What We Grow
Our food forest garden is far from fully meeting our needs. Nor is that a goal in itself, although we wouldn't object if we could....
But since we have only just started in this place, it will be a few years before we can be self-sufficient in food.
Our first goal is to be self-sufficient again in terms of fruit. We already were in the previous house, but partly because of an old neighbor's apple tree.
Our permanent plantings now look as follows (summarized, I will describe this in more detail in the near future):
3 walnut trees
2 chestnut trees
Approximately 6 hazels
Dozens of berry bushes, including blackcurrant, gooseberry, currant, blackberry, strawberry, aronia berry, blueberry, Saskatoon berry, honeyberry, buckthorn berry, red bilberry (or foxberry)
4 apple trees
3 plum trees
5 wrinkle roses
1 huge, old pear tree, which was already there
Possibly a cherry tree, a young shoot on the stump of one cut down by the previous owner
Wild asparagus
Sorrel
Perennial kale
Cardoon
New Zealand spinach
Jerusalem artichokes
Many different herbs
And our annual vegetable plantings include at least:
Peas and beans
Zucchini
Pumpkins
Carrots, beets and tubers
Potatoes
Garlic
What we harvest from "wild" plants and trees:
Leaf of the summer lime and of the Chinese mahogany tree, dandelion, plantain, nettle, deadnettle....
A wide variety of leaves for tea: birch, rhododendron, ginkgo, hawthorn (leaf, flower and berry), walnut leaf, hazel leaf, lemon balm, lady's mantle, flowers of the red clover, leaf of the black currant, leaf of the willow rose, mint, leaf of fiber hemp, nettle, ....
Furthermore, we still have to discover what is in the garden and in the immediate surroundings in roadsides etc., and we are still going to study the edibility of all kinds of plants and trees already on the property.
As you can see, fruit is very important to us. We sometimes say to each other that, if we had to and could in terms of quantity, we could live on only fruits and nuts....
Photo: Hazel (Corylus avellana 'Rød Zellernød')
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