As I mentioned in our monthly newsletter, this month I am starting on doing a big reset in our food forest. This involves heavily pruning all our support species (tithonia, bana grass, queensland arrowroot etc), pruning our fruit trees and emergent as required, organizing and layering all the material that we chop off back onto the soil, and then filling any gaps with new plants, cover crops, and mulch.
As we heavily prune back the support species it encourages these plants to produce growth hormones which they then share with the whole (food forest) system. This is what is called ‘pulsing’ the system. The way that all these plants are interacting with each other is why it’s so important to treat the food forest as one living organism rather than just focusing on individual plants. This pulsing of the system is also why it’s a great time to be planting as well, all your new plants get the benefit of plenty of growth hormones and spring sunshine.
Our emergent trees like our eucalyptus nitens will just get a crown lift this year (pruning the lower branches) as they are only 1.8m – 2m tall.
When we add the pruned material back onto the soil (for building soil, fertility and to help keep in moisture), we will be putting the larger branches directly in contact with the ground, then layering up all the other materials in size order, finishing with the grasses and smaller material on the top.
This will be our first big reset so it’s a little nerve wracking chopping everything back so hard…especially after such a slow (18 months of rain) start. Will keep you updated on how it progresses over Spring and Summer.
