So you are starting a one acre food forest on a semi-arid zone 6 property. What do you plant?
Well, lets go through the items we decided to plant, working our way from the canopy to the soil surface.
American Chestnut
Planted as seedlings. True American Chestnuts from blight-free stands in Washington.
Paw Paw, Pennsylvania Golden Paw Paw and Mango Paw Paw
Planted as seedlings.
Honeycrisp, Dayton and Red Boskoop Apples
All planted as as bare root trees on Antanovka root stock.
Harken Peach
Bare root trees on Lovell root stock.
English Morello Cherry
Bare root on Gisela root stock.
Italian Prune Plum
Bare root on Marianna root stock.
Autumn Olive
Significant numbers planted from rooted cuttings to help with early establishment. Already growing very well. Sourced inexpensively on Ebay.
Choke Cherry
Planted as rooted cutting.
Oregon Grape
Hardy evergreen shrub with tart edible berries. Historically native to the area.
Ben Lomond Black Currant
Compact high-producing commercial variety from Scotland.
Ben More Black Currant
Another Scottish variety which is later blooming.
Blue Elderberry
Planted as rooted cutting.
Assorted Blueberries and Strawberries
We don’t expect much success with the blueberries until the the forest is more established due to soil acidity issues, but we’ve planted quite a few and we’ll see how they do.
Planting
Most trees were planted inside tubes of hardware cloth fastened with zip ties. The hardware cloth tubes go several inches into the ground to help reduce vole, deer and rabbit damage. It is a significant amount of work to create all of the hardware cloth tubes, so inexpensive and abundant rooted cuttings were left unprotected. You can also see here the 3/4inch drip irrigation tubes run along each swale. 5gph drip fittings are attached near trees, and misters are placed periodically to help with growth of herbaceous plants on the swale.
