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I am planning to plant a food forest in the northeast United States zone 7B. I have an area in my yard where we recently tore down a stand of 10 jersey pine trees that were completely overgrown with Japanese honeysuckle, Asian bittersweet, garlic mustard, poison ivy, non-native wineberry and no native raspberry bushes.

I’m trying to plant natives as much as possible, and the space previously was home to a flower garden and child’s place it about 30 years ago. There is a very large 47+ year old. Deutzia scabara and a similarly aged but very poor condition weigelia. We also rescued a native dogwood and plan to leave it alone.

Currently in my plans are a row of blueberry bushes, various varieties. I want to establish A row of pawpaw trees, which I’m trying to reintroduce to my area. Orchards are very common around me, mainly apple cherry peaches and pear. We have a large problem with spotted lantern flies.

I don’t believe I have space for more than four paw paws. I also want to add almond trees, at minimum two apple trees, current and elderberry bushes. The space is approximately 100 feet long by 30 feet deep. Am I being too ambitious and what would you recommend planting in that space?

I am also curious about your thoughts on planting in rows versus planting intermittently more natural forest style . This year is all about reclamation. We are covering everything in a thick layer of cardboard and pine chips from the trees we took down to try and smother all of the non native weeds.

This space backs up to 40 acres of undeveloped forest which is heavily infested with a litany of non-native invasive so it’s going to be a constant battle establishing natives in the space and avoiding deer damage.

I have been given the opportunity to partner with a farm and take over an established orchard of mostly apples, with some pears and plums. They are in standard rows, multiple varieties interplanted, but no mulch and just grass under them. Theres the occasional garlic chive. He reports them producing pretty well. Not a lot of disease/fungal pressure, and he reports good pollination. I presented the idea of planting black raspberries between the trees to improve biodiversity, and the response was a little hesitant, because he wants to make sure we can still get around the trees and tractor chickens through. Which is great consideration, but I’m a little worried about having good options to improve the overall ecosystem. They also dont mulch, or compost, they just rely on chickens to feed the ground. I am hoping to do some composting and utilize a wood chipper to start better feeding the soil. I just dont want to start friggin’ terra-forming the place on this old farmer. I want to focus on one positive step in the right direction at a time. And in general, it will be good practice to only change one thing at a time anyways.

The farmer is pretty on board with most of what I have to say, and is willing to let me do just about anything within reason.

What would your words of wisdom be for me? I have loads of book smarts on this subject, but this will be my first hands on orchard and permaculture adventure in this sort of setting.

Much thanks!

Hello! I’ve just moved and I’ve also JUST had a baby, so I have little time and few resources to get my garden started in the way I’d really like. I also live in the Canadian prairies so gardening time here is precious because you get so little of it. That said, we are starting a garden from scratch at the new house. I’ve bought raised beds and a poly tunnel. I spent a LOT of money on making beds at the last house and the results weren’t amazing (the soil I bought ended up being garbage). This time, I’m hoping to do lasagna method beds and plant right into them and just hope for the best. My idea was cardboard or wood chip mulch/hay at the bottom, then layer hay and aged manure, leaving a thick mulch layer at the top. Is this a terrible idea? Is there a cost-effective solution or amendment you’d make to avoid issues. I’m mostly worried about the stability of this substrate mixture and also disease that could come from only using hay and manure. Thanks in advance.

Newbie here trying to implement permaculture concepts into my first garden (17’x10′). I would love to have an abundant garden with lots of different food. However, I also want it to be accessible, of course. All input highly appreciated!

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I read that I am supposed to thin my dwarf peach trees (first year with them), but I’m confused about when to do it. Research turned up late May to early June for where I am and said “when the fruitlings” are about the size of a marble or a nickel. It’s early May and they are that size. They are covered in fruit! I am so excited and also so sad I have to toss a bunch, womp! And I just pick them off, is that right? Needed to verify this with some actual humans. Also, thinking of placing mesh bags over the entire trees. When is the right time, exactly? Thanks for any advice!

Hi y’all. I am putting this question out to the ether to get some different perspectives on how I’m approaching this. I have property in a high desert climate, red sand, 5k feet, desert heat in summer, freezing and occasional snow in winter, with less than 15 inches of rain annually coming mostly in monsoon season.

