You’re welcome 😊 Glad you enjoyed the vid. This was actually the first video we made in our Food Forest a few years back, you might like to see how its changed over the resent years in ... We've got more vids in this playlist here 💚✌️🌿 ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_
Hey Leo, Good to have you with us... We just filmed another tour video last week, that you might enjoy too: ruclips.net/video/45DOOR-ZxKY/видео.html Enjoy planning and creating your food forest - catch you here again soon✌️🌿
Another great video. I would recommend Sichuan pepper tree, many culinary uses, always a favourite with food forest tours. Some key points, mostly self fertile, tolerate -15c, yields yearly, incredibly robust but very thorny, could make an impenetrable productive hedge ( deer?). Goji; Aquire a productive strain, most are not very productive. Eventually we found one that yields reliably, our main use is to add the berries of up to 10% quantity to preserves... That way it wont inpart an off flavour but gain the nutrition. Goji was one of the plants that we moved to a wilder location where it spreads easily without rabbits. Chickens love the leaves and berries. Powdery mildew some years but unaffected.
Hey guys, amazing comment as usual, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience, the sichuan pepper has been on our radar a while, we were unsure if they were self fertile or not though..a must for the future! Sounds good about the gojis too, maybe we can find a named variety and graft it onto the others in time! Keep up the good work..
Glad you enjoyed our vid and it was useful for you. 💚We've made a few other food forest videos this year too that you might find helpful if you are in a similar climate to us. ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_ Good luck with your food forest - let us know how you go/any questions we might be able to help with ✌️🌿
Try putting cardboard down over the invasive weeds. Make sure the area is fully covered with no spaces or holes in the cardboard. Then cover with woodchips. Might need to do a second time for extremely tough weeds. It has worked for me. I LOVE your food forest! Great video, can't wait to see more!
Hey thanks - glad you enjoyed it, we have a few other tours at various times of the year too: ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_ Always appreciate your comments 🙏✌️🌿
You guys have really nailed it. That Yarrow looked super pink! Love a cherry plum used to have one in my grandparents garden. Respect the edit too editing these videos people don't realise how long it is! ✌️🤣
Hey Guys! Thanks so much, oh did they, their amazing fruits aren't they! Ha yeah takes time doesnt it, was a day filming it and 3 days editing! Loved the editing on your wildflower video too...keep rocking it guys and thanks for your comment! ✌️
Just lovely,what a collection of plants. My attempt at a forest garden is on a housing estate - just my home garden with a few fruit trees , strawberries for ground cover,a Sichuan Pepper & herbs for using in my recipes . etc I grew Quince & Medlar this year. The blossom of both so beautiful.
Hi Caroline, thank you for your lovely comments... Your ahead of us with the Sichuan Pepper .. its one of those things we've been meaning to get since we started our Food Forest, and it just keeps getting forgotten for some unknown reason!!! 🤔 This is going to change very soon though! 😊 Keep up the good work in your own little forest garden and stay tuned, we have a winter food forest vid coming out soon ✌️🌿
Hi Sarah, sure, they absolutely have a place ... just not on the scale they would like to grow in this area if we left them to do their thing 😆 so we do have to 'manage' certain things. Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it 🙏 We have more recent tours that you might enjoy too ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_ ✌️🌿
Thankyou for sharing your v inspirational food forest video. I'm hooked on permaculture,food forests videos!!! Many of them are in the tropics where they can grow some amazing fruit and veg. But we are limited in the UK. So now I'm watching food forest UK to learn about what works here. I have a small allotmentand experimenting with comfrey feeds and nitrogen fixing plants and mulching. Would like to know about companion planting too.
Hi Ranjan, so glad you are finding our video helpful - yes we found the same about food forest video when we were researching before we got ours going too.. Sounds like you are doing some great stuff on your allotment 🙌 We have made a few other food forest videos since this one that you may find useful too - i'll pop the links to some of our playlists here for you: Food Forest Tours: 👉 ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_ Permaculture vids: 👉ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMMKiXCwIh98GgtuDLnkxMHd Enjoy ✌️🌿
In the Process kid recreating/rethinking the Produce Garden. I found a starting point and it’s Pathways that I’m considering. I would like my little Grandchildren to learn to forage and to become sustainable. I can never get enough of these Videos. Good for the Soul.
Just about to start planting 10 fruit trees with the intention of creating a food forest. The video was very informative and it was good to see strawberries used as a ground cover. Good to hear that some things haven't worked out but on the whole it all looks ace. Well done your food forest is a credit to all your hard work. Many thanks for inspiring me too!
Thank you, the reds have stayed but the white have are now in pots awaiting a new home - Jelly is a good idea for the reds though - I like it - thank you ✌️🌿
I think you can eat the goji berry leafs. We used to grow them when I was younger. We stripped the leaves off the stalks periodically and made soup. Those were a treat. That might have been a variety speficially for eating the leaves as we got them from a chinese supermarket and just planted the twigs. I had a goji berry bush for years which never fruited for me. Friends down south did though.
