A Tour of Our Alabama Food Forest (Many Species! Lots of Life!)

追加: 2026-05-27

[00:00:02]This long shot of a geodic dome and a magnolia tree is either the beginning of a Tarovski film or the very edge of my food forest.

[00:00:16]Considering this video's title, the latter is much more likely.

[00:00:27]Most of my food forest was planted between three and four years ago with some stuff over the last two years as well. There's a lot of newer bits and pieces, but there's a few core plants that were put in in the fall of 22 and then more followed in the spring. And then like this right here at the leading edge, this pair is a spalding pair. This was only planted a year ago and it's precocious.

[00:00:55]Actually is making pears which is great.

[00:00:58]I've heard it's a very good variety for the south. But a few of these trees here, you know, we just kind of put in the the main part of it started back there and then up here was a little bit lighter.

[00:01:10]This one was one of the initial trees.

[00:01:12]This is an Arctic frost satsuma and it is putting on fruit for the first time this year. It's a significantly more cold hearty satsuma that came out of a Texas breeding program and it has survived 18° uncovered. But as you can see, I planted it underneath this cedar tree so that overhang would keep it from getting the worst of the freezes. I also always put a barrel next to the trunk right there full of water with the top screwed shut to act as a capacitor to hold the heat in on freezing nights. And when it was small, we covered it with sheets. But this last year, the sheets blew off and 18° hit it and it still did fine. So, it definitely seems to be more cold hearty.

[00:01:59]As you come back here in this little woodland garden, I have a chameleia sensus. That is true tea. For those of you that don't uh know the Latin name for tea, I won't be too condescending to you. That is true tea.

[00:02:16]And it is very cold hearty here. And then in the first year, I also planted a chia Mexican tree spinach.

[00:02:24]And it keeps freezing down and coming back. And it'll grow usually to about this tall and then freeze back again. It It really is too marginal here. But it has survived multiple years, which is surprising. I've got some butterfly ginger in here. or somebody came to the Pensacola market when I was down there at the Palif Fox market and they rode their bicycle with a gigantic ginger plant over their shoulder and and gave it to me. But it it was when I wasn't actually at my booth, they left it at my booth. So, whoever you are, thank you for that. I found out it was a great big butterfly ginger. This right here is a paw paw tree, Asamina Triloba, and it is probably a good 14 feet tall at this point. This is an improved variety that came from Randall White.

[00:03:16]Unfortunately, I didn't plant a pollinator right next to it, and it bloomed this spring. Had blooms all over it, but no fruit. If we were to go find the pollinator, you would have to look over there.

[00:03:36]Back there, there is a little paw paw next to that junk that the kids left around their tree fort project. So, there you go. I should have planted it right over here to begin with. So, if you're going to plant a pawpaw, just remember that they don't pollinate nearly as easily as some things do. So, make sure that you have a mate for it close by.

[00:03:59]This is Rosa Rugosa right here. the rose hip rose.

[00:04:04]There's a dascoria alada growing up through here.

[00:04:09]There is a native crab apple that always gets cedar rust. And of course, it's right next to the cedar tree. So, that makes sense. But, interestingly, the cedar rust doesn't seem to affect any of my other apples that I have in the yard, just the native crab apple, which I would have thought would have been stronger than that. So, who knows? This is chasteed tree, which is a really good pollinator plant.

[00:04:33]And then behind it there is a peach tree that is a seedling peach going way up there. Does not have any peaches on it.

[00:04:47]This is a cusa dogwood which is a fruing variety. I just got a few of these at my shop and I said I have to take one home and plant it. I've wanted one of these for a while. It is a white dogwood that makes edible fruit. Look it up. It's a pretty cool plant. That is napier grass right there. That is an autumn olive right there that I transplanted from my godparents place up in Michigan and it has just gone ahead and grown here just fine. Nitrogen fixing makes edible fruit. And then what I've done is I I dump plants that are not doing very well or don't sell in my nursery and I give them one last chance. I throw them in piles around the food forest to either rot down or to grow. That's your last chance. If you can make it, you know I didn't kill you. I gave you a chance.

[00:05:30]One last chance.

