will take it down to the grass. Will need to protect plants until they can handle browse.
2. The biggest things for not needing irrigation is:
- Proper tree selection. For you it would be very dry tolerant trees.
and
- Creation of shade. You can do this by using proper herbaceous layer/groundcover plant selection. Shading the soil level is SO IMPORTANT. If you can get a dry-tolerant groundcover established, then your eventual water irrigation needs can be almost (or actually) zero.
Put it this way.... somewhere around you, nature is surviving on whatever rainwater it gets naturally. Nature doesn't need us, it just needs proper setup, then we should be able to walk away.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thank you! You talk about the benefit of grasses. Do you still always recommend starting with sheet mulching to cover 10” grasses in pasture or jump right into seeding ground cover crop into the grass?
Keith, I have been following you for a few years now, and I am super impressed with the science you bring to your permaculture project. I do have one question, which is relevant to my own project as well (farm land converted to forest, ponds, wild grassland and fruit orchard, and of course a large and chaotic vegetable garden):
How much of the food you eat during the year is self-produced? Perhaps the subject of a video? If you already made one I am sorry that I missed it. Thanks! And Happy new year!
Thanks for the idea. I haven't made a video on that yet. Keep in mind, I'm more of a hobby food forest designer, and I grow more for nature than myself, and work full time. I won't grow as much of my own food as for example a full homesteaders, or market gardener.
Also, although I eat tons of greens, my kids (which they do eat them) love pizza and stuff that kids like. My goal for food is to grow healthy nutritious veggies and fruits to compliment their diets, not so much to be fully self sufficient.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks, Keith, I'm with you, and there will be plenty of time (a decade?) to up the game as the impending crisis grows closer. At some point our/my expensive(?) hobby may pay for itself and then some. I find myself constantly having to choose between a hundred worthwhile projects (landscaping, planting more trees, digging nature ponds, fixing up the old barn, improving veggie beds, finetuning my poor woodworking skills, getting the dream polytunnel finally built, not to mention the sunken Chinese greenhouse for overwinter citrus etc) while holding down a main and secondary job. It's a blast! And it will never end, hopefully. Cheers.
Happy New Year Keith! I just watched Andrew Millsons video about Willow. Have you had any experience growing willow in Ontario? Go Sens Go
LOL! (Boo sens)! I have willow on my property but it's in the back. I've been spreading it around wet areas that flood in snow melts in the spring. My goal for that was to have good forage trees for it I ever get goats 🐐
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Haha that's great! I hope to see some goats in future videos. I'm going to test out living willow fence this spring
Is horse radish a nutrient accumulator? Thank you for all of your informative videos. I've been gardening for 8 years and this is my first time giving permiculture a try.
The quick answer is "yes" because just about every single plant could be defined as a nutrient accumulator. So it really comes down to how you use the plant in your system. If you keep harvesting the horse radish, then it's a nutrient extractor. However, if you leave the horse radish in the ground, and constantly chop the leaves, let them regrow and perform photosynthesis, and never harvest it ever, then ALL it's doing is building soil. It's a root-exudate-solar-factory.
🙏💜🌞
Thank you for putting out these very informative videos. I hope to start a food forest later this year. Can I ask what is your climate zone? Thank you.
❤️ Zone 4
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy great! I am in Zone 5. Your videos will help me a lot.
This is an excellent video - and well timed, too! I am about to start my food forest, and was planning on heavy wood chip to start out. Nice to hear I can sort of phase out of it ;)
If you happen to read this: well firstly thanks for sharing all your knowledge and experience! And secondly, I am really struggling with spacing. My space is 'on the tight side', and I want to fit in as many trees as I can but I dont want them to shade each other. I will plant apples and pears on wild root stocks - how close would you go?
I would change plans and go with dwarfing root stock, then decide what I wss going for. Espaulier against a fence? Maybe 3 to 4 feet apart. Main overstory tree in the food forest? Maybe 6 to 8 feet apart. Heavily pruned commercial style planting? As close as 2 feet apart, but understanding there will be tons of micromanagement in the future, and and an eventually 50% thinning around year 7.
