Fertility plan for a food forest

hey welcome back to the Food Forest uh with my friend where'd she go there she is Rosie Rosie's out here with us as always anytime I go outside she always comes running out um I gave a uh talk at a Simco Master Gardener conference and I wanted to discuss one of the questions that was raised thought that would make a good video which is where does the fertility in your food Forest come from what's my fertility plan so that's what today's video is about stick around so my fertility comes from stuff like her and stuff like this the two things that the fertility in any Forest system comes from that is animals and plants my fertility comes from this plants going through their normal cycle uh collecting sunlight turning it into plant root exudates via the photosynthesis equation we talk about this all the time so photosynthesis is carbon dioxide and water turns into with sunlight turns into sugars and oxygen so the sugars are things that the plant uses in order to survive but it goes into the leaves so we get you know nitrogen and other other uh nutrients going into the leaves and then they kind of end their natural life cycle they fall over and they decompose and they make way for flushes of New Growth if it's early in the season or they send all that energy down in the roots to store for next year so because in a food Forest we focus on perennials largely um and not annuals the plants will undergo their full life cycle and take some of the energy that they have put it back down into the roots and um get ready for next year so that they spring up you know earlier than anything else I'm eating greens out of my food Forest when people are just starting to plant their Gardens Out and because we plant so densely in a food Forest system a polyculture that mimics you know a natural Forest where there's you know an overstory an underst story an emergent layer herbaceous layer ground cover we've got uh you know plants everywhere we're getting a ton a photosynthesis happening compared to a normal Garden a normal Garden we would have you know a couple tomatoes and we would have lettuces and peppers and in between that we largely have um Blank Space we might mulch it if we know what we're doing in gardening but we don't have the density of photosynthesis that's happening in a natural system so in a you know or you know a mimicked natural system so in a food Forest you know this is our tree and a lot of orchardists will say don't plant anything around your trees cuz they'll out compete your trees but in a food Forest we plant tons of stuff you know densely and all of that photosynthesis that's happening is pushing plant root exudates down into the ground this is the main source of the fertility of Life anywhere but in a food Forest especially and in your you know Forest gardening especially all of that plant root eggit dates is food that then gets pushed down into the soil and it's it's this base of the food pyramid that we grow in a food Force system when we have a really healthy subsoil microbiome that feeds the entire food chain so we've got a ton of bacteria eating the sugars of the plants we've got a ton of protozoa eating those we've got nematodes and micro AR and microarthropods eating that macroarthropods eating that we've got small reptilians eating those and we've got birds eating those small mammals you know eating all the things smaller than them this is the base of the food pyramid the food chain the web of life when we have a very strong and robust base layer to that web of life we have a lot of energy think about the imbued chemical energy in all of those creatures um digestive systems creating energy for themselves and then excreting it back out and closing that Loop that all happens in the forest it all happens in nature and if we design Our Food Systems to allow for that instead of exclude it then we get access to so much natural energy and fertility cycling and because we focus largely on perennials and we don't really till the soil we get a really healthy melium layer this this is some mushrooms here that have um you know that are undergoing their their natural phase they've actually fruited and created a fruiting body they sporulated and they're continuing to um build and connect all the plants that are around and uh make the fertility available to plants because it's not simply do we have the fertility in the soil it's do we have the micro risal association between the roots in order to share that fertility and make it bioavailable to the plant so they can actually use it so in a typical Garden system we also see pests we remove them Pest Management and our philosophy on how we deal with pests is very important and has uh echoing implications in our fertility uh of our system if we're constantly seeing issues like you know something is eating our leaves and we look to to eradicate that pest then we never get a insect Predator population that actually naturalizes on our land what are you doing what are you doing near my pear tree she must have found something oh my goodness this goes right down I actually wonder is this even you is that even you doing that probably well that is a natural Iration pathway you know in nature we have large creatures oh we've got a pair that fell down and it's feeding something so we've got creatures who are burrowers and we'll dig and they'll create natural irration as well okay so little tangent there ran into a little Rosy uh tunnel yeah so because because we allow life on our property um we get things like rabbit scat everywhere all in our food forest and we get um insects so we get a really healthy uh base of the food chain and then because we plant in polycultures and mimic a forest then we get a ton of you know litter down on the ground this is just what a forest does um it just drops down organic matter constantly the more uh carbon heavy organic matter will slowly break down the nitrogen stuff uh Rich stuff like leaves they'll break down much quicker uh especially if you've got a good healthy source of carbon on the base layer from wood chips in order to provide the carbon to you know accelerate that natural decomposition of the nitrogen just checking on the pawas down here I figured I would check on it while we were walking around sorry they pausing for a bit of a cough I'm still still getting over a little bit of an illness um and I'm just looking for bags on the ground again and I'm looking for the right day to start picking these paw paws because it's a daily thing to check but you can see how you know what I just walked by the base layer of my paaw trees is a just a giant herbaceous layer of a deep tap rooted plant so let's talk about what this does in terms of fertility of a food Forest okay so having a diverse set of plants in your food Forest is really important we don't just want the same stuff everywhere and although there is a lot of comrey here it's because I've been doing a lot of planting and digging and uh you know by association it uh fractures the roots of the comrey and then it propagates more but we have things like Jerusalem artichokes we've got roses in here that have kind of gone dormant as well um uh they're kind of being swallowed by the