[00:05:34]Pineapple guava. This plant has gone through 10 or 11° and about 8 to 10 in of snow like its mate over there.

[00:05:49]This is some sort of a native plum. It's called a slow plum. I think that's supposed to be S LE.

[00:05:57]I got it from Blue Star Nursery near Gainesville. And I said, I don't know what it is, but I'm going to plant it. This is an improved variety of autumn olive next to this seedling lowquat, which I got from my friend Karen Hill. Came from an improved lowquat. It suffered a lot when it was younger. It had a problem where part of the bark died back on the bottom, but it is has outgrown it and it's really starting to look good. Finally, it's been there for a few years. Poor thing.

[00:06:32]I I don't know what what the deal is with it, but there's a few walnuts that started themselves that probably shouldn't be there. That right there is a witch hazel.

[00:06:44]And this is a true hazelnut. I don't know if they're ever going to fruit here, but it's a possibility.

[00:06:53]They seem to grow fine. There's a cana and a seedling peach which is being bent down on purpose to grow sideways and to hopefully bear a little more by going out. That's that's a trick. That's a real thing.

[00:07:11]Some uh Mexican sunflowers that came back from the freezes this year.

[00:07:16]This island right here looks mostly unimproved. Originally, I had it as a spot where I planted cassava. And you can see the cassava keeps coming back.

[00:07:24]It's been coming back for three or four years, even after the snow, but it doesn't really make very good roots here. I don't know what the deal is.

[00:07:29]It's not very good soil. I should probably just come through here and bush hog it and then replant it cuz I I don't have a lot actually going on in that area. This is a uh beautiful looking pomegranate right here.

[00:07:46]Look at that.

[00:07:50]Blooms are lovely on pomegranates. They should be planted everywhere.

[00:07:55]See, this one survived from the shop.

[00:07:57]That is a mum. The potted mums that looked horrible at the end of last year got thrown into the edges of the food forest to rot down or to live. And there you go. We got some crysanthemums that survived. So, pomegranate right there and a pear right there and a plum right back there. So, you can see what I did.

[00:08:19]I did my triangle thing. One, two, three. And then I planted the cassavas in between and I planted pumpkins in between and other things. But it's really just become a mess of weeds, which is fine because it still supports lizards and insects and soil life and there's a lot of chop and drop in there.

[00:08:39]This is not the happiest pair. It just does not want to do well. It's got all kinds of blight and dieback on it. So, the variety, whatever it is, is probably not well suited. So, probably bush hog that, too.

[00:08:53]This is a gold plum. The variety is just called gold. It makes a solid yellow plum. This year, very few fruits actually did particularly well. This is the mate to the plum right here, which I believe is a Bruce plum. But neither of the plums are really making anything this year. I saw one plum somewhere on that gold plum, but we had late frosts that were very damaging and everything was in bloom and growing out and just knocked them out.

[00:09:31]This is a crepe myrtle that was already here and we're using it for something useful as a yam trellis growing dascoria alada.

[00:09:44]You can see here how this mulberry is growing back from lower down and there's a lot of dead branches and sticks on it.

[00:09:51]That's because it completely leafed out and then everything froze off and then it tried to grow back and then everything froze off again. It was that kind of a year. This apple doesn't know whether it's going to wake up or not.

[00:10:03]That is a pink lady. Not recommended for this area. There's another uh improved autumn olive that I planted.

[00:10:12]They're not really an invasive here in case you were worried. More stuff I dumped from the shop along with pumpkins that were planted on top of it. Those are either the zombie pumpkins or the tropical pumpkins or one of them. That's a pretty good looking malberry right there. Still not bearing much anything. Another one that saw some damage. The worst one is this one.

[00:10:38]This is a Thai dwarf, which is a really good large fruited, just very productive malberry in general. But you can see how big it was.

[00:10:50]This thing was probably almost 20 foot tall at least. Been in the ground for 2 to 3 years. Really a nice goodlooking solid tree. Leafed out, froze almost all the way to the ground. So all of this regrowth right here, which is about 8t of regrowth, is just from this spring.

[00:11:11]This grew back from the base. I didn't even saw down to where it's bad cuz it's pretty much bad almost all the way to the bottom there. You can see all that rot and everything. That's that's the late freezes and that's the abusive climate that we have here.