It all depends on your site goals and desired aesthetics.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thank you for the reply! I may have overemphasized my 'small space'. Its some 40 by 20 meters, so there will be lots of room for big trees, and the trees were grafted and temporarily planted at my parents place 2 years ago, so I'm kind of set on the vigorous root stocks. I just struggle with how many large trees can fit into a space like that.
Hey, man. Say you're starting over in 2025 with a homestead from scratch in a zone 5-6 Location, and bearing in mind what you mentioned about things getting kinda spicy in ten years. What would you prioritize getting in the ground from a food security/ providing for your family pov?
I'm just starting out too. I have discovered that so many plants that we label as "weeds" are actually edible and so nutritious, so my intention is to take my cues from nature - letting the land show me what grows well, where, and then adding in other stuff that I deliberately select (garlic, asparagus). Last year, I had wild strawberries for 10 days straight simply because I stopped mowing. I also harvested a ton of Queen's Anne Lace which can be used in a number of ways. I plan on planting Jerusalem artichokes, they are delicious, nutritious, extremely hardy, pretty, and impossible to get rid of once you plant them. And mushrooms in the wooded areas. I admit it's overwhelming and scary. I hate to cut/prune anything because I see every plant as a living being. I also struggle with identifying plants at the beginning of the season so I can tell what to keep/remove. Anyway, those are my ramblings from Quebec near the VT border. Blessings.
Apples, pears, currants, and nuts asap. These trees alone will provide carbs, fat, protein sources and will store well. Then Jerusalem Artichokes, chickens and annuals (for squash) because those 3 things fill out so much of the nutritional needs of a small family, and are incredibly robust.
Lastly, but certainly not least, some kind of pond for water storage, ideally situated in a manner to capture snow melts in the spring, and big enough, and we'll sealed enough (lined pond in my opinion) to store that water all summer.
Small addition to this... learning how to keep bees. I've found honey is an amazing barter value item.
But without you wood chip, your wine cap would not be productive. Or you keep one spot for them and that's it? Nice video again, thank you!
Yes, that's a good point, where you have a winecap spot, you definitely need to keep feeding them lignins.
Hi,
I'm just starting out.
Where would you buy your trees from?
They seem to be very expensive.
Thank you!
Why do you have black corrugated pipes in the middle of each of your garden boxes? Do you water your annuals with drip irrigation? Thank you!!
Do you mow your pathways with a lawn mower?
Besides your comfrey borders, how do you keep your grass (Kentucky blue grass here) from moving into your food forests? I noticed that you have a section of yard with a soccer goal, we too have a play area for our kids, but it’s next to our food forest and trying to keep them separate is tricky. For example, do you spray for dandelions on their soccer field?
I don't spray anything, definitely not going to kill dandelions, which are an a amazing plant. As for grass, if you search my channel for "grass", you will find detailed videos on the topic 😀
The pipes are for in situ worm beds. I put garden scraps in them, mixed with some leaves. It was a trial, and I'm still not sure if I like them or not. I'm leaning towards gimmick.
I don't water my annuals with drip irrigation, because I'm lazy and my focus is on perennials more. The annuals aren't really optimized, and I get tons of food out of them, so I mostly just half-arse them and focus on food forest expansion lol
Do you feel the same way about Bermuda grass? I don't think you have it up there but it's SO aggressive.
Oh, we have it. Probably the most annoying thing I deal with, besides poison ivy and ticks.
How do you deal with moles and voles? What I have is a yard that looks like Swiss cheese . Tunnels all over even against house foundation and steps!
I have grass and clover right beside my front yard garden bed. The rabbits went for my beans. Any tips to keep them off the beans?
