How to Create Edible Ecosystems for Easy Food Production

In this episode of The Evergreen Thumb, host Erin Hoover dives into the world of edible ecosystems, exploring how plant guilds, food forests, and fedges can transform gardens into sustainable, self-sufficient food systems. She discusses the basic concepts of these systems and their ecological benefits, and provides practical tips for designing and implementing them in your own space. Whether you’re looking to enhance biodiversity, improve soil health, or grow your own food year-round, this episode offers valuable insights to help you start cultivating an edible ecosystem today.

Erin has been a devoted WSU Extension Master Gardener since 2015. She initially trained in Skagit County and later relocated to Grays Harbor County in 2016. Growing up amidst the lush landscapes of Washington State, Erin developed a deep connection to nature from an early age. Her love for plants and the environment led her to pursue certifications as a WSU Extension Master Gardener and a Permaculture Designer and to share her knowledge with others.

Beyond her role as a Master Gardener, Erin is also an avid homesteader. She has transformed her own property into a thriving mini farm, where she embraces the principles of permaculture and self-sufficiency. From cultivating vibrant vegetable gardens and perennial fruit to raising livestock, Erin embodies the ideals of a modern homesteader, harmoniously blending traditional wisdom with innovative techniques.

Currently, Erin’s gardening interests focus on uses for native plants, feeding livestock from the land, and the pleasure and security of growing her own food. When not producing The Evergreen Thumb or working her homestead, Erin is out exploring Washington’s mountains, forests, and beaches. 

[00:00:00] Erin Hoover: Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb, your go-to podcast for up-to-date research-based horticulture and environmental stewardship knowledge to help you grow and manage your garden, produced by Washington State University Extension Master Gardener volunteers and brought to you by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.

[00:00:16] I’m your host, Erin Hoover, a WSU Extension Master Gardener since 2015 and a certified permaculture designer and modern homesteader. WSU Master Gardener volunteers are university-trained community educators who have been cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973. Are you ready to grow? Let’s dig into today’s episode.

[00:00:35] Welcome to Episode 29 of The Evergreen Thumb. Today I thought I would talk about what I’m going to call edible ecosystems. These are food-growing systems that mimic the relationships found in nature while also providing resources. Before we jump into today’s episode, it’s time for the September Gardening Calendar.

September Gardening Calendar

[00:01:07] There isn’t a whole lot of planning going on right now, though you could be planting your fall cover crops, uh, if you haven’t done that already.

In garden maintenance, it’s time to harvest winter squash when the ground spot, that’s the area that contacts the ground, changes from white to a cream or gold color.

[00:01:28] You can pick and store winter squash, mulch, carrots, parsnips, and beets for winter harvesting. Episode 3 covers in-depth how to harvest, cure, and store your crops for winter storage. I will link to that in the show notes. It’s also time to protect your tomatoes from early frost. Pick everything that has just a little bit of color on it, uh, and they will ripen.

[00:01:57] It’s time to reduce water on trees, shrubs, and vines east of the Cascades, to start hardening them for winter. You’ll want to stake tall flowers to keep them from blowing over in fall winds.

Dig, clean, and store tuberous begonias if there’s a threat of frost. Harvest potatoes when the tops die down and then store them in a dark location.

[00:02:19] The optimal time for establishing a new lawn is from August through mid-September if you plan to start a new lawn. It’s also time to aerate your lawns. Also, for lawn maintenance, it’s time to stop irrigating your lawn to suppress European crane flight populations.

Another note when it comes to composting, if you’re composting vegetable scraps or plant material that you’re clearing out of your garden, make sure you don’t compost diseased plants unless you’re using a hot compost method that reaches over 120 degrees.

[00:02:57] For planting and propagation, it’s time to divide peonies and irises. Plant or transplant woody ornamentals and mature herbaceous perennials.

Fall planting of tree shrubs and perennials can encourage healthy root growth over the winter. Plant daffodils, tulips, and crocus for spring bloom. You can also work calcium and phosphorus into the soil below the bulbs at planting time.

[00:03:22] Remember that when purchasing bulbs, the size of the bulb is directly correlated to the size of the flower that will come in spring.

In Western Washington and Oregon, plant seeds of overwintering crops by September or early October so they get established before the weather turns cold and wet.

For pest monitoring and management, you can apply parasitic nematodes to moist soil beneath rhododendrons and azaleas that show root weevil damage, such as notched leaves.

[00:03:51] Control slugs, if necessary, using the least toxic management options, including barriers and traps.

Monitor trailing berries for leaf and cane spot and treat if necessary. Also, apply copper sprays to peach and cherry trees as needed for fungal diseases. Continue to monitor late-season soft fruits and berries for Spotted Wing Drosophila.

[00:04:15] If they are present, use an integrated and least toxic approach to manage these insects.