Hi, Yes we've had a few messages before about either adding the young Goji leaves to salads or using for herbal teas - we tried munching a few last year, didn't find the flavour that exciting, but I think they could go well blended with others in a tea for sure and just added to salad, you prob wouldnt even know they are there, but can benefit from their added diversity and properties for sure 🙌 hoping to have a lot more time to focus on things like teas and medicinal herbs - my goal for this year 🌈🙏 Would love to know the variety you used ... Thanks for your lovely comment 🙏✌️🌿
Thank you for sharing and showing us around your food forest! What abundance you have cultivated already - I can really feel your love and passion, and appreciate your knowledge and learning from you. Huge respect to you for following your hearts, it shines from you both. Also, wish to acknowledge the work that goes in to making a video like this - kudos. SO much love 💚🌱🌳🌞
Thank you so much for your beautiful comment and for appreciating our vid. Growing good clean healthy food to nourish our bodies and caring for nature is a huge passion for us indeed 🙏💚✌️🌿
Thanks for this detailed video. Living in the UK, Cambridge and interested in food forest, the 1st question I have is "how does it look like?". It's really nice to see people trying things, sharing the results and speaking about what you learnt along the way. One thing about the birds eating your fruits. I didn't read all the comments below so sorry if it's a duplicate. The birds eat the fruits to get the water from them so you need to add few water points. This water needs to be changed if it doesn't rain enough. In permaculture, water is a key part of the design, as you probably know. I would dig a small pond at the highest spot of the forest (even if it looks like pretty flat). Or maybe in the middle? I am not sure to be honest. The pond could capture rain water and soak it into your forest plus that could bring few frogs, newts that'll eat slugs and water for birds. It could be a nice feature for the forest once it's surrounded by aquatic vegetation. I have a public allotment and one of the neighbour dug a pound, I think it's a really good idea. What about nut trees? Hazelnuts, walnuts are doing well in the UK. Walnut trees can get big though... Good stuff!
Hi Matthieu, thats really interesting what you say about the birds/water, we do have 2 pond on the land, but none actually in the food forest ... Dan does love a water feature though, so perhaps you've sown a seed for the future! We do have a young hazel nut copse in another area (check it out here if you like... ruclips.net/video/PAWtkW-hI7w/видео.html&ab_channel=FreedomForestLife-OffGrid ) .. but no walnuts .... yet!! 😃😉 Thanks so much for your ideas and comments - we love hearing from other permies 💚 Thanks for watching and hope to catch you here again soon ✌️🌿
Just a quick one to say I got a Nikita's gift persimmon in 2014 and finally got my first fruits in autumn last year so could take a little while. Good luck
Hey Joshua, thanks, i think its given up now! The guy selling the ones i got sent them bare root and had cuts nearly all the roots off, im not so sure bare root is the way to go with persimmons, are you in the UK?
Beautiful guys, I love it! It looks like you created your own paradise on earth. Imagine a world filled with gardens like these how beautiful it would be. Keep up the good work!
im not sure if its been answered already but you should prune a plum in spring or summer. pruned in winter will allow disease to get in. they are different to other fruit trees in this way. hope that helps if you get another.
I believe it can cause silver leaf . Which is a fungus. This can be quite devastating if it spreads to other trees. I think the bore holes are probably a bug 🐛
Great Vid 😀 Here in Australia where I am in Southern Victoria we also get a green wild cherry plum. They are rare i've only seen two and I know one has been removed. The fruit on the green ones is the best of the three imho.
Hi Neville, Great to know you are watching from over in Australia 💚 We have a few more young Cherry plums around the land - I will have to keep an eye if we get a green one when they start fruiting 👍 This is an older video, I can't remember if we know what the 2 were in our food forest then - we have a Red and a Yellow one atm. Just put out a new summer update tour video today that you might like to see how its changed in 3 years 😊 Appreciate you watcing and messaging 🙏✌️🌿 ruclips.net/video/CQckIDwkqNY/видео.html
Glad you enjoyed it 💚🙏 If I could make harvesting and preserving my full time job, I think I could out do them for sure !!! 🤣 Hope you're enjoying your binge watch 😉✌️ 🌿
Hello guys. Great food forest you have going there. I regards to your trees, I would check out a guy called Michael Phillips. He was an amazing orchardist, probably the best in the world! Worth checking out for tips on pruning and tree care. Thank you for the inspiring video
Wow, your food forest looks fantastic. A not regarding the white currants. Try to let them ripen waaaaaaaaaaaaay longer (until the first of a cluster goes a bit wrinkly or even start to fall of). In my experience they will become much sweeter, the longer they can ripen on the bush
Hi Martina, Thank you, I will try this, there may still be some on there if the birds haven't eaten them all, so will check this out as its been a long time since they first formed. Glad you enjoyed having a look around too 🙏✌️🌿
Great to see what you're doing and your project coming together. I look forward to following your journey :) I hope one day I can do something like this too so it's great to see you trying things out and before everything is fully formed, there's things we'd all run into like it would be me buying 20 varieties of something and realising I like 1 of them, someone else actually told me about that red gooseberry earlier today and now you've gone and recommended it too, I never liked gooseberries but now I'm willing to give them a try ☺️
Oliver, thanks for your nice comment! A pleasure to have you following the journey too, we hope you can also! Ha yes its so easy to get so excited but also sometimes the only way to learn, the reds are lovley, so sweet compared to what i used to remember of the sour'ish green ones when younger...
Throw that Goji away and get gomui instead. That Goji will look like you guys raspberrys in no time. Very cool video. I love seeing similar climate stuff to me. My urban ediable landscaping on its 3rd years.