Hmmmm, plant more beans! Also maybe raised beds could help. Beans in the raised beds with grasses/clover around the bottoms of the beds, and the rabbits should likely focus on what they can reach easier.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I'll give it a shot! Thanks!
you should make short tiktok vids of your youtube vids! you'd get a ton of views
Yeah I know shortform content is all the rage these days. I find it SO HARD to do that content because I always want to explain and teach. I really should do some, to drive traffic. It just sucks because it's actually a decent amount of work, and gets almost zero financial return, so it's hard to stay motivated to do that kind of content. I also just really don't think that way (30 sec clips)
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy They have long(er) form videos now. Not CZcams long I don’t believe but 5 minutes. Could always pay an editor off of fiverr to grab some bits from your vids as well and throw them on tiktok? They just have sooo many eyeballs. Wishing you all the best
Soon there will be AI that can do that all by its own. Wait, they do already?
Hi Kieth, I have a question. I really took your video a couple years ago on mythbusting to heart, but still hear you regularly mention nitrogen-fixers and deep taprooted nutrient accumulators as part of a diverse forest eco-system. So, I'm just wondering where your thinking is on the importance of these plants right now. Like how much effort should we make to include those specifically for the nitrogen fixation and deep nutrient accumulation?
100% still valuable additions. Speaking about nitrogen fixers, although they work a bit differently than I (and many permies) originally thought, they are still zero nitrogen loaf plants which drop leaves and build nitrogen that way. They are incredibly valuable.
Same with deep taprooted nutrient accumulators. They may or may not take much of their nutrients from deep down, but they still aerate and provide water pathways deep town, so are still incredibly valuable.
Thanks for the update and clarification!@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
What kind of grass?
What do you do to eliminate ticks?
There's nothing you can do. Keep grasses cut short, that's it. Climate change is doing the rest to make them out of control. We just check often, to make sure if we do get one on us, we catch it before it can do any harm.
What about using cardboard rather wood chip. I mostly just thinking expense & its massive availability.
My one issue I can think of is the printing inks, are they dangerous?
I was also wondering about mob grazing rabbits? If you could mob graze rabbits would that help soil fertility?
Obviously, human controlled flocks would be easier to manage especially if the plan was to predate on the rabbits. But could a system of just wild rabbits work? With or without predation?
One of the things I think about is how to use robotics in mob grazing to remove human time from food production.
The other thing I am watching how the technology develops is robotics & food forests. Designing robotic food capture from guilded food forests.
A simpler example of this is Agroforestry tools that can take individual trees out of forests, cut it at the base, auto strip branches etc, whilst lopping the main trunk into standard sections.
Cardboard and wood chips have different advantages and disadvantages. For the most part ink on cardboard is made of soy ingredients and is mostly non toxic, to be safest only use brown boxes with minimal black ink. They can sometimes contain glues and other chemicals that may effect soil chemistry but to my understanding unless they’re painted, coated, or heavy on the glue, it not an issue.
The biggest difference is the time it takes for them to break down and what kind of soil life it’ll promote. Wood chips have a lot more range of nutrients and are much harder to breakdown so they provide a more well balanced and sustainable base for your soil food web. Wood chips also provide more niches and more air penetration which is incredibly important for soil health. Cardboard works great as a way to smother out plants and act as a quick carbon source for your soil or compost.
And to your second comment. I do not work directly with rabbits so im no expert but, Mob grazing rabbits would improve soil health, as most well managed grazing animals provide bio available nitrogen and therefore more life and fertility. I think how successful it would be would depends both on what you plan to do with the land and rabbits. If your plan was to build a foot Forrest and then allow or introduce small amounts of rabbits at a time they could work well together, however if you were to use rabbits to establish land for a food forest, without having the right protection and food sources for them in place I think you could open the door to a boom of predation without the rabbits being able to establish well. Rabbits will also probably make it very hard to establish certain crops in the future, but with the right management and planning I think they could do well for building soil fertility and health, and find a useful place in a food forest/Agro forestry context.
Black printed inks are natural and soy based. It's no problem. The thing you are looking to avoid is stickers and glossy prints, etc. Using cardboard as a mulch is totally fine. It's just not very aesthetically pleasing, as it doesn't look natural of course. However, it will break down fairly quickly, and you can always put shredded leaves and grass clippings on top, to kind of cover it.