[00:11:28]This area I did some clearing out.

[00:11:31]There's not much going on here except when you get an opening, you stick some pumpkins in.

[00:11:38]And that's that Bruce plum and a black locust next to it for nitrogen fixation.

[00:11:43]I was doing some chop and drop because we've had a lot of rain over the last day and just felt like a good thing to do.

[00:11:52]Got a saw palmetto I planted there. That is a a grape that is climbing on the remains of a Mexican sunflower from last year. The Mexican sunflowers are all over. They've actually been doing really well. They fight nematodes. Sam Singleton told me about that. More ginger pomegranate.

[00:12:11]Look at this weedy mess.

[00:12:14]There's some useful species in there.

[00:12:18]There's another hazelnut.

[00:12:22]And there's another hazelnut.

[00:12:25]This is a Nepali hog plum I just put in.

[00:12:28]This is a Kentucky coffee tree, which is not really supposed to grow here, but we'll see.

[00:12:35]Velvet bean. I stick those all over the place, too. This is a pretty good looking chestnut right here, but it's not the best looking one I have. I like it when they go shrubby like that.

[00:12:46]I have some that are much taller.

[00:12:50]You come through here. So this is where I put in the chinkapin.

[00:12:57]It's a chinkapin native chestnut.

[00:13:01]And then here there is a honeyloust.

[00:13:09]That big one in the middle is a native crab apple.

[00:13:13]There's another honeyloust back there.

[00:13:15]There's a few plums. There's some sugar cane.

[00:13:18]Some blueberries.

[00:13:21]That one's about ready.

[00:13:25]And this is a peach that we planted in.

[00:13:30]It's got some peaches on it. Not a good year for fruit this year. Pretty unimpressive.

[00:13:38]There's some plums.

[00:13:40]Those are just some natives.

[00:13:44]This is a chestnut that I put in last season. So, this has not been in here very long. We have to keep cutting back the wisteria. I did that video and getting rid of wisteria.

[00:13:54]Why it's such a pain in the neck.

[00:13:57]That's the spot.

[00:13:59]It's another pomegranate. Looks pretty good. And this area is the area I was just clearing out with the mower. I'm letting some of the sugarcane grow back, but I I just chopped it all down.

[00:14:10]Beef and onion tree, tuna sensus.

[00:14:16]You can see it's a a wild mess back here.

[00:14:23]Another chinkapin. That's the mate to the other one. More plants that I just dumped.

[00:14:32]This is uh sapinda sapanaria soapnut.

[00:14:39]And there's three of them planted to here because they come in male, female, and hermaphrodite. and you don't know what you're going to get. So, I wanted to make sure we had pollination. So, I planted three thanks to uh Sam Singleton who saved some for me from the original trees I gave him some long time ago. He planted out seedlings and gave me some of the seedlings.

[00:15:00]This is another tuna sensus right here.

[00:15:06]This is a very recently planted as of uh last spring.

[00:15:12]Japanese pimmen. I've got about five or six varieties.

[00:15:18]This is some sort of an ornamental tree that I found in a lot that was being cleared. I don't know what it is. It's probably something horrible I shouldn't have planted, but it really looks cool, so I I just planted it. And speaking of horrible things that you shouldn't plant, this is the Empress tree, the world's fastest growing hardwood. I started this one from a seed I think 3 years ago, maybe four.

[00:15:44]That's pretty epic. I want to harvest it when it gets bigger, like at, you know, 8 years of age or something, and then make a guitar or a bass or something out of it. Maybe both. Heck, I there's enough there I could probably make a piano. That's uh that's a big tree.

[00:16:00]Let's see. It's about five David's tall at this point.

[00:16:05]Maybe six. So 30 to 36 ft.

[00:16:10]There's a fig.

[00:16:13]And then all this mess here is just assorted weeds of whatever has come up.

[00:16:19]I don't have to actively manage cuz I don't have the time. So I'm just going to say I don't have to.

[00:16:29]Got blackberries all over the place.

[00:16:31]These are thornless varieties I planted here on purpose.

