Join me as I show you around our 6 Year Old Colorado Food Forest that is just beginning to get established.
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This video will give you an idea of what to expect if you are thinking about starting a food forest in the Colorado mountains. Our food forest is located on a northern facing sloped 1 acre property at about 7300 feet in elevation and is in hardiness zone 5b-6a. There was only one mature tree on the property when we started this project.
We have planted both fruit trees and shrubs as well as non-edible trees to help shade the edible plants from the intense Colorado sun and to also act as a wind block. Wood chips were added around plants to help keep moisture in the soil and reduce the need to water. We didnt use wood chips for the first couple years and they seem to really help the plants. if I were to start over I would use them from the beginning.
We do not have a well. We are using rain water for the majority of the irrigation but sometimes need to supplement with water that we hauled in from town.
#permaculture #colorado #foodforest #forestgarden #coloradogardening
strawberries raspberries are starting to flower oh what else we’ve got plums starting see these are the plum trees that we planted six years ago going kind of fast but here’s all the plums they’re little babies i want to show you the strawberries again so here’s the raspberries we’ve got lots of strawberries hiding in there get in there some strawberries they’re all in here chives lavender and I wanted to come down here this area we dug this all out by hand this area it was all on a slope and we dug it out so it’s flat and let’s see what we got going on got some herbs going on in here that is some thyme i’ve got some lavender in this area this is the rock wall see if we can get a better view of the rock wall let me dug out all right let’s see what we got going on so we’ve got some aspens for the canopy this lavender sorry this is lilac lilac we planted the lilac about six years ago so it’s getting pretty tall now and there’s more lilac and some aspens here these this area I’m going to have choke cherries they’re very small little tiny choke cherries right now but they will grow over time so this whole area has got a bunch of um choke cherries let’s go look at the um service berries the service berry you can see that they are finally producing some fruit this tiny little plant I think this is three or four years old this little tiny plant and see if you can see the forest starting so it’s kind of hard to see but right here we’ve got some aspens that we planted for the canopy shade wind block privacy um and then there’s food sprinkled in so like this is some lovage the elder berry that I planted last year this one grew really fast and we have elderberries all over the place we just have radishes going to flower and you can kind of see the pine trees that we have going on that are starting to grow a little bit they got eight last year but they’re looking all right there’s another elderberry so a lot of the plants are um still getting established not producing enough food to really you know be abundant but we do have some a lot of fruit trees so this is a choke cherry when I first moved here this choke cherry was maybe coming out of the ground like this and now it is huge it’s very awesome and you can see the choke cherries here the choke cherries we’ve got currants these are um just wax currants so these are native you can make like jam out of them they’re they’re getting ripe go over here see what else there’s that elderberry again got more elderberries up here here’s some more currents bushes so things are really finally starting to grow we’ve got raspberries here and I’ve got some small some more elderberries there’s another one right there another elderberry looks like there’s some potatoes randomly coming up over here i have this is my compost pile and I’ve got a few things growing they need to be watered but I’ve got like some zucchini some squash in here they are they’re pretty thirsty so open the potatoes another current bush here starting to make some currents let’s go see what else we have going on i really like these these are the um what are these called these are the blanket flowers they’re wild flowers they were here already there’s some more some more blanket flowers they’re just so pretty i love them all right let’s go look at what else we have going on so yeah if you just want to see kind of what we’re working with that whole back area is hopefully going to be our food forest eventually we’ll keep planting in there this whole area in the back it was just there were no trees when we moved in there was just a big um it was kind of like it is out in the neighbor’s yard it was just a nice field little meadow but now we’ve got so many trees which is awesome look at this lilac it decided it was going to pop up a little lilac i’m pretty sure that’s what that is hopefully hit us but yeah so we’re just kind of getting wind blocks established that’s pretty that just randomly came up here’s some more aspens they got chewed on so they’re kind of starting over but this whole area is aspens and I’m going to plant more berries and shrubs in here too um I showed you guys the service berry already we had a service berry here that died it’s kind of sad i’m going to have to plant another one and we got some more elderberries down here elderberry elderberry so once these get a little bit bigger those will be really nice but yeah this whole area is going to be hopefully the food forest before too long we’ll have some food going on in here like I said we’re really just trying to establish