Reddit reviews Forest Gardening: Cultivating an Edible Landscape, 2nd Edition

1. Water is life. You want to keep as much water on your property as long as you can. Have you put in swales on contour or keylines to stop, spread, sink the water into the soil so the trees can benefit?
   
   
2. What is your soil like? Is it acidic or alkaline? Is it compacted? Eroded? Deficient in minerals? Is it more clay or loam or sandy? Have it tested. There are ways to improve the soil. If it's compacted, you can deep rip. If it's acidic, you can add lime and dolomite. If it's clay, adding gypsum will break up the clay. Pioneer trees can also help break up soil with their deep tap roots. Forests are usually alkaline while pastures are more acidic. Forests have more fungi where pastures have more bacteria. You can get a jump start on changing over the soil if you take some starch like rice to a forest, leave it on the ground for several days, collect it, and scatter it where you want the fungi to take over. There are things you can add to increase the soil microbes that are so beneficial: compost, compost tea, bio-fertilizers, and inoculates on seeds.
   
   
3. What do you want to accomplish with a forest? Are you wanting to use some of the trees as a wind block? Are you wanting to stop some of the soil erosion along the stream? Are you wanting food (fruit, nuts) or fodder for animals or fiber or timber for building or trees that bloom to feed bees or trees for coppice or trees for firewood or a mixture? If you know what you want, then you can consult some books and local permaculture groups for trees that will live in your site-specific conditions that provide the function you want.
   
   
4. For each tree, you'll want to plant multiple nitrogen-fixing support plants that you will sacrifice so that the desired tree has nutrients. Legume trees, shrubs, and ground covers add nitrogen to the soil that will feed the main trees. Over the course of several years, you'll chop and drop the nitrogen fixers several times. Besides adding nitrogen to the soil, they will also shade out grasses and other non-desirable plants until your trees are established. You can also mulch with straw to shade out pioneer plants you don't want. Timing is important. You want to plant at times that give the plants the best time to get established. You'll want to chop and drop the nitrogen-fixing support species when the rains come. You'll want to use the mulch and cover crops at the same time as you plant your trees to prevent weeds from taking over. You'll want to time when the trees produce food. You can plan some early crop, mid-season crop, and late crop varieties. Thinking about your timing carefully.
   
   Resources:
   
   
   Creating a Forest Garden by Mark Crawford.
   
   Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier
   
   Forest Gardening by Robert Hart
   
   
   

/r/permaculture and /r/forestgardening are ones I've looked at, How to Make a Forest Garden and Forest Gardening are the two books most people seem to talk about, I haven't gotten around to reading them yet :(

Funny you ask this. Just today I got out my copies of Forest Gardening: Cultivating an Edible Landscape and How to Make a Forest Garden.

I bought these a few years ago, read through them and kept the thought in the back of my head. Just today I began a much needed book organization and these came out on top of the 'read again' pile.

The concept is solid and if you will be on land long term this is a great way to go. I would keep a traditional vegetable garden in tandem though.

Sorry to not have any real experience.