A Tale of Two Food Forest Design Approaches | The Survival Gardener

Many times you’ll see elaborate food forest designs that require lots of sketching and measuring and planning and then more planning, and then…

…well, you know, I ain’t got time for all that.

I saw this video last week and it reminded me how much I hate doing a bunch of intricate planning.

I did think it would be amusing to parody the style, though. Can you imagine shots of me wandering around, looking thoughtful, drinking tea, etc., as I dream of food forests? Maybe with mellow music, and a soft voiceover?

ULTRA Millenial style.

No, I won’t do it. And this isn’t my food forest creation method, either. We don’t do a lot of heavy planning.

My approach is to plant a ton of stuff all over, let it fight, feed the losers to the winners, and let it all grow together. Yeah, we pay some attention to spacing, and shade needs, etc., but it’s mostly just on-the-ground walking around and dropping pots and saying, “HOW ABOUT HERE?” and then planting things.

Otherwise, we’d get stuck in analysis paralysis. I just about got hives watching Goldifarms plan her system out. Actually, I only watched a little of the video before having to go out and eat a bucket of velvet beans to recover the testosterone it drained from my system.

It’s beautiful in the end, though – and so are our food forest systems. So long as we get food growing, we’re way ahead of the pack.

However you like to grow, grow.

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