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What types of food forest work best for the city?
Fruit trees can be sized for about any yard. You can get a 10 foot or 16 foot dwarf apple tree. Cherry trees fit well into an urban setting. Kiwi vines, grapes, and numerous fruiting shrubs can fill a yard in no time. Underneath the taller plants are layers of edibles. There are seven layers to an edible forest. Each protects or supports the others. This is the structure for building the plant list with the database.
Robert Hart's Seven Layers:
- · Canopy layer’ consisting of the original mature fruit trees.
- · ‘Low-tree layer’ of smaller nut and fruit trees on dwarfing root stocks.
- · ‘Shrub layer’ of fruit bushes such as currants and berries.
- · ‘Herbaceous layer’ of perennial vegetables and herbs.
- · ‘Ground cover layer’ of edible plants that spread horizontally.
- · ‘Rhizosphere’ or ‘underground’ dimension of plants grown for their roots and tubers.
- · ‘Vertical layer’ of vines and climbers.
8*. - "Mushroom layer" Added by some designers as a layer for fungi.
Can you grow any Food in shade?
Certainly, that is what a rain forest does. Here we have many plants that can photosynthesize in low light. Many are leafy greens like Miners Lettuce, but also Broccoli, Potatoes, and then others that will grow in partial shade, Pumpkins, Beets, Squash, Kohlrabi, and Chard.
Companion planting. I went to one of your workshops, explain strawberries around our fruit trees.
Fill the understory of the trees with smaller plants, fruiting shrubs, and perennial. The biggest competitor to trees is grass. Use the trees closest to each other to create a curvy planting bed and fill it with perennials and small shrubs. This connects the trees, reduces competition and creates a unifying element in the landscape. It also creates beneficial habitat for pest control. Depending on your soil, in my bias opinion, anything is better than grass.