Establishing a Food Forest DVD Review
This post is titled Establishing a Food Forest DVD Review. Wednesday night I watched the DVD “Establishing a Food Forest” which was presented by Geoff Lawton. This is at least the third time I have watched this 80-minute DVD and every time I watch it I still pick up something new.
Food Forest Definition
Establishing a Food Forest DVD Review
Before I get into the review of the DVD, lets define Food Forest. On Wikipedia, the term Food Forest re-directs to Forest Gardening. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of Forest Gardening:
“Forest gardening is a low-maintenance sustainable plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers, to build a woodland habitat.”
DVD Overview
The DVD starts out with classroom lecture going over what a food forest is and how to design one. They go into looking at patterns of existing forests and the layers of a forest. The layers as described by Geoff are; canopy, understory, shrub, herbaceous, ground cover, vine/climbers, and root yield. He does go into a few additional layers that are specific to the tropics.
Many of these layers are support species planted for the future end results. He talks about support species as follows:
- Ground cover – hundreds of thousands of nitrogen fixers per acre that will only survive for 6 months. This could be clover or other nitrogen fixing ground cover.
- Herbaceous / bush layer – tens of thousands of nitrogen fixers per acre that will only survive for 4 to 5 years. Examples are certain legumes and peas.
- Understory layer – thousands of small trees that fix nitrogen that will survive 10 to 15 years.
- Canopy – hundreds of trees that will go full term.
- The above are all support species used just to fix the soil with nitrogen and other nutrients and provide mulch through chop and drop. Mixed in with all of the above will be our fruit and nut trees.
- In the beginning the mix will be 90/10. 90% of mass is support species and 10% is our fruit trees. As time goes on we end up with 10% of mass is support species and 90% is our fruit trees. This happens as the fruit trees get larger and the support species die out.
- The support species is coppiced, pollarded, and chop & dropped. This happens during the wet season, which is when there is more rainfall than evaporation.
Establishing a Food Forest DVD Review
After the classroom portion of the DVD, Geoff goes to the field and plants a food forest into a swale at the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI). He demonstrates mixing a nitrogen fixing inoculant with some legumes (cowpea and lupin). He shows a large variety of plants that they are putting in, how to put them in and why.
He then goes back to that same swale after 3 months and gives you a tour, shows the progress and explains what is going on. He talks about too many grass hoppers not being a grass hopper problem but a deficiency in Turkeys. He talks about too many slugs/snails not being a slug/snail issue but a deficiency in ducks. He also demonstrates “feed the forest” by doing some chop and drop.
He shows fungus being the “teeth” of the forest and explains how the fungus is breaking down the dead plant life to feed the living. He shows how chickens help establish a food forest and also explains how a food forest is low maintenance once established.
He shows a kitchen garden that has over 400 species of plants in it. He goes on to explain how all of the diversity confuses the pest and how they make climates attractive to predator insects to predate on those confused pests.
My thoughts on this DVD are that it is a wonderful learning resource and I wouldn’t understand why anyone that likes gardening doesn’t want to put in a food forest after watching this DVD. It is also one of the reasons I put a food forest in last year and will put more in going forward. It is a wonderful concept and I enjoy the thought of high yield and low maintenance in the future.
Extras
In addition to the 80-minute main feature, there are five clips in the bonus section of the DVD:
- 30-Year-Old Food Forest – 10-minute video walk through of a 30-year-old food forest in Thailand. Most of the plants in this clip are tropical and likely wouldn’t grow in temperate climate North America.
- 300-Year-Old Food Forest – a 6-minute video walk through of a 300-year-old food forest in Hanoi.
- 2000-Year-Old Food Forest – a 4+ minute video walk through of a 2000-year-old food forest in Morocco. This video has many fruits that do grow in North America.
- Permaculture World Wide – a 4+ minute video about how to grow permaculture plants world wide and how to raise funds to do so.
- Harvesting Water DVD – This is the trailer for another of Geoff’s videos “Harvesting Water DVD”
About Geoff:
According to Wikipedia: “Geoff Lawton is a permaculture consultant, designer and teacher. Since 1995 he has specialized in permaculture education, design, implementation, system establishment, administration and community development.”
He is Managing Director of The Permaculture Research Institute – www.permaculturenews.org. and is the go-to practicing expert on anything permaculture.
To Buy the DVD:
A downloadable copy of the DVD can be bought at:
permaculturenews.org/product-category/digital-downloads/
The physical DVD can be bought at:
www.ecofilms.com.au/store/
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Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine
This post provides Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine and provides how to care for the plant, gives a recipe, and describes the fruit of this cold hardy medicinal.
Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine
Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) is an attractive vine that flowers in the early summer and then produces two-inch-long fruit that is shaped like a chicken egg and is ready to pick in the fall. The flowers are very sweet smelling and attracts a lot of beneficial insects. The flowers are white and lilac in color and are quite showy. It is a hardy perennial that survives down to -20F and is hardy in USDA zones 5-9 and is native to the Eastern United States. The vines freeze down to the ground each winter. Maypop gets its name by popping out of the ground in May.
Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine Maypop Flower
Fruit
While the vine will have dozens of flowers, only a few will actually fruit. I have found several sources that say you get better fruit production by hand pollinating. This year I totally ignored mine and mowed them down with the lawn mower a few times and they still produced fruit.
The maypop fruit is ripe when it turns from “Kermit the Frog” green to light green to yellow-orange in color. A better indication of a ripe maypop is a somewhat wrinkly skin whereas the unripe maypop fruit will have a firm, tight feel and taste quite sour.
Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine Maypop Fruit
Upon splitting the fruit, you will see numerous seeds coated in a clear goo while the inside of the skin will have a thick layer of white pulp. Only the clear goo is edible, suck it off the seeds like you were eating a pomegranate. You can eat the fruit raw, make preserves, cold drinks, and tea. I took one of these fruits over to my mother’s house last week and we tried the fruit. It had a sweet tropical fruit flavor like I hadn’t had before. I don’t know that I’ve had passion fruit before, so I can’t make a comparison. It was mighty tasty, but it was difficult getting the pulp off of the seeds. I looked online for an easier way to do this and did not come up with anything. The recipes below seem to cook, squash, and strain. That may be the best way.
Vine Info
The alternate leaves (2 to 6 inches long and wide) are palmate with 3 lobes and finely serrated margins. (Palmate means having several lobes whose midribs all radiate from one point.)
Maypop loves full sun and the fast growing vine can grow to 25 feet. It likes moist but well drained soil.
This plant suckers all over the place. I put in one vine two years ago. Last year I had suckers coming up twenty to thirty feet away. The suckers come up from the main plant going out along the roots at about every twelve to eighteen inches. If you plant these near a lawn you can just mow them down. I planted mine near a large mulch garden and they went crazy. Just use caution putting them in the landscape as they can become quite invasive. I have a separate post on Maypop Propagation if you are interested in propagating this vine.
Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine Maypop Fruit Cut in Half
Vitamins / Minerals / Medicinal*
Maypop contains the following vitamins and minerals: Vitamin A, B2, B3, C, iron, and phosphorous. http://www.fruitsinfo.com/maypop-fruit.php#Nutritional-Value
Tea made from the dried leaves and stem of the passion vine contain alkaloids with a sedative effect on humans. According to drugs.com: “Passiflora exhibits sedative and anti-anxiety activity in laboratory animals. Human studies of Passiflora, in combination products, have also demonstrated anti-anxiety and sedative properties.”
Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine
Maypop Plant Information | A Unique Edible Vine
In these pictures we see one seed with the edible fruit around it and two seeds that are without the edible coating. It does look very similar to a pomegranate fruit from this perspective.
Recipes
| Maypops Jelly | |
| 2 cups ripe maypops, sliced 1 cup water | 2-1/2 cups sugar 1-3/4 ounces pectin |
| Combine the Maypops and water, and boil gently for 5 minutes. Then strain, discarding the pulp. Combine the liquid and sugar and bring to full rolling boil. Add pectin, and again bring to rolling boil. Remove from heat, pour into hot, sterilized jars, and seal. Makes 2-1/2 pints. | |
http://www.monthsofediblecelebrations.com/2009/04/food-shopping-au-natural.html
Maypops Squash.
| 4 cups maypops, halved 3/4 cup sugar 1 cinnamon stick, halved | 1 whole clove 2-1/2 cups water 1/4 cup lemon juice |
| Combine the paypops, sugar, cinnamon stick, clove, and water and bring to a boil. simmer gently for 5 minutes. Put through a strainer, pressing fruit to extract all the juice. Add the lemon juice, and chill well before serving. Makes 4 servings. | |
http://www.monthsofediblecelebrations.com/2009/04/food-shopping-au-natural.html
| Maypop Ice Milk This will make a 1/2 gallon. |
| http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/snitz/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1746 |
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
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