IVOFG: John Valenzuela and food forests

This week we had the privilege of listening to John Valenzuela,

president of the Golden Gate Chapter of The California Rare Fruit Growers Society. We discussed food forests and permiculture, as well as sampled apples that he and students brought from home (yummo!)

and finally took a trek out to our orchard. 

A food forest has seven layers, although a food forest needs to have at least three layers (big, medium, little)

1) Canopy or overstory (such as large fruit and nut trees)
2) Semi dwarf (such as peach, citrus, persimmon)
3) Fruiting shrubs
4) Herbaceous layer
5) Rhizomes (root veg)
6) Soil (ground cover)
7) Vertical layers

Food forests were inspired by the tropics, where the forests are super productive with foods, herbs, and medicinal properties.  We also discussed the Polynesians, who when traveling, were said to have 22 types of plants and animals they'd bring in their canoe to feed themselves in distant lands.  This sparked an internal question: What would my 22 canoe crops be?  What would yours be?

John said the number one item needed for the a food forest is water. "You got tho get your water right, or you got nothing right."  Wonderful ways to go about collecting war is to have a rainwater catchment system.  Another idea is grey water recycling--to use water from inside the house for outside water.  Gravity fed water is a great and simple system also.  How about a pond?  Grow fish for food and the fish water is great for plants.  "Do you have an excess of slugs?" John asked.  "Maybe instead you have an absence of ducks." Ducks!  Ducks are great for eating pests and they give you eggs!  Double win!  For more info on aquaphonics, please check out Max Meyers of NorCal Aquaphonics link below.

How about planting flowers?  Flowers are a wonderful habitat for the predators of pests (pest predators).  When planting flowers in your food forest, look for flowers that are very accessible for insect's small mouth parts.  It's very important to provide for the pest predators, because these guys have a longer, slower life cycle than the pests they hunt. Remember when planting your food forest, diversity makes it interesting.

Also, please make sure that you plant pairs or clusters of fruiting trees for pollination (plant sex!) and that tree planting is planting for decades away.  And as always, share  your harvest!

And lastly, I want to impart you with John's 3 VERY IMPORTANT rules for seed saving, planting, and propagating.  LABEL, LABEL, LABEL!

Please check out these other links for more info!

Regenerative Design Institute  

CA Rare Fruit Growers Golden Gate Chapter

CA Rare Fruit Growers Scion Exchange 

John Valenzuela's blog, Cornucopia Food Forest  

NorCal Aquaponics