[00:16:36]gummy berries. The gi is a nitrogen fixing shrub. I tried using some of these little ball things. They don't work very well. Trying to air layer it.

[00:16:47]You can see my velvet beans hanging up in the tree here.

[00:16:52]I found that you can start these from cutings, but they are very, very slow to take. At least for me, took about 6 months, and I did not have a good strike rate. It's pretty good fruit.

[00:17:04]like a little cherry, slightly astringent. My kids really like them.

[00:17:08]You taste it at first and you're like, it's a little astringent. Kind of like black tea. And then the sweetness and everything just kind of fits in and fills in and it's nice.

[00:17:18]You know, we're doing all right on blackberries this year, but not awesome because we had the freezes followed by a drought.

[00:17:30]That's popcorn tree that needs to get taken out. is because there's a popcorn tree right here that needs to get taken out. This is a very invasive species and it keeps dropping seeds all over the place. So, they show up all over. And I've tried knocking them down, but they don't like if you knock it down, it just starts a whole bunch more. Every piece of root comes up. It's pretty obnoxious.

[00:17:53]Starts new trees. I've heard that the forestry departments will will slash into the side of them and pour Roundup or something into it and then it goes through the vascular system and kills it.

[00:18:04]I would never recommend doing that, but I am getting pretty irritated at them.

[00:18:10]This is a fuyu pimmen. This has been a very good tree for us.

[00:18:15]Very productive. We did uh 15 pounds off it last year. It's only a few years old and it it it's been a consistent producer.

[00:18:26]And you can see, yeah, the beetles chew up the edges of things. I don't spray. I just let things happen and take what we take, get what we get.

[00:18:35]And the little bit of defoliation doesn't seem to be a problem. There's another fig. It's a more recent fig.

[00:18:42]Blueberry.

[00:18:44]This is cold hearty cassava.

[00:18:46]Unfortunately, not an edible cassava.

[00:18:48]Manahot graham.

[00:18:51]Not edible, but it looks cool. So, I got one from somewhere and stuck it in the ground.

[00:18:59]This is a plant I'm trying. It's called tree daisy. One of you guys gave it to me. It's a nice place to make out with your your best beetle mate. Um, supposed to be similar to the Mexican sunflower, but possibly much more invasive. So, it'll be fun to see what happens. This is another tuna sinencis.

[00:19:23]This is actually recently planted. I had this one here. The stuff around it was not here. I just chopped and dropped some mimosa tree albizia jula bristens.

[00:19:32]And I planted these this spring. This is coral bean. This is a native and it is making some beans. They are poisonous, but I am waiting for them to ripen because I want to start more. Very pretty plant. Nitrogen fixer. This is vivrass.

[00:19:49]doing pretty good after the freezes and everything.

[00:19:52]Napier grass on the other side. So there's my two chopping drops.

[00:19:57]The ubiquitous pumpkins coming up.

[00:20:02]Little bit of chonia.

[00:20:05]And this right here is not a mimosa tree. This is actually an entryobium.

[00:20:13]Entrolobium cyclarpum or cortistoquium.

[00:20:16]I'm not sure which one it is. I started some seeds. The earpod tree or guanacoste tree down in Costa Rica.

[00:20:24]It's a nitrogen fixture. I don't know if it's going to live here. It may copus us and die back. Uh Craig Hepworth had that happen in his food forest in Citra.

[00:20:32]We're a little colder than him, but his would freeze down to the ground and and come back, so I figured why not try it.

[00:20:37]Those are about two years old. I finally stuck them in the ground, took them out of the greenhouse. Napier grass, coral bean, pumpkins, and terillobium around a chewed up Japanese pimmen.

[00:20:55]This is an AU roadside plum from the Auburn series of plums. Napier grass right there. And then weeds. All weeds are chop and drop. All All weeds are fair game.

[00:21:09]Got some elderberry right there.

[00:21:13]Let's come through this way.

[00:21:16]You can see how I leave the pathways the width of a lawn mower.

[00:21:22]We've got decent amount of blackberries, but not awesome.

[00:21:27]This has really not been a a a great climate compared to growing in South Florida and compared to the success that we had down in the West Indies. Things are slower here. There's a lot more problem with frost and with heat and with drought. So, this food forest system is taking longer than I have expected. But, we are having success.

