2 years ago we planted an edible forest

2 years ago we planted the first trees to create a new food forest ecosystem. Since then, a lot has changed.
Here’s the swale article I mention in the video: https://www.rootsreconnected.com/articles/swales-101

two years ago before we planted our
first trees this used to be an old Olive
Grove after a devastating fire turned
this place to ashes the land was
completely clearcut when we decided to
bring this place back we knew it was
going to be a big challenge but after
building these massive water harvesting
swells and planting close to a thousand
trees and over 100 different species
things have changed the idea was simple
plant a wide variety of fruit and Nutri
to create an ecosystem that functions as
a forest but feels more like a modern
day version of the Garden of
Eden it is now April the beginning of
Spring and this place has a really
undergone a big transformation in the
past two years we are finally reaching a
point where it starts to feel and look
like the beginnings of a young Forest
the whole swell is now covered in plant
growth we have all sorts of branches
organic matter starting to break down
mushrooms are popping up here and there
the trees are starting to wake up from
the short winter Siesta and we even have
already harvested our first fruits of
the year one of the trees we’re really
excited about is this flat Peach Tree
there are literally dozens and dozens of
little fruits growing on this tree
unfortunately as you can see it’s got
Peach Leaf curl which is a disease
caused by a fungus that that creates
these ugly distorted leaves that damages
them and make them fall prematurely now
we could remove all the leaves and burn
them to reduce the number of spores of
this fungus but in the winter and spring
it can be really humid here and we’ve
got so many different species so many
different edible trees that we just try
to focus on creating the most vertile
and healthy growing conditions for them
to grow in that in the end of the day if
this fungus continues to bloom and
persist and it affects the trees too
much we will simply compost the tree
down and we will grow something else
instead it’s one of those things when
working with nature sometimes you have a
lot of success and sometimes Nature has
other plans and that’s all
right that’s why with everything we
plant in this food Forest we mostly use
a strategy or a concept called stun
which was uh developed by Mark Shephard
stun stands for sheer total other
neglect and the idea is as humans we’re
good at killing things that want to live
and we’re trying to keep things alive
that want to die when we are planting
trees with the stun method we first look
at the larger biome and look for the
types of Woody perennials that are
already proven to work within the region
from there we can then select the types
of trees that we want to grow and that
are most likely to succeed and we plant
those trees in the native soil without
much else inputs and basically we’ll see
what works or not the idea is to give us
little maintenance or care and attention
and whatever dies dies but whatever
works we will plant more of and will
form the foundation of the
ecosystem some of the trees that work
really well here are pomegranates
apricot Citrus mulberries and this tree
the Almond Tree I mean look at it when
we planted it it was nothing more than a
tiny Whip and in just two short years it
has grown into already a decent sized
more than 2 m tall beauty of a specimen
and in fact every single almond we
planted two years ago has grown as much
or more as this one can’t wait to start
harvesting our first almonds it won’t be
much yet but it just keeps on getting
better and better every year now that is
a good investment if we walk a little
bit further on the sale we are greeted
by this beautiful black malberry tree
and this is another one of those trees
that just seem to love the conditions
here as you can see it is completely
loaded with berries at the moment we
planted this one during our first fall
which is roughly a year and a half ago
now and since then it has grown
amazingly fast this is actually one of
the trees that has been used uh for more
than 5,000 to 8,000 years in China in
the production of silk which is made by
the silk Worm but that’s not why we
planted them here we are after their
berries which are super sweet and juicy
and we are definitely not the only ones
who love them during this time of the
year we get a lot of Aur winged Mac pies
that can literally strip an entire tree
before the berries are even ripe they
normally eat a lot of uh acorns pine
nuts insects and I guess they come here
for dessert so since we share the love
for these berries so much with our
fellow earthlings we decided to plant
another 10 of these with all sorts of
different varieties and eventually
there should be enough for everyone in
the worst case we’ll start maybe a
little macp Sanctuary who knows and that
is what I really love about this system
initially you are planting this food
forest for your own consumption and that
it can provide you with all the fruits
nuts and essentially all the food you
and your family will ever need but as
the system is evolving you start to
notice that it goes far beyond that we
have tons of insects birds amphibians