HI Justin, Glad you enjoyed seeing the vid, we filmed this one 2.5 hrs ago, One of the Goji berries has spread out a bit since and looks a messy shape, but the other 2 havent spread much... they haven;t fruited yet either though! So I have been debating taking one or more out for this reason. Here's the most resent tour we made in the summer and also a vid we made just few weeks back with a glimpse at Food Forest in mid winter, you might like to see 💚 Thanks for watching ✌️🌿 ruclips.net/video/HW5zMtcKMM8/видео.html ruclips.net/video/Rx77iItXCis/видео.html
You prune stone fruit after fruit harvest to avoid infection with something we (dutch) call loodglans. Didn't see that infection on your tree but it might be somewhere else which weakened the tree....
Slowly working my way through your back-catalogue of vids and absolutely love this one! Please may I ask how you went about planning the space out. When we move we will have a similarly open area which I’m hoping to cultivate into something similar but with no background in landscape design or permaculture am a bit lost in how to start! Did you have a layout plan in mind or did it evolve slowly over time?
Hi, Glad your enjoying some of the oldies 😃 Our Food Forest has been and still is an ever evolving space. The only real plan we had to start with was the spacing for trees to work out roughly how many main fruit trees we could fit into the space, we spaced at 4m appart from the centres of each tree, allowing for fairly big trees (so this spacing could be much less with drawf trees for example) then, taking into account the sun positioning, land gradient and planning biggest trees to go down the bottom. This spacing has also allowed us to plant the fruit bushes in between or have guild type plantings around the trees. Ever year we make changes, some from our own inspiration/discovery, some forced by a loss or under proforming plant or just finding we don't like something. Just let it unfold with a little loose planning I feel. If you work you way through our Food Forest Tour Vids playlist, in order, starting from this one, you should be able to see some of the transformations 🙌 ... I do plan to make a timelapse montage soon (ish) 😃✌️🌿
We do have herbs dotted about, although I so intend to spread more around this year .. both annuals that will hopefully self seed and more perennials. We do have red vain sorel somewhere and one of the things we are plagued/blessed with is Sheep Sorrel! Which we do add to salads etc. There's several varieties of mint, rosemary, chives etc, but defo room for many more herbs for sure. Thanks for watching and for your ideas 💚✌️🌿
Only just discovered you, enquiring about sweet potatoes! Great video! The tour through your garden looks sooooo good! I've paused @the currants...In our garden the white currants are the favourite and the black ones the least! I'm also in the south east, very chalcky and clayish. Is it variety or soil or both?
Glad you found us .. we've got quite a few vids on sweet potatoes that might be useful and when we've bought slips in the past we've used Highland Horticulture. Yeah, its interesting re the current.. I'll have to check the varieties we have, if the lables are still attached 🤔 we are on clay with a woodchip mulch, not so chalky where we are ✌️🌿
Hi Annette here from Appletree Urban Homestead on RUclips from Perth Australia. We are a family of three and in the process of turning our Aussie backyard into our dream urban homestead and I am documenting our journey to self sufficiency on my RUclips channel
Hi James, thanks for comment 👍 The mint we are actually letting spread a seed in other areas a bit as the mo as everything finds its place, if it gets too dense in places i'll strim paths through it, like I am going to with the raspberries this year and where mint is quite shallow rooted it can be pulled out of the wood chip layer with just a little persuasion quite easily. Thanks for Watching, we're gonna be doing some more tour vids soon ✌️🌿
My first time on your channel. Love what you're doing there. I'm a bit further north, so I'm growing some of the trees you have there. (Hope you have better luck with the Goji berries than I did. I just found them to be a scruffy, unproductive mess which eventually died, but by then I wasn't sorry to see them go). If you are both fans of mint, especially as a tea alternative - may I recommend Korean Liquorice Mint? I bought some seed from RealSeeds UK earlier this year and plants grew just large enough to make a few cups of tea. It's a lovely tea, has a good full flavour, and I look forward to spreading this plant about the garden more in future years.
Hi Debbie, thanks heaps for the mint recommendations, we'll look into that one, sounds yum 👍 I feel our Goji berries may well be switched out for something more productive before next season for sure ... all part of the learning though hey - Thanks for joining us here and for your lovely comment/ideas - thanks for sharing ✌️🌿
Hi, we are central south coast, not Cornwall. 😊 We've more recently been trialing edible lupins as a nitrogen fixer, hoping for better results though this year, as they didn't much like the droughts of last summer ✌️🌿
Beautiful food forest. Iam inspired to have place and grow trees. Thanks for the content. I have couple of questions to get clarified. Is the place near your home? What is the distance.? Is it fenced? Thank you.
Our food forest is Rabbit fenced where it is young and still establishing, although Deer did damage the fence a while back and we ended up with a few Rabbits inside who ate all the Chives and Strawberries, we think they've gone now and the fence has been fixed! ✌️🌿
Goji berry - I found to be a waste of time. It’s a thug of a plant, waited 5 years to get flowers but sadly no fruit also not good for small gardens so had to go. Whitecurrants are best as white jelly as an alternative to redcurrant jelly. Very nice with cold meats (sorry if you’re vegan). Quince brilliant natural source of pectin, I stick 2 fruits in with the fruit I making jam with. 😂 however careful when making a quince jelly (once mine set so hard I couldn’t get it out of jar).
Agree about the Goji's, we have since taken all but one out and that one will probably go soon too. I used to make Quince cheese (its not really cheese - think just called that as a block) loved it, but havent done it for years .. maybe i'll get to it this year if the tree does ok, it didn;t look too happy this summer 🤞
@@freedomforestlife I got nowt of my quince this year, I think the cold weather & late frosts killed off pollination. The Mrs made the cheese a few years ago, it was certainly different, taste ok but texture I wasn’t too keen on.
