r/foodforests • u/Belasius • 27d ago
6B Fledging Food Forest
Hey food forest / permie folks. I just want to post a little image dump of my first season partially finished food forest! Its been alot of work transforming my suburban backyard into what it is now. It all started as a severely overgrowth thicket in the corner and grass lawn. We took several weeks to clear the ground and then sheet mulched the whole area in phases with cardboard, compost, and lots of arborist woodchips!
It still feels a bit sparse, but I'm missing a lot of the perennial herb and pollinator understory.
From the northeast double gate down, I have a bush cherry (carmine jewel), peach (redhaven, not planted yet), 5 graft apple tree (first actual planting!!), persimmon (meader, also not planted yet). The 4 cages along the east fence are 2 different types of everbearing raspberries. The tree closest to the stairs is a Standing Ovation serviceberry. Down in the dappled shade of the existing giant silver maple tree along the southern fence is a gooseberry and 2 different grafted pawpaws.
For understory, there's 6 strawberry plants scattered around the upper orchard area near the peach, service berry, and apple. There's 6 comfrey, one near each major anchor tree. Ive planted a few native pollinator plants (whorled milkweed, spotted bee balm, hairy mountain mint, wild bergamot, and golden alexander). And I just recently raked some wood chips aside in swaths to seed some white clover throughout several areas.
What's planned but not planted yet is the peach, persimmon, and a golden currant shrub.
Everything is still very young, so it feels like there's tons of space still. If anyone has any suggestions for any layers I might be missing, feel free to comment. I'm planning a grape vine Trellis eventually, and the southern fence line will be a long hugelkultur annual vegetable bed mound. And I was planning wine cap mushrooms in the wood chips and maybe innoculating some of the fresh cut logs from the two volunteer trees i had removed with some mushroom plugs (oyster or chestnut mushrooms).
Anywho, I'm proud of what me and the wife have been able to accomplish so far. The compost bins are filling up with tree leaves and twigs and occasional food scraps already, and its not even fall yet!
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u/That_Minimum8513 26d ago
Looks nice! Why not plant a plum tree?
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u/Belasius 26d ago
Well, they always say "plant what you eat". My family doesn't or hasn't really eaten plums. My two experiments were the persimmon and the pawpaws.
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u/cozycorner 26d ago
I live in KY and a pawpaw is totally in my plans!
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u/Belasius 26d ago
Just know, they aren't self pollinating, so you need 2 genetically different pawpaws for cross pollination. I just planted a KSU Atwood and Shenendoah grafted cultivars. I bought smaller ones, as they're being planting under the shade canopy of that gigantic existing silver maple, so I didn't want to try to dig a giant 5 or 7 gallon planting hole in that existing root zone.
The apple is the same way, pollination wise. Not self fertile. But I've found a few nurseries around that do multi-grafted combo apple trees to handle that.
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u/AllosSubjectatosNunc 26d ago
This makes me so happy, you've clearly put in a ton of work and hopefully you'll be rewarded year after year as it grows and evolves. May you grow roots deep and berries sweet!
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u/Belasius 26d ago
Here's to hoping! Ive got two young boys who love berries, and we all know the prices ain't coming down on anything these days...
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u/IntrepidCheesecakes 27d ago
This is brilliant, and clearly a lot of labor and love. I’d love to see an update next year too if you don’t mind! And I think you did a great job integrating the existing landscaping into your design.