If so, which fruits and other plants are you growing?
What is currently producing?
How do you manage the size of your trees?
Do you make compost, or do you only use mulch to build soil fertility?
Which climate are you in?
I’m interested to know how popular fruit forests are in this community and how others are doing it.
Also just getting started! The only edible fruiting plant when I moved here in 2023 was a black raspberry bush. A year ago I added two apple trees (though the honey crisp may not have survived the winter, we’ll see). I had a very successful annual garden last year, hoping to continue that this coming season and try out the three sisters companion planting method.
For perennials, this year I’ll be adding two blueberry bushes, inoculating some logs with shiitake and oyster mushroom spawn, and encouraging some volunteer black raspberries that have popped up elsewhere.
Pruning hasn’t been an issue yet, but I will need to more actively manage the raspberries this year.
In the future I’m hoping to add lots more edible native shrubs, and maybe more trees if I can find good spots for them.
I’m in the northeast woodlands bioregion of the US, zone 5. I have two compost bins going with leaves, grass clippings, shredded paper/cardboard and kitchen scraps. Last year one bin produced enough to cover about one and a half of my 4x8 ft garden beds. I’m planning to order a cubic yard or two from a local business again this year to top up the annual garden. I don’t really expect to get fully self sufficient on compost anytime soon, but I’ll keep producing as much as I’m able.
Did your Honeycrisp survive?
You might consider Fordhook lima beans and Delicata squash. I’ve heard good things. Do you have purslane (Portulaca oleracea) there? If you let it colonise the garden beds, it makes a weed-suppressing moisture-retaining arthropod-sheltering edible ground cover.
Yes you will, lest they begin to manage you. I recommend growing them over a fence or some wire or some sort of trellis and then pruning the ends before they can touch the soil and tip-layer themselves. Life is easier that way.
Some ideas in alphabetical order:
So you cover the surface of your garden beds with compost? That’s the way. Protect the soil from erosion while keeping the nutrients near the surface where the roots can reach them. A generous layer of mulch over the winter is also helpful, especially if the beds will be vacant.
Do you compost your poop? Mixed with wood shavings, that could make a fair amount of compost.
Thanks for the detailed response!
Neither of my apples have leafed out yet, which has me a little worried - though the Baldwin put out a sucker below the graft which I cut off.
I actually do have a couple of (non-native) purslane species in the yard - I hadn’t thought about using them as a living mulch, but I like the idea. One of them has gorgeous flowers.
Not something I feel comfortable I could do safely, unfortunately. Especially since my house is in a saddle curve where a lot of storm water flows through into some wetlands conservation land. I’d be worried about runoff. Also not sure how my town would feel about it!
That’s the plan! I’d also like to do some cover crops and chop-and-drop this fall for mulch.