Working With and Learning From Nature
How To Create A “Fruit-Full” Food Forest
Episode 134: Have you ever wanted to grow a cornucopia of organic fruit at home? In this episode, Permaculture Teacher and Ecological Designer Michael Judd teaches us how to plant a food forest in easy to follow steps. Michael recommends a “patch method” for starting your food forest, shares his recipes for soil preparation, and talks about how to incorporate existing trees into your new food forest. Michael covers guilds (a group of plants that form a small ecosystem to support trees) and talks about the plants he loves to incorporate into food forests including: Comfrey, Strawberry, Lead Plant, Yarrow, Wild Blue Indigo, and many others. Michael shares his favorite Uncommon Fruits and “Edible Landscaping All Stars” which include: Hardy Kiwi, Gooseberry, Juneberry, Goumi, Autumn Olive, Paw Paw, Che Fruit, Elderberry, and Currants.
You can read more about Michael and his amazing work at EcologiaDesign.com. Michael is the author of Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist.
You can taste some of Michael’s uncommon fruit at his 1st Annual Paw Paw Festival on September 17th, 2016 at Long Creek Homestead. The Fest is a celebration of North America’s largest (and many say most delicious) fruit.
To hear more from Michael on my podcasts, click here: Have Your Yard and Eat It, Too!, Outdoor Mushroom Cultivation, and Goumi, A Beautiful Bush With Benefits.
If you have the Sustainable World Radio App for Mac or Android, included in this interview is a short segment with Michael’s recommendations for nurseries that sell uncommon fruit.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:42 — 40.3MB) | Embed
8 Comments on “How To Create A “Fruit-Full” Food Forest”
looks really good , thank you so much, we gratefully appreciate you , sending blessings from Fruit forests & Forest gardens for healing & health https://www.facebook.com/Fruit-forests-Forest-gardens-for-healing-health-347638495382415/
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Great episode, thanks! Just FYI Juneberries/ Serviceberries are called Saskatoons in Canada – there’s even a city in the province of Saskatchewan named after them! And they are commonly eaten on the prairies where they grow wild as well
Thanks for letting us know and for listening, Hannah!
I really enjoyed this episode. It re-inforced the patch method of growing fruit trees I witnessed on a tour of a local organic dryland farm called Millberg Farm in Kyle, TX. I’m excited to apply this method on our property and start adding some of these trees to our landscape. Thanks for the great podcast, Jill, and thanks for sharing your knowledge, Michael. I’m adding it to my favorites!
Thank you so much, Carmel.Have fun planting!
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