Hi Mikkel, Yeah, I'm not sure what the problem is with the White Currants, as I think we had a couple of different varieties too. The Red Currants haven't be great yet either, but we're sticking with those for now and our Black Currant are AMAZING!! The whites are in pots now and will be re-home somewhere else when we decided where, so all is not yet lost ✌️🌿
@@ia8018 I believe my comment was based on the video saying fruit trees were the canopy layer. Because it wouldn't matter how tall trees are currently.
Hi Sara, all over really, trees we mostly get bare root from Orange Pippin and a lot of the current bushes came from Morrisons Supermarket. The more unusual plants/herbs are often from seeds or slightly more specialist providers, like Pennard Plants, incredible vegetables etc and then we use our local garden centre on Ebay/other online sellers. Hope that helps - Thanks for watching ✌️🌿
It's important to do your pruning in the winter or summer during a dry spell that will go on for a few to several days after pruning. This will allow the trees or shrubs to seal the wound more quickly against insect or disease. Thanks for the video!
Excellent video guys.. I have similar climate I found I like many of your types of plants that I don't have at the moment . Will add these to my garden. Thank you. SUBSCRIBED. 😁🪴🌼
Hi Janet, thanks for your message, really glad the video was useful for you, We have filmed a few in our food forest now at various times of the year, which you might enjoy seeing too - here’s the link to our food forest playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_ We’ve got trees coming for our next area in January too, which is exciting, but maybe a while until we getting the other layers in. Thanks for subscribing - nice to have you with us. 🙏 Seasons greetings ✌️🌿
If you had a hoop house you could grow tender trees in that for a couple of years before planting out. There is a man in New York who does that and has succeeded in keeping many fruit trees that are supposed to be tender in his area,
Good idea - thank you - We do actually have 3 hoop houses and one we have dug out deeper to give more roof space and we do plan to grow marginal trees in there eventually, thats a great point though that we could bring some on and harden them off for planting out later 👍 Thanks for watching and commenting, we have a few more recent Food Forest videos on our channel that you might enjoy too 💚✌️🌿
So fruits, some years, it seems to chance every year. Mostly blackcurrants are left alone and there is always enough raspberries for everyone ... the strawberries are great for the start of the harvest and then slowely everything starts noticing them and moves in... Blueberries are tough, we have HEAPS this year, our biggest year yep bu a long way, so will be interesting to see if we can beat the birds to at least some of the harvest this year. 🤞 Thanks for watching, you can find more recent vids from our food forest on our channel too ✌️🌿
What is the “Octave” plant? Not sure if that’s how you spell it? I feel like I have these and the name I found for them is Oxalis. Is this the same plant? The leaves sure look the same.
Hi Samantha, i think the plant you mean is called OCA, its a tuber from the andes, its in that family, its simular to grow like potatoes here, we can leave them in through winter, they taste like potatoe with a lemon citrus hint!
Beautiful food forest
great vid so good to see in uk
Thanks - glad you enjoyed watching and seeing it - so much more still to add … growing and changing all the time 💚✌️🌿
Thanks for showing the different layers.
You’re welcome 😊 Glad you enjoyed the vid. This was actually the first video we made in our Food Forest a few years back, you might like to see how its changed over the resent years in ... We've got more vids in this playlist here 💚✌️🌿 ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_
You seem so happy. Lovely video 😊
😊 thank you
Considering setting up food forest and watching this video has definitely inspired me thank you 😊
If the goji berries don’t flower you can always strip the leaves to eat! Very yummy
Thanks Max, we'll try this 👍 ... using them for tea has been suggested also ... thanks for sharing your knowledge, much appricated ✌️🌿
im in! great share folks!! just starting "my" foodforest in switzerland. much love✌️
Hey Leo, Good to have you with us... We just filmed another tour video last week, that you might enjoy too: ruclips.net/video/45DOOR-ZxKY/видео.html
Enjoy planning and creating your food forest - catch you here again soon✌️🌿
Another great video. I would recommend Sichuan pepper tree, many culinary uses, always a favourite with food forest tours. Some key points, mostly self fertile, tolerate -15c, yields yearly, incredibly robust but very thorny, could make an impenetrable productive hedge ( deer?).
Goji;
Aquire a productive strain, most are not very productive. Eventually we found one that yields reliably, our main use is to add the berries of up to 10% quantity to preserves... That way it wont inpart an off flavour but gain the nutrition. Goji was one of the plants that we moved to a wilder location where it spreads easily without rabbits. Chickens love the leaves and berries. Powdery mildew some years but unaffected.
Hey guys, amazing comment as usual, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience, the sichuan pepper has been on our radar a while, we were unsure if they were self fertile or not though..a must for the future! Sounds good about the gojis too, maybe we can find a named variety and graft it onto the others in time! Keep up the good work..
You really do know your stuff. I am quite envious.
Thanks Norman 🙏✌️🌿
amazing forest. let's do that
Thanks - glad you like it ✌️🌿
Lovely tour. I want to make a food forest. And this is helping me form the idea and how to go about do it! Thanks for this
Glad you enjoyed our vid and it was useful for you. 💚We've made a few other food forest videos this year too that you might find helpful if you are in a similar climate to us. ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_ Good luck with your food forest - let us know how you go/any questions we might be able to help with ✌️🌿
@@freedomforestlife thanks I’ll check it out
Try putting cardboard down over the invasive weeds. Make sure the area is fully covered with no spaces or holes in the cardboard. Then cover with woodchips. Might need to do a second time for extremely tough weeds. It has worked for me. I LOVE your food forest! Great video, can't wait to see more!