There’s a 1/2 acre horse paddock that is hard as nails with only the most pokey weeds – the ones that flatten tires and make you cry – growing. To try to get the land healthier, I’ve tracked rainfall and where the water travels, started by digging swales and planting trees I was able to order through a state conservation program. Through friends and neighbors I’ve gathered organic debris to deep mulch six to eight foot circumference around each tree. Next up is adding native and xeric perennials.

This however, especially as the trees are whips at this stage, is still leaving the majority of the space as pokey weed zone. We try to chop and drop but with the heat and wind everything that gets dropped dries to a crisp and blows away off the hard packed ground. Although pokey weeds have their place, it makes it impossible to even walk back there and my neighbors are probably silently planning my demise since the seeds travel. My dogs have been injured with foxtails burrowing into their paws.

Has anyone successfully helped a space move beyond the pokey weed stage in the American southwest or similar situation? If it was your space, what would be your next step? The ground is hard as a rock. I will be supplementing water to get the trees started but only by flooding where I’ve dug out. Would love to hear how others might approach this challenge. Thank you!

Hey guys, so we’ve moved into a new garden (Northern Germany) that used to be cultivated by a grandma who first planted a bunch of nasty stuff and then let the garden deteriorate as she was growing into old age. I’ve read a bunch of permaculture books and it might be that I’ve just not read the good ones, but they seemed to be cherry picking their way around dealing with actually unwanted plants in favour of a pseudo-inclusive, hippie-esque narrative about re-defining our attitude towards plants and “seeing the good in everything”. I’m exaggerating (only a little), but what I mean is that when it comes to “weeds”, I’ve had several books expound on the advantages of stinging nettles, goutwort, etc. – which is all swell and dandy, but none felt like they touched on the really problematic stuff. I’ll split said “problematic stuff” into two separate issues.

Issue 1) When “misunderstood”, useful plants become a little too comfortable around the garden.
The concrete troublemakers in our garden are: goutwort, hops, blackberry, ivy and creeping jenny. I like and harvest most of them (not the ivy 😉 but they’ve started sprouting into the vegetable patches and into the lawn. I guess for goutwort and creeping jenny it’s mulching/covering the exposed areas of vegetable patches – but what do you do about the lawn? I’ve read guides that say to cut the lawn often as the grass will eventually outgrow the herbs, but I shudder at the thought of becoming the “every saturday morning”-lawnmower guy. And how do you deal with guys like hops and ivy who have zero problems driving their roots through meters of covered area to come out the other side?

Issue 2) – the real kicker – how to deal with properly unwanted plants. What’s the permaculture consensus on dealing with healthy and sizeable specimens in your garden of
a) cherry laurel – it’s verging on becoming a tree at 4 meters of height. Occupying a prime spot in the garden, south facing in front of the house, where a lot of fruit trees would probably thrive. Is it possible to plant a fruit tree right next to it and eventually let the fruit tree outgrow the cherry laurel – I’d imagine true to poisonous and invasive form it probably doesn’t tolerate other plants growing next to it? So do I set about cutting down and uprooting a fully grown bush/tree?
b) Yew – I’m sure it’s the bush species, but they’ve let the thing grow into a tree-ish monster at six-ish meters of height. It dominate an entire half of the garden, the best south facing one at that, is now overhanging half of the vegetable patches and, most importantly, I’ve got a really small kid and i’m not looking to watch him die after muinching on a couple needles or fruit. But before I go and fell a living tree I’d like to know how the rest of the community deals with such a thing.
c) Aliantus Altissima – only asking for vindication here because I’ve already cut that shit down as it’s on the local blacklist of the ten most invasive and problematic species in the area.
d) Thuja – not sure what the previous owners’ aim was but it looks like they planted two single bushes in the corner of the garden and then let those fuckers skyrocket to a whopping ten meters. They’re actually really impressive looking and remind one more of cypress trees in the mediterranean. Actually come to think of it I should probably make sure they’re not actually cypress trees haha. Regardless, there’s pretty much nothing growing around them as they seem to really not tolerate anything besides the braves stinging nettle in their immediate vicinity. I hardly ever see a bird in them and I therefore question wether they oughtn’t to make way for a more habitable variety?

Thanks for your advice guys and let me know if there’s a book out there that deals with these things properly