Experiments in Syntropic Agroforestry: early stage designs for converting an old family fruit tree area into syntropic Food Forest.
Update 2 : An extra fruit forest tree row with pre-existing support + planning raised bed areas, fruit tree guilds etc….
S.W. France, climate zone 9a, maritime/oceanic temperate.
Instagram: @greenwisehq
Dec. 2023
Okay welcome back to Southwest France down here in the bottom of the uh green Wise garden we’re just uh well today I’m Sunday and it’s early December so getting a bit cold um but what what I’m doing is doing another mod to collect grass cuting and put them still
On the edges of the tree lines so that’s still happening but in between these uh popet trees which are quite old and being pollarded a lot as you can see it’s quite cool I want to put some a new tree line here of um Evergreen something hopefully loquat trees in
Between um not from seed obviously but uh ordered in from uh that would create a little bit of a barrier here and also provide Evergreen foliage that I can use um to put as organic material material not just uh grass cuttings um either side and in the middle obviously
Is going to be a a new tree line that I can use for um other things and seeds and possibly some uh strawberries rasberries whatever so that’s another idea but that’s just for now I’m just clearing between these trees um here this is going to be a circular permaculture
Um design with a tree Consortium in the middle maybe a locust or honey locust tree just to fix the nitrogen um and a aums and um in a circular shape coming out there’s going to be some raised beds um quite a simple plan and there’ll be annuals in there and maybe a few
Trees as well just to create a bit of um uh shade for the early early annuals and then um maybe move into the tree line because the tree line is still where the fruit Forest will be and there’s a lot of interplanting we still need to do so
I’m ordering some new trees to go in between there but at this stage it’s quite a lot of work cuz I’m using all the grass cuttings I can manage with my little mower to add to the either side of the tree lines um so I’m bringing I’m I’m still bringing in a lot
Of extra organic material as well from the local Dey which is the local tip where you can get free compost so um I’ll be over the course the next few weeks bringing in more uh compost from there to add in between the trees and do more plantings uh ready for spring
Um and then obviously at Spring we’re going to plant annuals down the lines next to the lines and more seeds going in so we should be in a good position in the springtime but for now yeah we setting up the system we have to use whatever organic material we can get um
And that is uh very useful if you can get it locally from uh so that’s really it for the moment um but yeah there’s quite a bit of grass we can use uh but it’s never enough um to add to the tree lines I wanted to put grass cuttings either side
Of here but I’m not going to have enough for the moment um so I’ll continue on with that and give you another update