[00:21:52]The trees are getting bigger. It's going to work. I can feel it locking together.

[00:21:56]But I feel like it should have locked together more by now. It's at that bad haircut phase. This is a Dunston chestnut. It's also doing the multi- trunk thing, which I like. I like them to be smaller and spread out sideways.

[00:22:10]And it is in bloom. This is a good looking tree.

[00:22:15]Back here, I have a black cherry.

[00:22:18]There's more pumpkins.

[00:22:21]This is the native black cherry which my friend Peter and I tied down.

[00:22:28]See, we're trying to get it to grow like this so you can actually keep it harvested. So, those middle branches got to go. And then we tied these branches sideways, as you can see, down to there and down to there. So, we made a Y out of it. So you can actually harvest the fruit because these things tend to just go utterly completely straight up. Just backed up a little bit here. I wanted to show you this. This is an apricot and it's a solid 20 foot tall at this point. Apricots are not really supposed to grow well here. You may get the right chill hours, but they're not known to do well here. This is a more park apricot.

[00:23:15]I got it from Tractor Supply.

[00:23:19]Something's chewing on it a little bit.

[00:23:22]It's grown like crazy. It has never bloomed. I don't know that it will ever bloom, but it's it's big, so it's possible.

[00:23:33]And if something happens to that, well, I've still got an autumn olive right here that I can eat from because they always seem to fruit just fine. Okay, I'm under the big cedar tree that I have the tea and the arctic frost on the other side of. And this is a Rachel mulberry that we planted. It's not made a lot of fruit for us. Uh it has frozen down repeatedly, but it's it's growing.

[00:23:56]It's getting some strength to it and it's really pretty.

[00:24:00]Just a cool looking tree. And maybe as they get bigger, it'll get a little more cold hearty. I don't know. Uh the the up and down here is really the killer. It's not how cold it gets, it's that it gets very warm and then it gets cold. This is toothache tree. Zanthazylm clav hercuus.

[00:24:17]You can chew this and it'll make your mouth go numb. It's a natural anesthetic.

[00:24:22]I stuck some cutings of this the other day. Also, interestingly, you see this larvae right here? I know it looks like a bird dropping, but that is the giant black swallowtail caterpillar.

[00:24:37]And they feast on these guys. These are actually in the greater citrus family related to citrus and so these guys like to eat citrus too. Has a nice spicy aroma when you crush the leaves. I wish you could smell it through the camera.

[00:24:51]It has multiple uses but toothache tree is it is its most startling use. Now we'll travel in along the other edge past the magnolia. This citrus has been here for the same amount of time as that arctic frost. But I think that there is something alopathic about magnolia. I planted it here because the shade would give it a little bit of protection from freezing nights. But nothing underneath the magnolia tree seems to want to do very well. This citrus too, this is one quarter the size of the arctic frost. I have three of them that I planted under this tree and none of them are doing great.

[00:25:33]This is where I had sugar cane this last year. You can see some of it's coming back. This is a little green gauge plum.

[00:25:40]I don't know if it's going to live or not. It's not particularly happy.

[00:25:44]I stuck in a polyhog plum back here in the middle.

[00:25:50]I just took my mower through here. Oh, look. There's a pumpkin.

[00:25:54]I did a little chop and drop around it.

[00:25:56]Nepali hog plum.

[00:25:59]They're remarkably cold hearty. I just saw a skink run by. I wish I could have shown that to you guys.

[00:26:05]And this is a mulberry, a bear root I just stuck in here that I got from one green world. I don't remember which one it is.

[00:26:14]I probably have a record somewhere. Or maybe there's a tag on it, but I won't dig for it. But as you come around here, got another plum tree right here.

[00:26:25]A little golden rod growing up in between. I kind of like them because the pollinators like them. This is a burbank plum right here at this edge.

[00:26:35]This is a Vitex chased tree. Very pretty variety that I bought from Scrubland Farms Nursery. It's a new release.

[00:26:50]This is a another Japanese pimmen.

[00:26:58]This is a great big native crab apple. I saw it bloom a little bit this spring, but I haven't really seen any apples on it. And again, the cedar apple rust just chews these guys up. Don't know why. Must be something genetic about it. This is a hatia Japanese pimmen. Look at all those fruits.