the canopy um because I just think that that helps everything grow i mean everything is growing so much better now that we have some wind blocks and trees in here so yeah all in this area we’re going to be planting more berry bushes strawberries raspberries service berries and I want to get all I want to get more currents i want to get all different kinds i already showed you guys this but I love it it’s got so many little blueberries on it these are not blueberries these are service berries because blueberries don’t grow in the West but this is going to be awesome our neighbor has one and it is a big huge bush so those get pretty big what else can I show you guys i don’t know i just wanted to give an update of the of the food forest in the sixth year in the Colorado mountains so yeah it’s coming along but it is definitely definitely a process to get things started growing down in here see this whole area will hopefully be a forest and um the next time you see it it’ll be taller every year let’s see what else we got um jump down here oh I’ll show you some more stuff back in the back got a bunch of raspberries down here and some chil cherries that decided to come up so we’ve got more raspberries we’re going to be redoing the siding very soon there’s another choke cherry i got some trees planted in this area too you can’t really see them but I’ll show you up close so like there’s a lavender that the vos got to the roots so like this those lavenders that you saw over in the other area i keep calling them lavenders they’re lilacs um the lilacs in the other area they started out pretty small this one just hasn’t been doing great because the vos got in and ate all the roots so I don’t know but we’ve got See there’s some trees down back in here that’s an aspen that’s a lilac there’s a current bush right here can you see it there’s a current bush and what else oh I’ll show you in the back there’s some more stuff okay let’s see all right so I showed you the raspberries some more choke cherries little baby choke cherries another aspen we’re so close to our neighbor’s house it’s like I’m trying to plant some stuff over here there’s some chamomile some radishes some potatoes and some more lilacs that are going to like that’s the size of the lilacs that I showed before that’s what they started out looking like i got a little tiny smoke bush this is the second year it’s just taking forever to to establish but I dug it up and I replanted it here and it’s very cute but it needs to grow more they’re really pretty trees um and then we’ve got more chamomile got some more lilac back here we’ve got lots of herbs back here so there’s some um that’s some dill some beets back there lots of beets there’s beets in here beets and then some random like a pumpkin or something but we’ve kind of been in a drought the last little while so I’m out of rain water i need to get more water from town and put it in our rainwater tank this is another um it’s doing it’s got like these I don’t know what’s going on there it’s not healthy but it’s growing so these are more plums plums lots of plums these are growing here these plums in here lots of plums i’m going to plant more trees in this area there there’s some choke cherries little tiny babies but yeah these little tiny choke cherries that’s what they turn into these big this one’s maybe six or seven years old it was a little twig when I moved in um and then oh our rainwater here’s our rainwater setup it’s just kind of janky until we redo the siding we’re just I just have it kind of all janky but yeah there’s our rain there’s no rain water in there i used it all i have a little bit of some things going in here like some broccoli and some pock choy some kale i don’t know it might be too hot for all that stuff now but there’s also maybe I don’t know i’m just not watering this stuff enough i’m I’m focusing more on the trees i’d rather the trees get established i want my food forest going oh there’s some asparagus so the asparagus I don’t know if you guys could see that there’s more right there lots of asparagus in here here’s some more asparagus right there so yeah there you go that’s a little bit of what we have going on some cilantro oh I didn’t show you these herbs okay I’ll show you those so over here I’ve got some herbs i’ve got some oregano growing some sage right here this is some culinary sage oregano some thyme and more oregano there’s there’s a little choke cherry so hopefully that one’s going to get big and create some privacy and turn into a big one like that and then there are some more um plums over here like that’s a plum i don’t know if you can see that that’s a plum there’s some plums in there i need to go in there and get those thistles i’ve been going around get taking care of all the thistles and taking all the thistles out but they just keep popping up so I got to get those anyway that is that is about it i just wanted to show you guys the update on the food forest in year six Colorado mountains um mint i already showed you this but I think it’s like a called a Logan Berry it doesn’t have any spikes on it and then yeah more mint is in here but yeah everything I feel like things grow better under the canopy so this is an aspen and then underneath lots of things growing i think it just it’s just so sunny up here that you really have to have the the aspens as a canopy in order to grow things and not have them just get shriveled up from the sun we got a bunch of wood chips that we’ve been putting down that seems to really help keep the moisture in the ground and yeah I guess that’s it let me know if you guys have any questions and I will talk to you guys soon all right bye