How I Created a Food Forest – from Design to Delivery

Food Forest and Permaculture, permaculture

Permaculture Orchard from Design to Delivery

Chestnuts, apples, hazelnuts, asparagus, herbs like Wormwood and mint, comfrey, blackberries, Milpa garden beds, and annual beds.

In Spring 2021, I extended my homestead/permaculture orchard by 80 feet. This was the initial design:

permaculture design — Initial rough design. Bet you can’t read my handwriting!

This was a section at the edge of the pasture that I fenced in.

Plotting contour

Started with using an A Frame with a plumb bob to plot out the rows on contour. The land slopes down toward the SE.

A Frame on contour — A Frame with plumb bob

permaculture on contour — The land plotted out on contour, using wooden garden sticks to mark the rows.

Digging swales

I hand dug all of the swales and mounds. Starting uphill, I used a broadfork to create a swale area two broadforks wide. I double-dug down and then used the shovel to dig out the dirt and pile it all up on the mound.

permaculture swale — This swale above is one broadfork wide. I enlarged it to two broadforks width.

Planting into the mounds

I planted trees and bushes into the mounds, sowed buckwheat as a cover crop in the gaps and in the swale, then covered with wood chips.

permaculture mound and swale — Mound with a chestnut tree, covered in buckwheat cover crop

permaculture mound and swale with apple — Mound with autumn olive and apple, covered in buckwheat cover crop

I sowed asparagus and annuals in some of the lanes. I will have a follow up article on how I used Milpa as a cover crop and got a multi-month harvest of different veggies.

Lessons learned:

Grafted apples don’t like the STUN method (Sheer Total Utter Neglect). In KS they usually need extensive irrigation. These swales were one of the few times that I have had widespread success with apples. The chestnut trees did fairly well planted in the mounds with swales. Hazels failed or were eaten down by deer, who found a way over the fence. Asparagus didn’t last, even after being replanted and reseeded the next season. A lot of infiltration by haygrass = need more woodchips and cover crop.

This article is cross posted from Thriving News – Thriving Community News, without the Noise.