Thanks for the advise and your kind words Bobbie! Glad you enjoyed the video too!
Everything is looking beautiful 👍👍👍
HI Monara, Thanks - Hope you enjoyed having a look around - thank you for being with us and for commenting 🙏✌️🌿
Very enjoyable, touring your Living Forest with you. Best wishes 🙂
Hey thanks - glad you enjoyed it, we have a few other tours at various times of the year too: ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_
Always appreciate your comments 🙏✌️🌿
Great,thankyou 🙂🙏
I'm so happy for you mate. You manifested this life for yourself and it's an inspiration
You guys have really nailed it. That Yarrow looked super pink! Love a cherry plum used to have one in my grandparents garden. Respect the edit too editing these videos people don't realise how long it is! ✌️🤣
Hey Guys! Thanks so much, oh did they, their amazing fruits aren't they! Ha yeah takes time doesnt it, was a day filming it and 3 days editing! Loved the editing on your wildflower video too...keep rocking it guys and thanks for your comment! ✌️
Good job guys
Thank you ✌️🌿
Awesome vid. Getting inspired for my try at a food forest this summer. 🇨🇦👍
Epic, you wont regret it!
Beautiful space
Thank you Tanya ✌️🌿
Your land is absolutely beautiful. Can’t wait to see how things evolve!
Thank you Nneka, we are very grateful to have it in our lives and see nature do its thing, with just a bit of help 💚✌️🌿
Just lovely,what a collection of plants. My attempt at a forest garden is on a housing estate - just my home garden with a few fruit trees , strawberries for ground cover,a Sichuan Pepper & herbs for using in my recipes . etc I grew Quince & Medlar this year. The blossom of both so beautiful.
Hi Caroline, thank you for your lovely comments... Your ahead of us with the Sichuan Pepper .. its one of those things we've been meaning to get since we started our Food Forest, and it just keeps getting forgotten for some unknown reason!!! 🤔 This is going to change very soon though! 😊 Keep up the good work in your own little forest garden and stay tuned, we have a winter food forest vid coming out soon ✌️🌿
Lovely and inspirational. Sorrel and bramble are both edibles however and surely can have their place in a good forest
Hi Sarah, sure, they absolutely have a place ... just not on the scale they would like to grow in this area if we left them to do their thing 😆 so we do have to 'manage' certain things.
Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it 🙏 We have more recent tours that you might enjoy too ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_
✌️🌿
Thankyou for sharing your v inspirational food forest video.
I'm hooked on permaculture,food forests videos!!!
Many of them are in the tropics where they can grow some amazing fruit and veg. But we are limited in the UK. So now I'm watching food forest UK to learn about what works here. I have a small allotmentand experimenting with comfrey feeds and nitrogen fixing plants and mulching. Would like to know about companion planting too.
Hi Ranjan, so glad you are finding our video helpful - yes we found the same about food forest video when we were researching before we got ours going too.. Sounds like you are doing some great stuff on your allotment 🙌 We have made a few other food forest videos since this one that you may find useful too - i'll pop the links to some of our playlists here for you: Food Forest Tours: 👉 ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_
Permaculture vids: 👉ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMMKiXCwIh98GgtuDLnkxMHd
Enjoy ✌️🌿
Very inspirational. I also have been working on a food forest and you have a lot of great information here
Hi Colbroth, thanks very much! The exciting thing is the abundance should get better each year...good luck with your food forest too!
In the Process kid recreating/rethinking the Produce Garden. I found a starting point and it’s Pathways that I’m considering. I would like my little Grandchildren to learn to forage and to become sustainable. I can never get enough of these Videos. Good for the Soul.
Thanks Wendy, we're glad you enjoyed it 🙏 good luck with your recreating 💚
Great work you two!
Glad you liked it! Thank you 💚
Wow nice garden friend
Glad you like it and Thank you for joining us here 🙏✌️🌿
Just about to start planting 10 fruit trees with the intention of creating a food forest. The video was very informative and it was good to see strawberries used as a ground cover. Good to hear that some things haven't worked out but on the whole it all looks ace. Well done your food forest is a credit to all your hard work. Many thanks for inspiring me too!
Josie thanks so much! Really nice to hear..keep us updated on its progess! Peace and Plants
A tip for the white currant (and red) make jelly to serve with roast, turkey or chicken. Its lovely.
Thank you, the reds have stayed but the white have are now in pots awaiting a new home - Jelly is a good idea for the reds though - I like it - thank you ✌️🌿
I think you can eat the goji berry leafs. We used to grow them when I was younger. We stripped the leaves off the stalks periodically and made soup. Those were a treat. That might have been a variety speficially for eating the leaves as we got them from a chinese supermarket and just planted the twigs.
I had a goji berry bush for years which never fruited for me. Friends down south did though.
Hi, Yes we've had a few messages before about either adding the young Goji leaves to salads or using for herbal teas - we tried munching a few last year, didn't find the flavour that exciting, but I think they could go well blended with others in a tea for sure and just added to salad, you prob wouldnt even know they are there, but can benefit from their added diversity and properties for sure 🙌 hoping to have a lot more time to focus on things like teas and medicinal herbs - my goal for this year 🌈🙏 Would love to know the variety you used ... Thanks for your lovely comment 🙏✌️🌿
Amazing 🤩 I never know so much food could grow in the uk 💯👌🏽😁❤️👍🏽 really enjoyed the video, thank you both.
