Planting Your Food-Forest Inexpensively

I have been asked about Planting Your Food-Forest Inexpensively and how I plant the hundreds of trees, shrubs, and other plants in my food-forest.

The image on the left is English walnut trees grown from seed, and entering dormancy. I will separate them all and plant them bare root in spring up at my property. Many trees can be bare root planted when dormant.

And, if one were to go out and buy all of these plants it could certainly get overwhelming quickly!

I do not buy them all, although I do spend several hundred dollars every year on seeds and plants. My main objective at this point is to simply get many, many cultivars established on my property.

Then once established I can easily propagate the species from those plants, using seeds, cuttings, or if I want that particular plant in another location, I will simply transplant it.

So where do I get my plants?

Well one very easy way to get a ton of plants growing is to go out and harvest seeds from desirable plants in the fall.

The image on the right is seed from a couple of seed gathering walks. The bowl on the right has wild rose, black locus, milk weed, asparagus, goldenrod, and a few others. The bowl on the right is mostly alfalfa which is a plant I have not had much luck with yet, but want to get established in a big way! Would love an acre or two of it. I am thinking if it was growing profusely there it would take a lot of grazing pressure of my other plants.

I have realized that as one ages the need to stay in good shape physically becomes even more important. The old saying…’use it or lose it’…begins to come to the forefront…you begin to ‘lose it’ much more quickly.

With this in mind I go on hikes every other day or so, I love to hike the wild places, which around here is managed wildlife areas. (I can bring my dogs…who have never experienced being on a leash.)

These wildlife areas are as I said managed, so they purposely plant them with desirable plants….plants that I want to propagate as well…such as goldenrod, wild roses, elderberry, milkweed, gooseberry, wild plum, hybrid popular (and a few other hybridized trees), sage brush, willow, cottonwood, blackberry, to name a few.

So I simply go out and harvest some of the seeds in the fall, easy, free, and very fresh and viable seeds. This is the key to Planting Your Food-Forest Inexpensively

I also go to these same areas in the early spring and take cuttings.

One of my favorite ways to plant cuttings is to take a long (about 4 ft) cutting. I then go to where I want to plant this cutting in the early spring and ram a hole down in the soft wet soil of spring with a steel bar I have. The bedrock at my mountain property is about 4 ft down, if you do this and can go deeper, that would likely be advantageous. I then trim everything off the cutting, push it all the way to bedrock, and only leave a node or two exposed. Then you simply have to keep it moist till it roots.

This works well for all the water loving trees and shrubs (willow, cottonwood, popular, mulberry), and any others that are likely to root easily.

I also have asked you my readers to help me out with seeds form around where you live, and will even trade cannabis seeds for ones I want.

I also actively propagate in pots where I live now (I hope to get up to my property this next spring.)

My ultimate goal for my property is many acres of a food-forest that can feed both humans, and all the animals that live there for years to come.

I am very interested in one plant that I have not introduced yet, and that is bamboo. Do any of you have bamboo growing where you live? I am especially interested in the bigger varieties, and those that are the clumping type, as opposed to the spreading varieties.

One other thing I would like to add, for those of you who have read this far…I have a special going on right now of a free offer of random feminized cannabis seeds. (thanks to Travis my fem guy) If you put in an order, and leave me a note asking for them, I will give you two vials of these free fems with your next order. This offer is good only while supplies last.

Justcannabisseed.com does make me money that supplements my retirement, but falls short of giving me the income I need to build a living space at my property (would love to build a good sized shop), nor buy the piece of equipment I need to really put things in high gear up there (I need a mini excavator.) Hopefully by spring….we shall see.

A quick update to this post…12/23/23… I plant more and more cultivars winter and summer for my food forest. Many seed need stratification, and I simply plant them in pots and let the winter weather do that for me. I also put some in my refrigerator to stratify.

As you may know I ask for seeds from my customers (I will trade you cannabis seeds for them…contact me!) and some are so kind as to take me up on my offer. I just got a ton of seeds from Fox, a customer…thank you so much Fox!

I am excited to plant them all and see what I can get established. Trees, bushes, vines, pollinators, food plants for me or animals, ect. ect. I am simple planting a wide variety of plants, shooting for diversity, and will basically let nature sort them out. I will however (it being semi arid there) supply water in the dry months.

Here is an image of pots that I hope will have plants sprouting come spring… I hope this helps you when Planting Your Food-Forest Inexpensively.

If you want to grow your own cannabis in bulk go here: bulkweedseed.com