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Australian bunya pines produce cones up to 10kg with up to 100 nuts in them that are about the size of a chestnut. They are somewhat like chestnuts in that you need to cook them, and taste like a cross between a chestnut and a pine nut. Don’t park your car under a bunya pine when the cones are falling. The cones can be bigger than your head and just as heavy. I cook the nuts in salted water for half an hour then store them unshelled in the fridge in the salt water for up to a few months, or they can be frozen after boiling, splitting and shelling for later frying. They are great boiled but I often then add the step of cutting them in half and frying them. Boiled they make good pesto. I often make falafels out of them. You need to hit them with a big hammer to split them first if you want to roast them otherwise they will explode. After boiling, the leathery shells tend to have a bit of a split at the pointy end so this is where to split them with a big kitchen knife on a cutting board. The trees take 15 years or more to fruit. They are frost hardy.

Hey yall! Beginner here working towards starting my first, modest food forest with 6 fruit trees in 7b. I have land with suburban lawn that I am working to get rid of with sheet mulching in prep for planting trees in Oct/Nov and then rest of guilds in Spring. Of note, I have the most compact, clay soil everrrrr.

Three Qs: 1. When we bought our house a few months ago, we inherited two large piles of rotting logs. Can I rent a wood chipper and turn these into wood chips for the sheet mulching or are they too far gone? (See pic)

1. Can I use dried grass clippings and/or pine needles as a mulch on top of nitrogen layer (compost/soil) like I would wood chips? I have SO MUCH of it bc of the massive lawn but am not sure if trying to kill grass by putting dead grass on top of it makes sense… (I know I can use them for bed mulching but wasn’t sure about the lawn murder part)

2. We also inherited this old playset and do not have any conventional uses for it (blissfully child free, no young kids in neighborhood, all my friend’s kids are too old for it). Any thoughts on how it could be repurposed given its likely treated/painted wood of some kind? (See pic)

Thanks so much in advance!

I’m slowly (very slowly) starting a food forest in my 8a front yard. I have a persimmon, strawberries, raspberries (one of which is dying of, I suspect, RoundUp, which is part of why I’m trying to de-lawn the front, some lavender, chives, echinacea, comfrey, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale (those last three were planted too late in spring, but the kale is fine and I’m hoping the other brassicas rebound in the fall). Getting ready to plant broccoli rabe, beets, radishes, carrots, and Brussels sprouts, but fall garden will also have fava beans, peas, turnips, rutabaga, collards, garlic, walking onions, and anything else I can fit in (there’s also an area in the back yard and some containers I can plant).

Thus far, I’ve been focused on building this bed – it’s been there for two years now, first with three apple trees (I killed them with mulch, but now I know better, and am being more careful to keep the persimmon trunk free of contact) and raspberries, then a layer of cardboard and more mulch in between those plantings, and then strawberries, herbs, and flowers this spring.

This summer, I’ve been working on clearing weeds and figuring out irrigation. All my gutters and water barrels are in the back-back yard, so I made some ollas, and I like how they’re working – I can fill them up once a week with a five-gallon bucket from the rain barrel. Our water table is really, really high, and drainage in the back yard is bad, so I’m hesitant to do any digging for catchment before I understand the front yard better.

I’ve also started a worm bin in a five-gallon bucket, but I’m unsure about microplastics, even though I love the way things (mostly weeds so far) grow next to it, and I’m excited to try carrots in that spot.

I had to take down a hundred-year old pine tree that was rotten on one side, but the guys that did it left me the chips in the driveway, so that’s what I’ve been doing for mulched paths. In the next couple of weeks I’ll lay down wet cardboard and wood chips to make an outside path around the bed pictured and another pathway from the front steps, on the other side of the liriope.

I’ve also mulched planting areas with store-bought compost because I’m bad at compost. I never have enough browns, but I have finally invested in a paper shredder that can handle cardboard, so I’m hoping this will be the last time I have to buy. Those are the areas I’ll plant in over the next couple of days/weeks/months.

I would love to know what more I can be doing, or what else I could be planting, especially if there are some fall-flowering plants folks would recommend for biodiversity and/or forest layers?

I feel like I’ve got a lot of room right now to do more interplanting, but part of me is still stuck in vegetable garden mode, where I feel like I need to give everything lots of space – how do folks find a balance? How do you visualize things spreading out? Do you just do a lot of digging and moving?

In the future, I’d like to add a peach tree where the pine tree came down, and I’d love to have more fruit trees (there’s a dude in my zone, closer to the coast, who keeps his bananas in-ground year-round, and a lady in the mountains of my state who does the same with lemongrass, so those are on my list) – the front yard has plenty of space, and I figure I can just expand the bed I’m working with now outward or start new ones around new trees? That’s not a question, but I mean it like one – does that sound like a sustainable plan?

I have an asparagus bed by the fence further back in the front yard, but I’m feeling like I’m not taking full advantage of the beds with foundation plantings (barberries, tea camellia, azaleas, with some daffodils and irises by the fence). I would love some suggestions for interplanting there (I thought about just putting a fava bean here and there, but any veggies and pollinator-friendly suggestions would be great – if I thought the collards would get enough sun, I’d love to try them close to the house (I got seeds from an in-state open source project on purple collards I’m kind of excited about, but I’m also wondering how isolated they need to be from other brassicas to save seeds).

Basically, am I doing this right? Help me make it better, cause I would like 1. not to kill any more trees and 2. to build something sustainable.