A food forests, or forest garden, is an ecosystem of edible, perennial plants.  It is complimented by insect attracting, nutrient accumulating, and weed suppressing plants.

How to get free plants and spread them throughout your community

1. File papers to start a 501c3 (nonprofit organization).

-Nurseries can’t afford to plant out all of the hundreds or thousands of bare root trees and bushes that they don’t sell by late spring. They can, however, write off taxes for donating these trees.

2. Grants

-If you write a grant you get to write your own salary into it.

-Neighborhood Associations often have some kind of matching grant that they can help you apply for as well. In Olympia, the matching grant has an annual budget, and they consider volunteer hours to be 29 dollars/hour, so it is easy to get all the money you need for projects.

3.Reach out to local nurseries to see if they are interested in donating any trees

-The organization with whom I am interning receives hundreds of trees every year. In this case it is necessary to put together nursery beds. The most simple way to do this is to fill a raised bed with alder sawdust and plant the trees into that. They won’t grow too fast and they will stay alive through the seasons until you figure out where you can put them. It is easier to pull roots out of sawdust than soil. A cheap way to make big raised beds is to use many layers of cardboard for the walls, with stakes (sticks work) to hold them in. You can also put bare root trees and bushes into pots with alder saw dust. it has enough nutrients to sustain them for a couple of years.

4. Reach out to Schools, Parks, Neighborhood associations, community gardens, and anybody with land and plant as many fruit and nut trees and berry bushes as they will let you.

-The neighborhood associations have connected EFG with hundreds of public places to put food forests that will outlive all of us.

Planting

-interplanting: fruit and nut trees are the main part, surrounded by berry bushes and perennial vegetables

-If you are in the PNW give the plants a shrub and tree mineral mix. The constant rain washes out all of the minerals. The native plants of the PNW thrive in a low-nutrient, high-fungi environment, but none of our commercial food is native plants.  Apply the minerals on top of the soil all around the root zone of the tree, not in the hole that the tree is planted in. This should be topped with mulch (cardboard and woodchips) which will slowly fertilize the roots, retain moisture, keep grass from competing with the roots,  and act as substrate for fungi.

-Fencing is important around young trees in places with a lot of deer (unless you have dogs, which scare them away)

-For the first couple of years, new trees will probably need to be watered during the summers. Budget in the matching grant for drip irrigation or a soaker hose to install on a timer, or get someone who lives or works at the site to water every week.

-Workshops are a good way to get help with projects while sharing knowledge and inspiration.  Also, local organizations and schools are always looking for projects to be involved with

-Planning: Having the right trees to plant together is crucial. Some trees need pollinizers to produce fruit.