How to TRANSFORM your LAWN into a FOOD FOREST!

hello and a very warm welcome back to Hughes nursery and I've got an awesome video for you lined up today because James Pazhani is here to give us ten tips on how we can transform a lawn into an abundant and productive forest garden so I really hope you enjoy it what's going on Ellen growers it's James prigioni coming to you live from the US I'm excited to bring you this one today and thankful for the opportunity to do a collaboration with my friend Hugh over at Hughes nursery I think I've been watching Hughes channel for I guess over five years now so to be able to come together is truly a blessing I hope you gained some value from this video and maybe learn something new let's go right now I'm in my food forest garden surrounded by all different kind of edible plants and also functional ones everything in this garden has a purpose to the untrained eye it may seem se but it's all by design like I said this is a food forest we look out in nature out of natural forest and copy it so today I want to show you how you go from a lawn to a food forest in ten tips the first tip to turning your lawn to a food forest is choosing the right site and to know your zone if you're like me though and you don't have a lot of space you've got a small allotment then you may only have one place to put it but if you can choose I would say a good location is an area where you can get the most Sun as long as you don't live in like a desert area because you can always make shade but you can't make more Sun knowing what growing zone you're in is also important because this will dictate what you can and can't grow you want to be spending time and money on things that won't grow properly in your location now that we've got site selection out of the way let's move on to some of the nitty-gritty number two is to realize that you're creating a system and I use the word system because we want a garden like this where all parts work together to serve one function all one unit and this system is also we're looking to create is sustainable and self-replicating what I mean by sustainable is a system that actually produces more energy in this lifetime that it takes to create and maintain so we're hitting that right on the nose when you're creating this kind of system you really need to work with nature that's one of the main things you must have that philosophy because you've got to have the most kind of life in here and if you use different kinds of pesticides and herbicides that will kill a lot of your life the third tip for taking your lawn to a food forest is to let the natural forest be the teacher that's the guide and the reason we do that is because you can just look locally around you if you have a natural forest just go out there look at it realize how big it is how productive it is how fertile it is no one takes care of that no one water is it so that's really a beautiful model high in fertility high in production and that's something we're looking to create in our garden but we don't just plant oak trees and things in a natural forest we replace these elements with food things productive things stuff we want to grow so how do we take what we learned from observing a natural forest and apply that to our garden that's where we get into tip number four and what that has to do with is understanding that all natural forests have seven layers what are they and how can we use them well the first one is a canopy tree here in our garden as a canopy tree we use a mulberry tree a big tree up there next is a sub canopy tree for those we choose to use things like apples pears and even peaches third is going to be a bush layer for these we like to use plants like raspberries and blueberries next stop is going to be your herbaceous for a basis I like planting tomatoes and peppers usually a lot of different annuals after that we're gonna go with the ground cover and my favorite ground cover is strawberries because they're delicious and you can get multiple harvests on certain varieties then we've got the creepers and the climbers for those we like using grapes grapes are a favorite and we love making jellies and all different kinds of things with those lastly is gonna be your root crop for these we love playing things like carrots and horseradish depending on your location these things might be different but it's all about having those different layers because if you don't plant something there something else will probably replace it and most likely it's gonna be a weed or you want to have that nice thick mulch down so you don't have any weeds coming off the seven layers of a natural forest that's not the only thing that we can learn from and apply to our garden one of the most important and the things that was almost an epiphany for me was understanding how a force was so productive how the trees got so big the reason they did it was because the support of the ground the forest floor so what you want to do is create your own forest floor if you want a big forest that's what's going to get you there in my opinion nothing's going to give you the forest floor better than a thick wood chip mulch the idea I believe is to create that mature Fleur that's what's gonna even give you a food forest quicker in the past I start off by just growing annuals trying to successively use the annuals to fertilize the area where I wanted to grow up food forest but then I realized that's not the way to do it you want to use the woodchips a lot of these woodchips are basically you know 30 40 year-old trees and all that solar energy condense together we're putting that down that's fertilizing the ground let's dig down here and find out why we want to use these woodchips as I start digging down here you'll notice it's already getting moist we haven't had rain here for I guess over a week now it's been dry this is just the time of year that it is and you'll notice the the woodchips retain moisture it brings in life one of the most common questions I get and you may be asking yourself are these woodchips gonna tie up nitrogen in the soil no they're not and whenever woodchips you use will be fine only problems I see with woodchips have to do with application if you take these woodchips and you layer them on your soil that's fine they're gonna be great but if you try to mix these into the soil you're gonna create a soil stomachache you're gonna acidify your soil and you might even tie up some nitrogen but layering it's the way to go another reason we like to use woodchips is because they're constantly breaking down every year your soils and get more fertile one thing you might wonder though is is it gonna type nitrogen like I said it's all based on application so you don't have to worry about that what's actually going to break down your wood chips are gonna be the fungus the fungus are truly the teeth of the forest so these wood chips are going to create a heavily dominated fungal soil trees woody species love