It’s also time to clean your house plants, check for insects, repot if necessary, and fertilize, and then bring them indoors for the winter. This is assuming you put them outdoors for the summer. So that pretty much covers the gardening calendar for September.

[00:04:39] I want to acknowledge that the information month-by-month for the gardening calendar comes primarily from Oregon State University Extension.

So we appreciate their resources for the gardening calendar.

Edible Ecosystems

All right, let’s get into our episode on edible ecosystems. Some examples would include food forests, plant guilds, and fedges or food hedges.

[00:05:04] The right combination of plants can improve biodiversity, provide natural pest control and pollinator habitat, improve soil quality, conserve water, be more adaptable to climate change, and provide delicious and nutritious food.

To start off, I’m going to go over kind of the simplest form, which is a plant guild.

Plant Guilds in Edible Ecosystems

[00:05:26] Plant guilds are a combination of form and function, and the goal is to mimic the stacking relationships found in nature while also providing useful resources. So think of it like companion planting in your vegetable garden. This is kind of taking this to the next level. Plants in a guild provide one or more basic functions.

[00:05:49] They can be edible, they can be animal fodder, medicinal plants, nitrogen fixtures, forage for pollinators, insectaries, biomass for soil building, fuel sources, raw materials for lumber, crafts, and that’s just some examples. Not all guilds will contain every function.

Midwest Permaculture puts out a great free eBook with a whole bunch of examples of plant guilds and how to assemble and manage them.

[00:06:22] So I thought I would kind of go over some examples of plant guilds and how you can use them in your garden. So, guilds can vary in size, but they usually center around a tree and that’s the size of the final guild, it is dependent on individual plants. Some guilds can be built around an existing tree.

[00:06:52] Other guilds can address a specific growing situation. Like if you have a wet ground or if you want to turn it into a small orchard, you know, there are a lot of options and uses for plant guilds. Also, when illustrated, guilds are typically drawn in a circle or a circular pattern, but that isn’t a hard and fast rule.

[00:07:14] You can adjust it based on where you need to place it or where the existing tree is if you’re building it around a tree where that is, you know, there’s a lot of flexibility. There’s not really a right or wrong way to build a plant guild. You just want to keep in mind the different functions and stacking of resources that you want to include in that guild.

[00:07:36] So one example that I like is built around a fruit tree. So the center is a, say, an apple tree. You could use it, you know, say you have an existing walnut tree, um, any sort of large tree that can be the center of your, your plant guild or your tree guild.

[00:08:12] In this particular example that I’m taking from the eBook, which I’ll include a link to in the show notes, um, the walnut is the center. You can use this for any kind of walnut and then plant in a perimeter around the walnut.

The overstory of the walnut is going to be much taller, but the drip line of these smaller trees around the walnut kind of meets the overstory or the drip line of the walnut tree. So the walnut is not shading out these other trees.

[00:08:39] So then around the perimeter of this is alternating. You can alternate trees like, uh, cherry, uh, mulberry. Um, you could even use apples, you know, a semi-dwarf rootstock is probably ideal.

Then in between each of those fruit trees would be a smaller fruit-bearing shrub-like, uh, currant, or, you know, you could use blueberries, or other, uh, small fruit shrubs, gooseberries, goji berries. Then all around in these trees, you’re planting spring bulbs, comfrey, mints, uh, strawberries, so that you’ve got other food sources.

Using Comfrey in Edible Ecosystems

[00:09:38] You’ve got comfrey. If you plant comfrey, you want to make sure that you use a sterile variety so that it doesn’t self-sow. Sometimes it’s called Russian Comfrey or Bocking 14. I have Bocking 14 and it’s, I mean, if you have it in a pot and the root goes through the pot, you’re going to have a new comfrey plant. It divides very easily by roots, but it does not reproduce by seed because it’s a sterile plant.

[00:09:58] So that is considered a nutrient accumulator. Plants with deep tap roots like dandelion and comfrey, they, because they have such a strong deep tap root, they’re able to take up minerals deeper in the soil than say your herbaceous plants like, uh, mints or, you know, say wildflowers or things like that.

[00:10:31] One of the common practices, especially with things like comfrey, is to chop and drop. So, and what that is, I mean, you can do this up to five or more times a year, depending on your climate, but when the comfrey is in full leaf and even in bloom, you chop it off at the ground and you either drop it where it lies and it acts as a mulch or you can use it to mulch other plants.

[00:10:59] You can use it to, uh, feed livestock. You can use it to make comfrey tea as a foliar fertilizer.

So it’s a plant with a wide variety of uses. So, like I said, mints and surprisingly I have mint in my food forest and I have spearmint, I have lemon balm and I have peppermint and they actually stay in relatively good control.

[00:11:24] They grew to a patch that’s probably 10 square feet each, and they just stopped. They come back every year and they keep coming up, but they don’t get any bigger. I do harvest them. I don’t really harvest the Spearmint, but I do harvest the Peppermint and the Lemon Balm, uh, every year. So I don’t see the mint as being as prolific or aggressive as I see a lot of people concerned about. That’s my personal experience.

