Grow a Food Forest
We chat with Ryan Cullen, the field supervisor at Durham College, about the newly planted food-forest garden at the college’s Whitby campus. Cullen explains that the idea behind the food forest is to grow a mix of food-producing species, layered in the sa
Food Garden Life Show: Helping You Harvest More from Your Edible Garden, Vegetable Garden, and Edible Landscaping · Emma Biggs, Steven Biggs
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Show Notes
We chat with Ryan Cullen, the field supervisor at Durham College, about the newly planted food-forest garden at the college’s Whitby campus.
Cullen explains that the idea behind the food forest is to grow a mix of food-producing species, layered in the same way that a forest is. There’s a herbaceous layer at ground level, a shrub layer, and a canopy layer of trees above. With time, the food forest becomes self-maintaining and, with the appropriate mix of plant species, can have self-renewing fertility.
The top layer of the food-forest garden is the “canopy” layer. Cullen says that they planted this layer with fruiting tree species including cherries, plums, persimmon—and even a hawthorn.
The lower herbaceous and shrub layers, which are still being developed, will be a polyculture—a mix of different plants. Along with edible properties, plants in the lower layers might make available soil nutrients (deep-rooted plants bring up nutrients,) supply nutrients (pea shrubs capture nitrogen from the air,) and attract pollinator species.
Lower-layer plants include bee balm, chamomile, rosa rugosa (for rose hips), strawberreis, and blueberries. Cullen says that this list will grow, as there is still a lot of planting to do in this layer.
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