Why Food Forests are imporant
Food Forests are important because of:
High Productivity
High Productivity
- High density planting ensures high yields.
- Biodiversity ensures continuous food supply throughout the year.
- Just like a forest, food forests are self-mulching and cover the soil on their own to retain moisture.
- With such a high plant density, a high volume of fallen leaves accumulates and rots down to add organic matter to the soil.
- Decomposers, the class of insects that break down organic matter, such as earthworms, wood lice (pill bugs, slaters), and millipedes, work to help the natural composting process.
- No chemicals required! Food forests use natural predators to get rid of pests – letting the experts do the work, naturally.
- Predatory insects have a permanent home (a natural ecosystem) and abundant food sources (nectar rich flowers) in a food forest. Provide these and they will come on their own! A regular veggie patch is a home only for pest insects, there’s nowhere for good bugs to live!
- An abundant, living ecosystem will attract birds and other larger predators, further contributing to natural pest control.
- Nature does not grow large areas of one plant species (or plants in neat rows either!), Nature prefers biodiversity, not monocultures! Mixing different types of plant together makes them grow better, period. It creates a natural synergy that benefits all the plants involved. The plants as a result are more resistant to pests and disease, and are more productive (and nicer to look at!).
- The use of Companion planting allow us to recreate nature’s biodiversity to gain these benefits
- In Nature, when plants die off, they stay in place. They’re not uprooted and binned! Don’t uproot annuals that have finished, cut the stem at soil level. The roots rot away to create thousands of intricate air and water channels in the soil. The tops of the chopped plants create a natural sheet compost system like the forest floor
- Preserve your soil, build paths. Don’t step in your garden beds, the soil is alive!!! (It’s actually a more complex ecosystem than anything that exists above ground). Stepping in your garden beds compacts the soil, closing all the air and water channels, making it harder for water and air to reach plant roots, which impairs the growth of plants.