This is a great response from adultpersonman (and a great name LOL)
Anyone with experience using sea buckthorn as nitrogen fixer wiith fruit trees?
What is sheet mulch?
Cardboard for a weed barrier and a good bit of compost, fallen leaves or woodchips on top. Keith(CPL) has a good video on it, as well as Geoff Lawton.
Search my channel for that term and you will find guides on what it is and how to do it.
Hey, I remembered you from the collapse and late stage capitalism videos which I found highly educational and intriguing. I wondered what your thoughts on chinas economic rise of their socialist spirit are and if you think if this could change how we economise in the western world and thus change our priorities and values or do you think the west will remain arrogant, ignorant and competitive?
That question can induce a 2 hour video LOL
I think yes, the west will remain arrogant and ignorant until collapse happens. We just think we're special and the rules don't apply to us, and we'll one day find out that nature doesn't care, and physics will just happen.
As far as China (and I want to be REALLY CLEAR, that I'm not talking about Chinese people, but rather the authoritarian government of China), I don't think you ever truly know what they are actually doing behind the curtain. They say one thing and do another, and they always have. For example, even calling China socialist, or communist is just a complete joke, because the workers have no power or rights. That's not socialism or communism. China is absolutely an imperial capitalist society, regardless of what they call themselves.
China will continue to dominate the economy as long as they can leverage their labour force. They have more people of working age than the west, and they work roughly 2500 hours a year, versus around 1700 here, each person. So as long as they are putting out that much labour, nobody can compete with that. It's going to remain true until their demographic collapse which is impending and inevitable. They are going to have to open up massive immigration just to keep enough labour to keep their economy able to support their elders.
I don't know, it's going to be a super interesting next 20-30 years, even just watching what happens over in China. They are going to be a case-study on their one-child policy and how it played out. Even though it's gone now, it had tremendous influence on China's future economy.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Tbh I would watch the entire thing😂 very insightful and I agree that in reality just like USSR it’s state capitalism being in the play there. China is multifaceted but they studied the west very well in terms of what to avoid and they have been pretty successful by lifting so much people out of poverty. Other then their suspicious surveillance upon their people, what fascinates me the most is their long term policies of 5 year plans and their geopolitical chess playing of investing strategically in other developing countries. I don’t want to bother much, but what’s your opinion on the concept of UBI for dealing with demographic changes and automatisation of labour in the future?
Have you ever just planted tree lines into grass sod without doing anything else? I am trying to reduce the work down to as little as possible, and i see little trees popping up and surviving (often not just pioneers) in old grassy fields all the time, and cant see an ecological reason to not try this, if you have access to cheap enough trees, plant tightly, and are willing to take losses. But maybe you just lose EVERY tree doing this?
I got a few hundred birch for free from a planting giveaway, and did that with them. I'd say I got maybe 20% survival rate, and the ones that survived were stunted for years. I would personally at least to small mulch rings around each.
i was really going to listen to this but then i saw the maple leafs cap knew this had to be a loser.... jk thx fot the great tips
What do you mean! The leafs are getting real close to winning the PGA tour
are nitrogen fixers actually real?
Yes absolutely, but they work differently than most people describe. There are lots of plants that “fix” nitrogen, meaning they are able to generate their own nitrogen through a connection with bacteria that grow on the roots. This means they can add nitrogen to the soil, but as I understand it the plant either has to die or be cut back fully with the roots left intact. Some plants are able share this nitrogen to other plants and fungi through mycorrhizal fungi, but these are usually perennial or at least in more established ecosystems.
But planting something like a pea plant, which fixes nitrogen, harvesting it like normal and pulling it out at the end of the season won’t really change your soils nitrogen levels, or benefit the other plants around it (unless they had some kind of mycorrhizal association already)
Check out my video on "biggest myths", where I talk about them. They do absolutely work, but not so much in the way that some people think they do.
So it’s only useful if you would cut peas and leave the roots in?
Okay thanks!
Rabbits eat everything? Not with my dogs.