comre to be be honest but we've got little saplings of of trees in here we allow wild plants you can kind of see them uh everywhere we've got lots of Golden Rod everywhere and we're under the uh overstory of an apple tree here as well but you know diverse plants is really important and specifically compri has a very deep tap rout so as much as the plant doesn't get a ton of its nutrient from the tap rout it does get some and it does split off laterals all the way down I've definitely seen it digging some of this stuff up and what that does is it actually causes the plant to access nutrients from so far down that they would normally just sink down and be covered by you know uh decades and a eons of of th and soil and slowly sink down into the Earth but this plant is actually accessing some of it is drawing it up and then it's putting it into leaves and then at the end of the season the leaves fall down so we look when we step back and we look at what this plant's doing it's actually taking nutrients that would be long lost bringing it back to the surface and depositing it back down onto the surface to build healthy uh top soil so when we plant in a garden and we're constantly turning the soil over we can't get that root really really deep cuz we're constantly fracturing those roots and like you know even if we allowed plants to grow if we're growing annuals we're constantly damaging and disturbing those roots and we're breaking that cycle if we allow deep rooted tap uh deep tap rooted plants into our system we design for that we plant them then it's constantly bringing up that fertility dredging it from deep below bringing it up almost like a nutrient pump to the surface you can see that the the paa you know they're they're all yellowing cuz it's it's fall but they're just doing fantastic these things are only about 7 8 years old and they're 30 ft high and they're planting hund or they're producing hundreds of fruit uh for us already and you know one of the questions that I was asked is the you know the photos from the food force that I was using in the presentation from earlier in the summer it's just so incredibly um fertile the Food Forest it just looks so Lush and green and the question was really how are you actually producing this level of fertility in a system not quite ready you know what are you doing are you spreading compost are you constantly getting manure in and I mean the answer is yes to both but I'm not doing it it's yes to both but um because we allow pests and we don't get rid of them and because we allow you know wild plants uh to grow um and because we plant in a very dense polyculture and because we plant like densely like very very densely then we get this really really insane fertility building just naturally the way that a forest does through really almost no work at all and then uh you know animals is the other way no no no don't like that what are you licking what are you doing animals are the other way that uh you get a ton of fertility so here's some chickens um you can run chickens through your food Forest like a food tractor system uh that was my original plan and I'll probably get to it at some point when I'm home a little bit more uh but here's two Food Forest strips believe it or not and we've got a a path between them the Jerusalem artichokes are just finishing up and when when they start falling like this this is one I know I can Harvest them but they're falling over the path a bit uh but you can run food for you can run animals through your food for system using just uh sequences of netting that you can move or an actual established tractor and move them along each day now the reason why um I don't do that uh right now currently is that I'm not home enough cuz I work full-time and then have other commitments with kids like their Sports where um I can ensure that the chickens are safe and that they're moving along properly and all that uh we've got a lot of pest or a lot of predator pressure from chickens uh aerial you know Hawks and that sort of stuff we've got raccoons I've seen raccoons up in the trees um so I I would really need to build a very robust uh chicken tractor which I just can't really do right now uh so that's why I'm not doing it right now um but uh we still actually have some good fruit on these so that's why I'm not doing it right now uh but uh integrating animals into your food Forest systems is a great way to get uh tremendous fertility you know a lot of full-time homesteaders who are doing the permaculture thing are um running stuff like cows uh through it uh chickens behind the cows to scratch and spread the manure and going for the whole Mark shepher all and savory um silver pasture mimicking systems in food forests so that's also something that you can do we've got a Broody girl so I like to bring her treats cuz I always steal her children to eat them uh but if you don't have um large animals and you don't want to tractor them through uh don't eat that no no no those aren't little snackers then you you know if as long as you don't fence out animals then you get stuff like this this is just free fertility rabbit scat so I hope you enjoyed this episode um that's where I get the fertility from for my food Forest it is through a mental approach and a paradigm shift for how we deal with pests largely and how we plant and design our systems so dense planting tons of photosynthesis tons of soy root exit dates build that food chain from the subsoils up and then you get access to all of their chemical imbued energy in their digestive systems and um uh closing the loop outputs that they provide you and then you know with pest allow them allow them bring in pest Predators for them to eat them and then you get access not only to all their chemical andbut energy but also all of their um closing the loop outputs as well so that is the main way that I cycle my fertility if I fenced rabbits out because they eat some of my trees I would get access to that fertility in the food Forest so to me it's a price well paid in order to feed and support the local wildlife and same thing if I see insect damage on some of my leaves and I spray insecticide to kill them all um that's completely backwards thinking I want to see damage on the leaves I specifically plant things like Oaks because they support so many insects and they act as a um uh like a guard a protector of my other plants because the insects might eat those tastier things I plant Clover for rabbits so that they eat those instead of my other fruit trees I leave uh branches of young trees that I can Harvest off of say Willows in my backyard and then I bring those and I lay those down around my fruit trees I did that last winter I'm going to do it again this winter and that's from a comment from some Russian uh viewers who are watching the show and mention that that's what they do uh over there and and I thought that that is just absolutely brilliant because that gives the rabbits that sweet young Ramel wood that they're looking for when they're eating my trees and hopefully that deflects some of the ra rabbit pressure as well I still lose trees to rabbits it's a price I pay for the fertility that they give thanks for watching see you on the next one