Glad you enjoyed it - Thank you for watching
beautiful, thank you
Thank you for sharing and showing us around your food forest! What abundance you have cultivated already - I can really feel your love and passion, and appreciate your knowledge and learning from you. Huge respect to you for following your hearts, it shines from you both. Also, wish to acknowledge the work that goes in to making a video like this - kudos. SO much love 💚🌱🌳🌞
Thank you so much for your beautiful comment and for appreciating our vid. Growing good clean healthy food to nourish our bodies and caring for nature is a huge passion for us indeed 🙏💚✌️🌿
As a food forest grower myself of only one year, I really liked the video, keep up the good work 🐝🪱🌈😎
Thanks Brian, glad you enjoyed the video. We've got so much more to share, so stay tuned ✌️🌿
Thanks for this detailed video. Living in the UK, Cambridge and interested in food forest, the 1st question I have is "how does it look like?". It's really nice to see people trying things, sharing the results and speaking about what you learnt along the way. One thing about the birds eating your fruits. I didn't read all the comments below so sorry if it's a duplicate. The birds eat the fruits to get the water from them so you need to add few water points. This water needs to be changed if it doesn't rain enough. In permaculture, water is a key part of the design, as you probably know. I would dig a small pond at the highest spot of the forest (even if it looks like pretty flat). Or maybe in the middle? I am not sure to be honest. The pond could capture rain water and soak it into your forest plus that could bring few frogs, newts that'll eat slugs and water for birds. It could be a nice feature for the forest once it's surrounded by aquatic vegetation. I have a public allotment and one of the neighbour dug a pound, I think it's a really good idea. What about nut trees? Hazelnuts, walnuts are doing well in the UK. Walnut trees can get big though... Good stuff!
Hi Matthieu, thats really interesting what you say about the birds/water, we do have 2 pond on the land, but none actually in the food forest ... Dan does love a water feature though, so perhaps you've sown a seed for the future! We do have a young hazel nut copse in another area (check it out here if you like... ruclips.net/video/PAWtkW-hI7w/видео.html&ab_channel=FreedomForestLife-OffGrid ) .. but no walnuts .... yet!! 😃😉
Thanks so much for your ideas and comments - we love hearing from other permies 💚 Thanks for watching and hope to catch you here again soon ✌️🌿
Loved the video & your attitude. Keep up the great work guys. Greetings from Oz. 😊🇦🇺
Super stoked you enjoyed and thanks for commenting, always nice to hear from friendly folk around the globe✌️🌿
Just a quick one to say I got a Nikita's gift persimmon in 2014 and finally got my first fruits in autumn last year so could take a little while. Good luck
Hey Joshua, thanks, i think its given up now! The guy selling the ones i got sent them bare root and had cuts nearly all the roots off, im not so sure bare root is the way to go with persimmons, are you in the UK?
Beautiful guys, I love it! It looks like you created your own paradise on earth. Imagine a world filled with gardens like these how beautiful it would be. Keep up the good work!
Hi! thank you its pretty cool, and that would be epic wouldnt it! Thanks for your comment, much appreciated!
im not sure if its been answered already but you should prune a plum in spring or summer. pruned in winter will allow disease to get in. they are different to other fruit trees in this way. hope that helps if you get another.
Epic thanks for your comment, learnt the hard way, as long as we learn from our mistakes i guess!!! Nice to hear from you..
I believe it can cause silver leaf . Which is a fungus. This can be quite devastating if it spreads to other trees.
I think the bore holes are probably a bug 🐛
There are also blue cherry plums.
Wow, I’ve not seen or heard of blue cherry plums 🙌 what country are you in/do you find them? Thanks for watching 💚✌️🌿
Beautiful 👍👍
See you in our Food Forest later 👍✌️🌿
Great Vid 😀 Here in Australia where I am in Southern Victoria we also get a green wild cherry plum. They are rare i've only seen two and I know one has been removed. The fruit on the green ones is the best of the three imho.
Hi Neville, Great to know you are watching from over in Australia 💚 We have a few more young Cherry plums around the land - I will have to keep an eye if we get a green one when they start fruiting 👍
This is an older video, I can't remember if we know what the 2 were in our food forest then - we have a Red and a Yellow one atm. Just put out a new summer update tour video today that you might like to see how its changed in 3 years 😊 Appreciate you watcing and messaging 🙏✌️🌿
ruclips.net/video/CQckIDwkqNY/видео.html
I hope you can find one I can’t atm as I can’t remember where the other one was.😒
What an epic tour 😁 can’t wait to see how things progress. You could rival ribena with the amount of berries you’ve got 😅
Glad you enjoyed it 💚🙏 If I could make harvesting and preserving my full time job, I think I could out do them for sure !!! 🤣 Hope you're enjoying your binge watch 😉✌️ 🌿
@@freedomforestlife I certainly am 😁👌🏿
Hello guys. Great food forest you have going there. I regards to your trees, I would check out a guy called Michael Phillips. He was an amazing orchardist, probably the best in the world! Worth checking out for tips on pruning and tree care. Thank you for the inspiring video
Thanks - will check out Michael Phillips for sure - Thanks for watching 💚✌️🌿
Wow, your food forest looks fantastic. A not regarding the white currants. Try to let them ripen waaaaaaaaaaaaay longer (until the first of a cluster goes a bit wrinkly or even start to fall of). In my experience they will become much sweeter, the longer they can ripen on the bush
Hi Martina, Thank you, I will try this, there may still be some on there if the birds haven't eaten them all, so will check this out as its been a long time since they first formed. Glad you enjoyed having a look around too 🙏✌️🌿
Great to see what you're doing and your project coming together. I look forward to following your journey :) I hope one day I can do something like this too so it's great to see you trying things out and before everything is fully formed, there's things we'd all run into like it would be me buying 20 varieties of something and realising I like 1 of them, someone else actually told me about that red gooseberry earlier today and now you've gone and recommended it too, I never liked gooseberries but now I'm willing to give them a try ☺️
Oliver, thanks for your nice comment! A pleasure to have you following the journey too, we hope you can also! Ha yes its so easy to get so excited but also sometimes the only way to learn, the reds are lovley, so sweet compared to what i used to remember of the sour'ish green ones when younger...
