This is a very good interviewover at A room to Garden . Michael ’s plan of attack is very similar to mine ( except I greatly dislike yoga ):
Michael : So a food forest[above , a young division of Michael’s]is not grow foodinthe woods . It ’s growing foodlikethe woodland . When you take a very healthy ecosystem forest , you see a spate going on . You see overstory trees , mid - chronicle , understory Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . You see vines run up through it all . You see herbaceous flat coat - storey layer lean , and it ’s all ferment together . It ’s all pumping and work symbiotically .
So when we take that observation , we see that pattern , and when we add up to imbed something on our landscape out in the unfastened lawn , you want to plant a fruit tree , instead of get that yield tree sort of out there in the center of the ocean of sess at the whimsy of weed whackers , what you ’re doing is you ’re creating a chemical group for it , what we call a guild in permaculture . Typically these are perennial familiar plants that plump for that independent yield producer . So we ’re not needfully going to heap that upper , mid - story and understory , but we ’re going to take the construct of put plant together to support each other .
And in that sheath , we often will put in something that localisation nitrogen , something in the legume family , something like the , was it the wildBaptisia , with beautiful blue flowers , and there ’s all these other benefits as well . But pay back nitrogen through the antecedent to the plant life around it is like implant your birth rate in one go .
Then you ’re also thinking about , O.K. , well , let ’s draw in beneficial insects . So let ’s put something like yarrow in there , which has this great architecture , great habitat for all kinds of good insects .
And then you ’re also going to desire something that ’s like a mulch plant life , something I love to apply , like comfrey , which is also medicative . So multipurpose plants , but also thing that I can chop and send away for mulch or that can croak on their own and pulse that soil horizontal surface and prey that Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree long - full term . And then you might have something likeEchinacea , a little gas place for the pollinators to land on .
Margaret : Yes . Yes . Yes .
Michael : Yeah . And augment that pollenation . So you ’re create diversity . A society is not just the plants , it ’s the life that it attracts as well . So it ’s going to affect bionomics proportion . And really what you ’re doing is have yourself off the come-on for having to really care for that tree because you ’ve done a little bit of design upfront by putting plants together , they help serve each other ’s needs , and that gives you more time to do yoga , swing in the hammock , play with your kids .
Margaret : await for the harvest[laughter ] .
Michael : Wait for the harvest , or go do more of these . And I call these yield patches . Of of course , they could be a freak patch , it could be a bush fruit , but it ’s a very unproblematic conception . So it take that larger idea of a food woods , and brings it down to something that could be eight , 10 feet in diam only . And you’re able to fit-
Margaret : Like at the canopy of the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , so to address , and underneath it like that , with that size ?
Michael : Right .
Margaret : Not of the whole K . It does n’t have to be the whole yard . It could be this one area .
Michael : Right . And then if you did have more space , and you wanted to have less lawn , you could bug out spacing these patches out 12 , 15 , 20 feet apart and have your other yield trees in those space . And then over time , if you require , you could kind of keep doing what I call sheet mulching , which is like lasagna gardening . It ’s like lay down cardboard and newspaper and wheat and forest chips and mulch , whatever form of textile that you have , constituent material around you , float around us . Put that down . And that aid extend those darn , so that over time your lawn disappears and you ’ve get this horn of plenty of flora . And when I do something like that , I ’ll often put in sort of running plants that will serve sort of cover that blank space and not have to maintain it .
( You canread the entire mail here – it ’s inspiring . )