fungal dominated soil and our plants like our herbaceous annuals they like more of a bacteria dominated soil the sixth tip to starting a successful food forest has to do with you it has to do with doing your research locally which is very important you need to find out what trees do well where you live for instance in my location pears do excellent with no help at all so I make sure that pears are foundational in here to make sure I always get a good harvest next is to choose trees that have good disease resistance so for instance I live in a location in New Jersey where we have high humidity because of this we can have issues with peach leaf curl so I make sure when I order varieties that I get ones that are disease resistant to peach leaf curl this will automatically put you ahead of the game and it could very much save you five to seven years the seventh tip is to buy bare-root trees from reputable companies I know it's tempting to go to a local big-box store to get like a Red Delicious or a common tree that they have locally that's potted that's big that looks like it's gonna fruit maybe even this coming year but in my opinion please don't let those things deceive you a lot of times those trees are not taking care of well and they're often root bound because the people taking care of those trees they're not specialized like those people at your nursery so again a reputable company bare-root that'll save you time - the 8th step is starting a successful food forest has to do with learning proper pruning techniques the reason for this is because once you put your trees in your bare root trees if you use proper pruning techniques this will help you get your tree larger and to production even quicker and also even things like raspberries if you know proper techniques this will boost your production heavily so right here I've got a young peach tree one that I just put in last year this is bare root and when I planted it I pruned it down heavily now it allowed it to focus on the root and now after the roots have been big healthy good growth the tops looking excellent this is a tree we're hoping for big things in the future because it's disease resistant we pruned it correctly and we also planted it correctly right now I'm standing in a section this is a new fruit forest I just put this in the fall you can see we've got the woodchips thick we put bare root reason we put the right varieties in and this food forest I believe is going to be even more successful than my previous one because I learned so much from it one thing I don't encourage you guys about is to learn from every mistake there are no such thing as failure because with every failure comes with it the seed of an equivalent success the nine-step the starting and growing a successful food forest is to observe to refine and to react you'll notice that when you grow a garden like this it's never-ending you don't just put it in once and it's done instead every time we're going out here we're learning something new maybe we're adding something it could get a little expensive if you want to do it all in the first year especially if you want to get the good varieties one thing you'll notice we didn't talk too much about is plant spacing that's really a personal preference if you have enough space actually giving trees basically as much space as you can give them you can always fill the areas in between but one thing we do like doing is over planting this way we can always take things out for instance if you plant three fruit trees where one person would plant one five years down the road if only one of them looks good you're right you can get rid of two you still got one but if you only planted that one you're stuck with it observation can be one of our greatest tools as a gardener but it's something that takes time to actually learn you've got to get out there every single day if you possibly can I suggest walking your garden maybe twice a day getting a feel for everything because your plants will communicate with you I'm not saying they're gonna speak to you but they'll let you know when they need some water or they need maybe a little added nutrition before the wood chips have broken down enough and fertilize so going out there every day learning how to observe is important and once you develop that skill you'll be able to walk out to your garden know immediately if something needs to change or not because before you change things you must exercise patience the tenth and final step is to have faith and persistence you must have faith if you want to go from something like a lawn like this like the whole backyard was to a one year old food forest and then into a six year old one high-production that's not gonna happen overnight that's why you need the persistence and that faith the first year you can see we're getting a lot of annual production we're not getting huge fruit production but the persistence of sticking with it every year and having faith that it will work is huge because like I mentioned before every year your ground will get more fertile your fruit production will get higher because this is a perennial system having a perennial mindset in the form of gardening is something that's going to save your back and that's going to support you more every year as you get older if you're interested in this form of gardening and you want to start your own food forest I've got actually a whole series phase 1 through 7 and it's continuing of how to start a food forest exactly how we put this one in here and you don't need a lot of space to start a food forest you can even start a small one it's all about kind of working with nature looking at a forest and let that be the teacher learning from that Matheny's video growers thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed it I just wanted to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to watch this video and I also want to thank you for giving this opportunity it is so much fun if you haven't noticed gardening is my passion not only guarding though this for food forestry this is what I live to do and to be able to bring you my passion I just feel honored so thank you so much if you enjoyed it hit the subscribe button on Hughes channel because I know he's always putting out good contact check out our channel to the gardening channel with James brugioni hit that subscribe button on both hit the notification bell so every time we upload you guys know check us out and steam it too because we love posting on there I hope I get to see you all soon James brugioni [Music]

Channel: Huw Richards

Views: 249,800

Rating: 4.9485226 out of 5

Keywords: Food forest, permaculture, organic gardening, james prigioni, the gardening channel, forest garden, collaboration, grow food not lawns, abundance, organic, grow your own food, forest, permaculture gardening, how to make a food forest, how to make a forest garden

Id: oLTGjiYHHbI

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 04 2018