Throw that Goji away and get gomui instead. That Goji will look like you guys raspberrys in no time. Very cool video. I love seeing similar climate stuff to me. My urban ediable landscaping on its 3rd years.
HI Justin, Glad you enjoyed seeing the vid, we filmed this one 2.5 hrs ago, One of the Goji berries has spread out a bit since and looks a messy shape, but the other 2 havent spread much... they haven;t fruited yet either though! So I have been debating taking one or more out for this reason.
Here's the most resent tour we made in the summer and also a vid we made just few weeks back with a glimpse at Food Forest in mid winter, you might like to see 💚 Thanks for watching ✌️🌿
ruclips.net/video/HW5zMtcKMM8/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/Rx77iItXCis/видео.html
I grow goji berries for their leaves. I make green drinks and I add it to salads.
Awesome info - thank you - will have to try that ✌️🌿
You prune stone fruit after fruit harvest to avoid infection with something we (dutch) call loodglans. Didn't see that infection on your tree but it might be somewhere else which weakened the tree....
Thanks Eric, good advice 🙏 Hope you enjoyed the video, great to hear we have people watching from different parts of the world 💚✌️🌿
Slowly working my way through your back-catalogue of vids and absolutely love this one! Please may I ask how you went about planning the space out. When we move we will have a similarly open area which I’m hoping to cultivate into something similar but with no background in landscape design or permaculture am a bit lost in how to start! Did you have a layout plan in mind or did it evolve slowly over time?
Hi, Glad your enjoying some of the oldies 😃 Our Food Forest has been and still is an ever evolving space. The only real plan we had to start with was the spacing for trees to work out roughly how many main fruit trees we could fit into the space, we spaced at 4m appart from the centres of each tree, allowing for fairly big trees (so this spacing could be much less with drawf trees for example) then, taking into account the sun positioning, land gradient and planning biggest trees to go down the bottom. This spacing has also allowed us to plant the fruit bushes in between or have guild type plantings around the trees. Ever year we make changes, some from our own inspiration/discovery, some forced by a loss or under proforming plant or just finding we don't like something. Just let it unfold with a little loose planning I feel. If you work you way through our Food Forest Tour Vids playlist, in order, starting from this one, you should be able to see some of the transformations 🙌 ... I do plan to make a timelapse montage soon (ish) 😃✌️🌿
What about herbs and spices like long pepper, lovage, lemon sorel?
We do have herbs dotted about, although I so intend to spread more around this year .. both annuals that will hopefully self seed and more perennials. We do have red vain sorel somewhere and one of the things we are plagued/blessed with is Sheep Sorrel! Which we do add to salads etc. There's several varieties of mint, rosemary, chives etc, but defo room for many more herbs for sure. Thanks for watching and for your ideas 💚✌️🌿
Only just discovered you, enquiring about sweet potatoes! Great video! The tour through your garden looks sooooo good! I've paused @the currants...In our garden the white currants are the favourite and the black ones the least! I'm also in the south east, very chalcky and clayish. Is it variety or soil or both?
Glad you found us .. we've got quite a few vids on sweet potatoes that might be useful and when we've bought slips in the past we've used Highland Horticulture. Yeah, its interesting re the current.. I'll have to check the varieties we have, if the lables are still attached 🤔 we are on clay with a woodchip mulch, not so chalky where we are ✌️🌿
Hi Annette here from Appletree Urban Homestead on RUclips from Perth Australia. We are a family of three and in the process of turning our Aussie backyard into our dream urban homestead and I am documenting our journey to self sufficiency on my RUclips channel
where is your forest in uk
it's beautiful
Thank you, we are in the South East of England ✌️🌿
Inspiring video 🙌🙌 How do you control mint when it starts to spread without digging?
Hi James, thanks for comment 👍 The mint we are actually letting spread a seed in other areas a bit as the mo as everything finds its place, if it gets too dense in places i'll strim paths through it, like I am going to with the raspberries this year and where mint is quite shallow rooted it can be pulled out of the wood chip layer with just a little persuasion quite easily. Thanks for Watching, we're gonna be doing some more tour vids soon ✌️🌿
My first time on your channel. Love what you're doing there. I'm a bit further north, so I'm growing some of the trees you have there. (Hope you have better luck with the Goji berries than I did. I just found them to be a scruffy, unproductive mess which eventually died, but by then I wasn't sorry to see them go).
If you are both fans of mint, especially as a tea alternative - may I recommend Korean Liquorice Mint?
I bought some seed from RealSeeds UK earlier this year and plants grew just large enough to make a few cups of tea.
It's a lovely tea, has a good full flavour, and I look forward to spreading this plant about the garden more in future years.