and all sorts of Life starting to create
little habitats and calling this place
their home so what started out as a
dream to provide for our own needs is
now turning and evolving into something
much bigger than ourselves into a place
that supports and provides for all sorts
of Life which in my mind it just can’t
get any better when we arrived on this
land one of the first things that we did
was build these massive water harvesting
swells this property used to be
essentially an old Olive Grove but since
the last forest fire completely turned
this place to ashes the entire land was
clear cut of trees as you can imagine
during the following heavy winter rains
most of the top soil washed away Into
The Valleys leaving the ridge completely
exposed to erosion and one of our main
goals is to reforest this Ridge so when
we started digging our first holes for
the first trees in some cases we Bedrock
10 to 20 cm down not exactly an ideal
place for trees to grow in and this is
what I mean as you can see here this is
where we dug the trench of the main sell
and you can clearly see the rock layer
right here on the ridge with only a
little bit of top soil on top of that
now it’s not everywhere like this but in
most places it was either rocks like
this or a near impermeable compacted
hard pen so you might have been
wondering from wow you know like that’s
a big sell and indeed you’re right it’s
not very usual to see them this big we
duck the trench about 1 and 1/2 M wide
and in this particular sell we went down
40 to 50 cm the idea was to then create
the burm with the excavated Earth and
back fill the trench with organic matter
like wood chips but as you can see the
wood chips is still on the to-do list
now I definitely don’t recommend using
sells everywhere and if you want to know
uh whether or not swells might be a
suitable water water harvesting strategy
for your land I’ve written an entire
article on that over on our blog I’ll
make sure to put the link down in the
description box below now apart from
being able to stop erosion Harvest rain
water and let that water slowly sink
into the soil to recharge the
groundwater we essentially built these
swells simply uh to increase the top
soil for our tree systems essentially
creating a large raised garden bed to
provide enough soil for the tree roots
to grow in and so far the SRS have done
their job quite well whenever we have a
very or an extremely large rain event
where water would normally Rush down the
slope with all the potential
consequences now it is slowly
infiltrating in the soil and watering
our young Food Forest but this is the
only sell that we built so large and
others are much lower and shorter so
let’s have a look at
those especially on this sell we didn’t
have to dig too much as the soil
was already amazing here there was a
natural depression and all organic
matter had accumulated here over the
years and created a sponge like soil
already and you can see that back in the
ground cover vegetation which is one of
the most abundant and Lush on our entire
property here we haven’t nearly planted
as many trees as we would like yet but
you can see the abundance of vegetation
quite well in between all of this dense
vegetation we have all sorts of trees
growing
um here we have the Fig Tree just next
to it we’ve got a citrus just a little
bit further we’ve got a pomy granite and
then you’ve got the Almond over there
and over there there’s right there is an
avocado tree so this avocado tree we
planted last November and it survived
the winter it’s not in great shape
anymore because we had several really
chilly nights that went down to minus 3°
C but it’s still alive it already
started flowering and growing new le
leaves so the goal is to remove these
flowers or any fruit that might develop
so the tree can focus all of its energy
on developing a strong root system but
for now I don’t want to interfere too
much with it yet with removing anything
simply because I want to make sure that
I don’t accidentally remove too much and
damage the tree if we walk a little bit
further on the swell there are another a
couple of exciting trees that we planted
and one of them is this young Carib tree
the Carib tree is an amazing long-term
nitrogen fixing tree while the PODS of
this tree can be used as a much
healthier substitute for caca it is
something that we nearly consume daily
as we really love the taste of it we
planted quite a bunch of these trees all
over the swells and the land and the
goal with this specific one is that once
we cut down uh these huge eucalyp trees
the goal is to let this one take over
and become the larger canopy tree of
this area and eventually provide shade
for another tree that that we’re triing
out and we planted this last winter and
that is the pawpa
tree I’m not sure if you can actually
see it because it’s just a tiny little
twig in the ground for now but the paa
tree is native from North America it’s
actually one of the only members of the
normally tropical fruit trees like
costard apples and Cherry Moya but this
one grows in the cold climate pretty fun
Evolution I’ve never tasted the fruits
before but from what I’ve read and seen
this is something I’m really looking
forward to trying out hopefully these
little guys will make it and grow into
