Rachel and I took luck of photos when we visited The Great South Florida Food Forest Project over Thanksgiving . Let ’s take a look at some of the interesting thing going on in this tropic urban backyard food forest .
Let ’s start with …
The Weird Ground Cover Layer
Something unexpected has happened in the undercoat cover stratum of this intellectual nourishment woods . Since my parent do n’t do a mint of gardening and because I ’m not around to plant and maintain the hot - fast - and - die - youthful parts of this project , an interesting mixed bag of weeds and ornamental plants have sprung up to fill the ecological void at the low levels .
It ’s pretty and tropic and it keeps the ground traverse and moist . Good enough . Plus , whatever that green wild flower in the center is , the bees love its blooms :
Eddy , my parents ’ neighbor , keeps a couple of boxes of bee in his backyard so the intellectual nourishment forest is always bombilate . That ’s great for our fruit set .
I throw a bunch more seeds around when I visited so we ’ll see what pops up next :
Now let ’s see at some …
Great Successes
The tropic Amygdalus communis has simply detonate . I embed it 2.5 age ago as a flyspeck sprout . bet at it in this video !
I ca n’t believe how tight that tree has originate and borne yield . The nuts are excellent , though a little bit of work to access .
Here ’s another success : the chocolate pud yield Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree –
It ’s just taller than I am and is suffer fruit . I ’m thrilled with its growth .
Another tree that has been bearing prolifically is the Starfruit . I got to eat a few while we were there and they ’re simply delicious fresh from the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree .
If you live inside the cooking stove where starfruit ( AKA star fruit ) grow , plant a tree . They ’re attractive and productive .
Here ’s another ongoing success :
I drank the pee from multiple coconuts while I was down there , plus ate nutmeats to my heart ’s subject matter . Coconuts are wonderful for you and very well-off to grow under the right atmospheric condition . That tree just turned 21 and I ’m quite proud of it – it pre - dates the rest of the food forest by 16 days !
Here ’s another success :
attend at that thriving avocado ! I plant it from a pit and it ’s now taller than I am . Heck yeah .
Pests and Pest Control
One of the problem we ’ve had with the fruit trees is this pesky little insect :
That ’s aSri Lankan weevil , an imported pest that chews up the leave of absence on a all-encompassing reach of mintage – many of which are prized tropical fruit tree . It ate most of the leaves on our short canistel tree before Dad knocked them out with a rung of Sevin dust .
One cocksure sign we get word in the nutrient timberland is this bundle of braconid wasp cocoons on the bottom of a cassava leaf :
They ’re a guided missile destroyer of caterpillar , particularly hornworms .
If you need to see more on this creepy parasitical beast , click here . If you defy .
And More!
Here are a few more photos from the intellectual nourishment wood to wrap affair up . First , a bursting bitter gourd :
A blooming nitrogen - fixing Cinnamomum cassia I set out from seed :
Katuk in yield :
A thriving mango tree branch :
Orchids bloom beneath the mango tree :
A felled tree turn into soil :
A white Anglo-Saxon Protestant patrolling the grumichama tree for caterpillars :
Dangling yam plant bulbils :
Is n’t all that living a LOT more interesting than grass ? And to think – this was unfinished sand and grass when we started a few years ago .
If you missed my video turn , here it is again :
Plant a food forest ! Goget my book , go through the species and turn your grass into intellectual nourishment . It ’s easy and more play than you may imagine . butterfly stroke , tropical yield , honeybees and abundant lifespan spilling out all over .
I ca n’t waitress until the other Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree get big and originate bearing – particularly the cashew nut . That ’ll be amazing .
Related posts:
The New Alabama Food Forest
One Year of Gardening
It’s Food Forest GO TIME!
The Simple Secret to Growing More Food with…
Creating A Food Forest Style Edible Hedge
Growing Sweet Potatoes in a Food Forest
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Seven Reasons to Start Growing Goumi Berries!
A dead time of year
Spondias dulcis: The June Plum