[00:27:23]This one looks kind of funky because I was trying to take a popcorn tree out of here and I ran it over with the bobcat.

[00:27:30]So, this is the second bobcat related tree uh injury in in in two videos. Same thing, but pushed it over sideways. So, now it just looks like uh you know, like a Japanese ink painting or something.

[00:27:44]Just kind of going over sideways.

[00:27:46]There's probably some bonsai form for that. Here's my big old honeyloust. This is a thornless honeyloust.

[00:27:55]It's disputed as a nitrogen fixer, but man, it always acts like a nitrogen fixer. Look at how deep green the leaves are. Full of nitrogen. I think it I think it's doing something with nitrogen.

[00:28:07]More pumpkins.

[00:28:11]And then here is another tuna sinencis.

[00:28:14]And then we're back around again to our sependis sapeneria.

[00:28:24]And somewhere in there, there's a wisteria that won't die. Can you see it?

[00:28:28]UPN 33's late night movie is The Wisteria That Wouldn't Die, starring Peter Graves.

[00:28:34]>> So, just walking through here is enjoyable. I like walking around and seeing what's going on and macheteing things down.

[00:28:42]Even though we're not getting a lot of food yet, other than some yams and pumpkins and the occasional plums and blueberries and blackberries and gummy berries, we are really creating an ecosystem for a lot of insects. We see butterflies and lizards and a lot of life out here.

[00:29:05]Little beetles everywhere, jumping spiders everywhere, all kinds of cool stuff. And to increase the productivity, obviously we could come through and shred out those wisteria and some other things that are just popping up on their own and you know plant in some heavy annuals or put in a lot more little berries and things and mulch heavily. But right now I don't have the time to do that. So, what I'm doing is just letting it grow, keeping the pads cut down, chopping down the things that are too invasive, and I've got a nice place to walk, a contemplative garden. And meanwhile, the main trees and the berries are growing bigger and bigger and bearing more and more, and the soil is improving more and more, and the life is everywhere.

[00:29:59]There's just a lot going on in here, even if it's not directly food productive at the moment.

[00:30:08]And we get probably a couple hundred pounds of food out of here. So, if we had done an annual garden through here, we would have had a lot more. But, we're pretty hands off at this point. just come through and walk and pick and look at the bugs and just enjoy the fact that it's coming together as a forest over time. Now, these trees that are in here don't need to be watered. They don't really need to be cared for. They're growing together into a system. The guilds are starting to work. And if we keep the the weed trees down and stuff so they don't overwhelm it, it works out. And if we don't leave our plastic pots all over the place, it looks better.

[00:30:51]But we pulled out a lot of sugar cane from here too and pumpkins and other things. But that's what we've got so far. And I thought it's about time to do a walk through my anarchistic, barely tended food forest system.

[00:31:09]I'm pretty happy with it. What do you think? Leave me a comment.

[00:31:15]So, this is just the latest in a series of food forest systems that I've planted over the years. I have one that's still going down in South Florida in Fort Lauderdale. And then I had another one that I started in North Florida that somebody else owns now. And then I had another one that I started down in the West Indies that somebody else owns now.

[00:31:32]I got one that I started at a church.

[00:31:34]I've got some other ones that I've helped people start. But this is the one in my backyard that I just work on when I have the chance. And I like that I can put in more work and get more out of it or less work and it still lives. I've got a few dozen useful edible medicinal species in here and it's a nice place to walk and to see. And it's more of a natural ecosystem than a garden. So, if you're interested in putting together your own food forest and you happen to be in Florida or lower Alabama, check out my book, Create Your Own Florida Food Forest, and I will put a link below. It's been a long time coming for me to do this video, so I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, may your thumbs always be green.

[00:32:13]>> Sugar pie.

[00:32:20]Sugar pie.

[00:32:26]Sugar pie.

[00:32:33]Sugar pie.

[00:32:38]Men have always sought an end to toil and misery.

[00:32:42]And it can't be given. It has to be achieved.

[00:32:46]There is hope.

[00:32:48]But it has to come from inside from man himself.