We took a break from our urban gardens and headed for the woods to prove that you can grow food virtually anywhere.  Simon Hart shows us how to create a perpetual food garden in a forest:

Countless people across North America are reconnecting with their food by making an effort to grow part of it themselves.  Some people are growing in their back yards.  Others are making use of a sunny balcony.  And some are taking the efforts indoors and growing food 365 days a year using grow lights.  Perhaps this recent spike in the popularity of the ‘Grow Your Own’ movement is a direct reflection of our concern over the global economy, or maybe the simple commonsense of local food production is beginning to naturally reemerge in our collective consciousness?  Whatever the case, like many others, I am making an effort to surround myself with more edible landscapes.  I’m learning as I go and having fun in the garden all the while.  My food garden is very unusual though – it’s in a forest.

I live on the West Coast of Canada – one huge rainforest – and I’m lucky enough to have a small acreage on what was once part of a family wood lot an hour outside of Vancouver, BC.  The Canadian Wildlife Federation has even certified my property as a wildlife habitat! Obviously, the special thing about living in the forest is the trees; so although I wanted to garden, I felt the responsibility of respecting the trees and all the biodiversity that coexists with them.  Being a temperate rainforest, the climate here is cool compared to tropical forests and this naturally limits plant selection and diversity.  While it’s important to work within your environment, it’s crucial to note that there are delicious, edible options no matter where you choose to garden.

Designing a Perpetual Garden

These 73 blueberry plants of 14 varieties could eventually produce about 1,000lbs of fruit per year.

My approach is based loosely on permaculture – a concept developed in the late ’70s which focuses on sustainable small-scale farming methods from the last 10,000 years combined with observations of functioning natural  ecosystems.  Permaculture is a complex form of garden management that works with the landscape by using topography and long term planning to create a garden that builds on itself to create a naturally chaotic equilibrium.  To look at a food forest is to look into natural chaos but that is entirely the point.  The natural world is quite disorganized, but functions as a balanced system.  This forward thinking garden design was developed by Bill Mollison and he was awarded the alternate Nobel Prize for his work.

The key to a perpetual garden is the use of perennial crops as your foundation.  Once established, trees and shrubs that produce fruit and nuts require far less work than annual crops and also provide the backbone on which to build a bio-intensive, layered garden system.  The most important point in the design stage is to create a multi-storey garden which provides a diverse group of plants, varied habitat and micro climates within the landscape.

Growing fruit is not a new idea, but my garden will be slightly unconventional.  Other than selective logging in the 1950s this land has never been worked.  I had to create the soil for my garden as I am growing in a flood plain with very thin topsoil.  The forest soil that was on the garden site was infested with Himalayan blackberry and had a pH of 3.7, which is more like vinegar than soil.  So I had to literally start from the ground up.

Before

My first job was removing large areas of invasive Himalayan blackberry vines by hand which was a thorny experience and took longer than I expected.  Because blackberries spread underground, if I had simply cut them down it would have made the problem worse.  Once the blackberries were gone it was time to start working on my first planting of blueberries, moving soil one wheelbarrow at a time to create raised beds.  In my initial raised beds, I used fallen cedar branches to create the sides. In subsequent beds, thanks to the abundance of river rock that covers the property I have used stone to define permanent fruit gardens. The beds don’t follow straight lines instead they follow contour lines away from the creek on the edge of my property.  The driveway, which winds through the fruit beds also follows topography; and the bed which meanders alongside acts as a swale to stop rain water runoff and helps it percolate into the raised bed.  I will take advantage of the gravel driveway (which releases radiant heat) to grow watermelons underneath my blueberries this season.

Soil Amendments

I amended all the soil for the raised beds with coir fiber, peat moss (untreated) and compost.  I have also used a variety of organic soil amendments such as alfalfa meal, fish hydrolysate, liquid kelp, worm castings and fermented soybean meal.  So far I have been using multiple organic inputs to provide extra nitrogen and other key nutrients, but this season I am also seeding legumes in open areas to incorporate into my onsite composting.  These legumes associate with nitrogen fixing bacteria which use nitrogen from the air to feed the plant roots they grow on.  I will be using white clover and lupines as a perennial ground cover under my berry shrubs.  Hairy vetch and fava beans will be harvested and worked into compost once or twice a season.  Supplemental nitrogen is probably the most important step to creating a self sustaining food garden, and these legumes offer a solution for onsite nitrogen while inhibiting invasive weed species from taking hold.  They also provide flowers for pollinators, and incredible mulch for the garden when mixed with fallen leaves.

After

I’m lucky to work with soil scientists – lucky because that means I can get my soil analyzed for free (which is how I knew that my soil pH was so low initially).  After nearly two years of management, my first blueberry bed now has a pH of 4.6 which is in an appropriate range for blueberries.  I should point out that any agricultural professional would have determined my land to be marginal for food crops due to the pH but I have successfully grown everything from Brussels sprouts to cantaloupe in my first two seasons in this garden.  I think this highlights the point that gardening should be about experimentation and learning from personal experiences and discovering what will work in your own unique situation.  It also shows that organic gardens can function effectively outside of the conventional agricultural knowledge base.

Dealing with Low Light Levels

My fruit garden only receives about six hours of direct sun a day during the summer because of the large trees.  This is less than what is recommended for most productive gardens.  However, I have found that all this means is slightly lower yields and less water consumption; lower yields can be compensated for by increasing the number of plants.  With watering in mind, I’ve made sure that all the beds are concave with higher sides to channel water.  They also slope slightly from one end to the other.  This keeps water from running off the sides of the beds and ensures the most impact from the water used.

Visually the fruit garden begins at the edge of 120 foot cedar trees. However, it continues under the canopy and into the dense shade.  By planting native fruit shrubs, I have found that it is possible to take advantage of lower light levels.  Behind the blueberries, evergreen huckleberries flanked by salmonberries grow in part shade.  In the deeper shade, are deciduous huckleberries and thimbleberries which still manage to produce a limited amount of fruit in the dense shade under the forest canopy.  Using native plants that require less light energy has provided a longer fruit season, and in addition has improved the habitat for beneficial wildlife around the garden.

I have had to make the difficult choice to use part of the sunniest area of the property to put in a wildflower meadow which I have seeded this spring.  Although this area will be agriculturally unproductive, I am experimenting with the concept that the increased diversity in habitat and blooms will encourage a wider variety of birds and insects into the area, thereby increasing the pressures on pests within the garden.

This season, I am planting grafted apples and pears and some hazelnuts to provide the 10-20 foot canopy which will shade parts of the food forest.  Vegetables will be grown in open areas: lettuce, carrots and potatoes in the shade; peppers and tomatoes in the sunnier spots.  Creating a perennial food garden is a long-term project, but I will watch patiently as the forest continues to grow, allowing me to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of my labor.

Simon Hart is the senior technical adviser for Grotek manufacturing in Canada.  If you have any questions regarding his forest food project or anything else garden-related you can email Simon at simonh@grotek.net

Don’t forget to tell us about your plant projects!  Email us at rant@urbangardenmagazine.com