abundant small trees they’re not exactly
known to like excessive heat or harsh
direct sunlight so we planted them in
the shade of the eucalypt trees and
eventually hopefully they will be shaded
by the Carib tree we’ll see how that is
going to work
out now what you see here is not only
planted by us and there are many
herbaceous plants and weeds that start
to come into this system and one of
these weeds is
tial now tial are great indicators of
compacted heavy and acidic soil which is
pretty much the case for us and probably
one of the reasons why all the
blueberries that we’ve planted here are
doing so great but I’m not the biggest
fan of having these thorny little plants
in the food Forest so since they’re
proven to work here without our input we
decided to copy this and instead grow a
tiol that we do love and that is native
to the Mediterranean and grows an
abundant amount of
food so this right here is an Arty choke
shalan has planted this one as a little
seed in the greenhouse and we’ve planted
well over 50 so far A little bit all
over the place this Arty choke is a
beautiful and delicious perennial plant
that provides abundant flower heads
which are exceptionally nice when
steamed for a bit and even raw and since
tiol seem to love it here so much we
thought why not replace most of them
with this one instead now normally from
seed it won’t flower in its first year
but in the years to come I hope they
will produce abundantly unfortunately we
do have some that have already been
eaten by slugs which we have
surprisingly a lot of this year so we’ll
see how many Will Survive honestly it is
easy to go on and on about the beauty of
this system I mean things are still
small and young but I think that now
that we’ve reached this stage we really
start to have a small and emerging young
food for us that will only get better
from here on right now our job is simply
to maintain what is already in place and
try to keep filling any gaps as time
goes by it’s still not that the density
and diversity that we ultimately want to
have in this Forest but hey there’s only
so much that you can do with the time
and resources that you have but one of
the plans that we did plant this winter
and we are quite excited about is the
alder
tree now we’ve already planted quite
some support species and biomass trees
and we started a lot more in the
greenhouse but we haven’t had this one
yet this is the alus Cordata also known
as the Italian Alder and this tree
doesn’t produce any fruits or nuts well
at least not for us but the great thing
about this tree is that it’s a deciduous
nitrogen fixing tree they are fast
growing super helpful and provide a ton
of shade and biomass and all sorts of
goodness to the soil and as you can see
I planted it right next to this massive
eucalypt tree that just doesn’t seem to
stop growing I mean just look at it they
really love it here but my goal is to
cut down all the eucalyp trees in the
coming seasons and then slowly let the
other trees and other beneficial species
take over and become the more long-term
support at biom trees of this system now
I’m not entirely sure how the eucalypt
will respond to such a hard cut but I’m
guessing that it’s going to take several
seasons before the Alder and the other
trees have completely replaced them a
couple of months ago we had a visitor on
the land and she accidentally drove on
this eucalypt tree and broke it and as
you can see it already starts growing a
lot of new Sprouts from the bottom of
the stem and that is essentially what
what I’m going to try and imitate I’ll
just keep cutting it down until it
doesn’t have enough energy left in its
root system and the other species are
large enough to start taking over the
space I’m pretty curious how that is
going to evolve over the coming seasons
one thing is for sure we will continue
to keep adding more diversity uh more
layers more trees and shrubs and then
eventually keep expanding this ecosystem
outward towards the edges of our
property we’ve noticed that now that we
have a bit of a foundation in place and
the system has had a little bit of time
to mature it becomes much easier to keep
on adding different plants and different
species that can go grow together in the
same space over the years we will see
more Wildlife making themselves at home
it will provide an abundance of diverse
fruits berries and nuts and many other
things and hopefully things will keep
getting better and keep on thriving for
generations to come
throughout this process we start to
realize that we’re merely short-term
passengers or stewards of the land and
we’re just trying our best to give
nature a little bit of a helping hand
wherever we can and in the process
create abundant ecosystems that will
continue to expand long after we are
gone we often overestimate what we can
do in a year but it’s really about the
day to day over many years that counts
this is going to be our journey for as
long as we can because why not I could
go on about all the different plants and
species that we’ve got growing here for
maybe hours and if that is something
that you would like me to dive deeper
into just let me know in the comments
for now thank you for watching and I
will see you next
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