Hi Debbie, thanks heaps for the mint recommendations, we'll look into that one, sounds yum 👍 I feel our Goji berries may well be switched out for something more productive before next season for sure ... all part of the learning though hey - Thanks for joining us here and for your lovely comment/ideas - thanks for sharing ✌️🌿
Whereabouts in Cornwall are you and what legumes do you use for nitrogen fixing?
Hi, we are central south coast, not Cornwall. 😊 We've more recently been trialing edible lupins as a nitrogen fixer, hoping for better results though this year, as they didn't much like the droughts of last summer ✌️🌿
Beautiful food forest. Iam inspired to have place and grow trees. Thanks for the content. I have couple of questions to get clarified.
Is the place near your home? What is the distance.?
Is it fenced?
Thank you.
Our food forest is Rabbit fenced where it is young and still establishing, although Deer did damage the fence a while back and we ended up with a few Rabbits inside who ate all the Chives and Strawberries, we think they've gone now and the fence has been fixed! ✌️🌿
Goji berry - I found to be a waste of time. It’s a thug of a plant, waited 5 years to get flowers but sadly no fruit also not good for small gardens so had to go. Whitecurrants are best as white jelly as an alternative to redcurrant jelly. Very nice with cold meats (sorry if you’re vegan). Quince brilliant natural source of pectin, I stick 2 fruits in with the fruit I making jam with. 😂 however careful when making a quince jelly (once mine set so hard I couldn’t get it out of jar).
Agree about the Goji's, we have since taken all but one out and that one will probably go soon too. I used to make Quince cheese (its not really cheese - think just called that as a block) loved it, but havent done it for years .. maybe i'll get to it this year if the tree does ok, it didn;t look too happy this summer 🤞
@@freedomforestlife I got nowt of my quince this year, I think the cold weather & late frosts killed off pollination. The Mrs made the cheese a few years ago, it was certainly different, taste ok but texture I wasn’t too keen on.
I am surprised you feel that way about white currants.
I find them to be the sweetest currant.
Hi Mikkel, Yeah, I'm not sure what the problem is with the White Currants, as I think we had a couple of different varieties too. The Red Currants haven't be great yet either, but we're sticking with those for now and our Black Currant are AMAZING!! The whites are in pots now and will be re-home somewhere else when we decided where, so all is not yet lost ✌️🌿
Cherry plums become a weed, good for grafting big plums onto though.
It's my understanding that the canopy layer is the trees that are much taller than fruit trees.
They are still young.
@@ia8018
I believe my comment was based on the video saying fruit trees were the canopy layer. Because it wouldn't matter how tall trees are currently.
Where do you buy your plants from?
Hi Sara, all over really, trees we mostly get bare root from Orange Pippin and a lot of the current bushes came from Morrisons Supermarket. The more unusual plants/herbs are often from seeds or slightly more specialist providers, like Pennard Plants, incredible vegetables etc and then we use our local garden centre on Ebay/other online sellers. Hope that helps - Thanks for watching ✌️🌿
It's important to do your pruning in the winter or summer during a dry spell that will go on for a few to several days after pruning. This will allow the trees or shrubs to seal the wound more quickly against insect or disease. Thanks for the video!
High high high...
Excellent video guys.. I have similar climate I found I like many of your types of plants that I don't have at the moment . Will add these to my garden. Thank you. SUBSCRIBED. 😁🪴🌼
Hi Janet, thanks for your message, really glad the video was useful for you, We have filmed a few in our food forest now at various times of the year, which you might enjoy seeing too - here’s the link to our food forest playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLOidPRQofoMO0DE7TSR7WXi14EsPi8Fd_
We’ve got trees coming for our next area in January too, which is exciting, but maybe a while until we getting the other layers in.
Thanks for subscribing - nice to have you with us. 🙏
Seasons greetings ✌️🌿
If you had a hoop house you could grow tender trees in that for a couple of years before planting out. There is a man in New York who does that and has succeeded in keeping many fruit trees that are supposed to be tender in his area,
Good idea - thank you - We do actually have 3 hoop houses and one we have dug out deeper to give more roof space and we do plan to grow marginal trees in there eventually, thats a great point though that we could bring some on and harden them off for planting out later 👍 Thanks for watching and commenting, we have a few more recent Food Forest videos on our channel that you might enjoy too 💚✌️🌿
Do you lose much in the way of soft fruit ti birds?
So fruits, some years, it seems to chance every year. Mostly blackcurrants are left alone and there is always enough raspberries for everyone ... the strawberries are great for the start of the harvest and then slowely everything starts noticing them and moves in... Blueberries are tough, we have HEAPS this year, our biggest year yep bu a long way, so will be interesting to see if we can beat the birds to at least some of the harvest this year. 🤞 Thanks for watching, you can find more recent vids from our food forest on our channel too ✌️🌿
Cleared it you say? Not from forest I'm assuming?
Hi Owen, no it was bramble and gorse, If you check out our buying a woodland in the uk video, there are before pictures of this area on there...thanks
What is the “Octave” plant? Not sure if that’s how you spell it? I feel like I have these and the name I found for them is Oxalis. Is this the same plant? The leaves sure look the same.
Hi Samantha, i think the plant you mean is called OCA, its a tuber from the andes, its in that family, its simular to grow like potatoes here, we can leave them in through winter, they taste like potatoe with a lemon citrus hint!
All those edibles must attract lots of animals such as rabbits. Which can be harvested too and added to the biomass for consumption. Bird traps too.