Forget struggling plots of weedy annual veggies: check out this 300-year-old food forest:
Here in the US, a food forest is a revolutionary concept; yet in the tropics, that’s just the way you garden!
300-Year-Old Food Forest
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Jack and I just watched this…thanks so much for posting. This is SO MUCH what we feel we're headed for in the type of growing we'll do from here on out…happy sigh…very cool!
Glad you dug it – discovering the world of food forests changed my entire gardening paradigm. There's an old book called "Tree Crops, Towards a Permanent Agriculture" that could have revolutionized the food supply decades ago… yet the man's writing was mostly overlooked. I feel like I'm playing catch up all the time.
Just ran across a book that's been around a while, but didn't know it till recently…called Florida Ethnobotany. It's pricey in book form but there's a free online pdf for the chapters (here's one as example http://www.neiu.edu/~wacliffo/The%20Botany/V.pdf)and we'll be looking at some of those native plants' medicinal uses and seeing if we can make sure they're generously layered throughout our farm we are trying to move to. I LOVE the ways trees have so many benefits. Like the loquat you wrote about…its leaves are medicinal, fruits are fantastic, the form is lovely, and they are hardy as can be. What's not to love?? :)
That's very cool. Looks like an overlooked gem. I'm always packing in rare and unusual plants when I can find them. Who knows – you may be breaking ground on a species that hasn't come into its own yet. I'm going to have to look for a hardcopy of that book.