Hello all, I am living in Virginia on a large 20 acre farm that sits in the floodplains of a large river that floods every once in awhile. I have the opportunity to create a food forest in an abandoned part of the farm that is across an old bridge and in an open field with trees on both sides but it does get a decent amount of sun. There are blackberry and raspberry that grow pretty prolific here because of the stream and the water flooding. I currently have a 10×20 foot garden and a 20 x 30 fot garden area but I want to expand to the area I mentioned across the delapated bridge which has 60 x 60 space available.
There is a river (Edgar Cayce) running north and I wanted to start by planting a bunch of fruit trees and bushes. I have been collecting raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, grape vines from homedepot and will probably buy fig and hardy kiwi today. Eventually I will buy apple tree and something else if possible, if I can get them on sale or cheap. The apple trees are $70 and maybe I can get them half off.
Right now homedepot has the small box fruits on sale half off so I am going to buy as many odd fruit trees as I can for about $6 per bare root. That will give me about 30 to 50 plants to start with in this space and I can start to propagate if necessary.
Looking for any tips on planning fruits along a stream to minimize watering. Maybe like build rows east to west along the stream or do north south? And are there other veggies or herbs I could plant that will come back every year that would go well?
I included some photos of the area in question and natural plants.
submitted by /u/emptiedbottle
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