[00:11:47] But back to this walnut guild, so there are, so like I said, you have a walnut in the center and then you have a row, a circle of fruit trees around it. In this particular scenario, because a walnut tree can get so big, there are four to eight trees around this.

[00:12:14] So this is a pretty good size guild. Um, like I said, you’ve got fruiting shrubs, and in between that; comfrey, spring bulbs, and mint.

You can do Lupine. Lupine is a great wildflower that is a nitrogen fixer, uh, which helps like clover. You could do, uh, plant annual clovers, uh, to fix nitrogen, which adds nutrients to the soil.

Insectary Plants in Edible Ecosystems

[00:12:39] You can do, uh, insectary plants. So pollinator forage, whatever kind of flowers you want to include that help draw in those beneficial insects. They, like the comfrey I talked about, are a form of biomass for soil building.

So that gives you an idea that every plant in this guild serves a purpose.

[00:13:02] And, you know, you get the benefit of, if you put in some Sweet Alyssum or some marigolds, not only do you have nice pretty flowers, but you also have great pollinator forage and pest control. So there’s a lot of options and possibilities there.

So next I wanted to talk about the basic concepts of a food forest.

Food Forests in Edible Ecosystems

[00:13:29] I’ve mentioned my food forest. I have a food forest on my five-acre property. A food forest imitates the natural processes of ecological succession. Food forests are also sometimes called edible forest gardens.

There’s a great book actually called Edible Forest Gardens by David Jacke, and he says, “Edible forest gardening is the art and science of putting plants together in woodland-like patterns that forge mutually beneficial relationships, creating a garden ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts”.

[00:14:04] So typically a food forest has, depending on the source you’re looking at, between seven and nine layers. The first layer or the top layer is going to be your canopy. Your tallest trees in a natural forest are going to be your maples, your oaks, and your conifers. Then the second layer is going to be your sub canopy or your large shrub layers.

[00:14:31] These are going to be smaller trees or large shrubs. So, you know, in a food forest, these would probably be your fruit trees, some of your nitrogen-fixing trees, or large shrubs.

In a natural forest, it could be, um, things like a Serviceberry or an Osoberry, uh, Vine Maples would be an example in a native forest, um, of that sub-canopy layer.

[00:15:02] Then your third layer is your shrub layer, and these are for small to medium-sized shrubs. In a native forest, this could be a rhododendron, things like um, a tall Oregon Grape, Salal, um, those would all be shrubs, uh, Ocean Spray, or, uh, Elderberry. Elderberry is kind of the shrub layer to the large shrub layer, depending on, the species.

[00:15:32] So in a food forest, your shrub layer might be currants, blueberries, let’s see, what else do I have? I have, uh, sage and highbush cranberries.

So, I mean, the possibilities are limitless and based on what you want to put in here.

The fourth layer is an herbaceous layer. So, these are going to be in a food forest and would probably be actual herbs, your mints, and oregano. I have oregano in mine, I have two or three large oregano plants in my food forest.

[00:16:06] Oh, another shrub would be rosemary if it’s on an edge where it can get plenty of sun and cane berries. So raspberries, things like that, you know, anything herbaceous that can be in that layer.

The fifth layer is a ground cover layer or creeping layer.

[00:16:32] So this could be strawberries, which is one of my favorite ground covers. Things like oregano could also count as a ground cover or thyme, um, other herbs like that.

Kinnikkinnik is kind of a woodier ground cover. If it’s not in an area that you plan to walk in, that would make a good ground cover. Um, it gives birds, uh, berries for birds.

[00:16:59] Flowers. Flowers. Those you could use either in your herbaceous layer or your ground cover layer, depending on what they are. I mentioned the Lupine because it’s a nitrogen fixer and nitrogen fixers are a really important part of the food forest system.

Then number six is your underground layer. So these would be things like root crops.

[00:17:18] If you want to put, um, grow root crops, uh, in your food forest, That’s great. Onions. I have walking onions, in my food forest.

You could do onions, you could do carrots and, or even, um, you know, non-edible roots like dandelion. Actually, some people do eat dandelion, but that’s kind of considered the underground layer because that root is getting down there and breaking up soil and pulling up minerals, uh, from deeper in, in the soil layers.

[00:17:58] So number seven is a vertical layer or a climbing layer. So this could be well, anything that climbs, really. I mean, we had honeysuckle, we have thornless blackberries, you could do runner beans or, you know, some similar type of green bean. Do it on an edge as a border for your food forest, or do other vines that are edible or usable in other ways, like hops or passion fruit, uh, you know, there’s a lot of possibilities there with the climbing layers.

[00:18:38] Then the eighth layer that you don’t see so much, and it’s going to depend a lot on where your food forest is located, is an aquatic or a wetland area. Because you’ve got that edge. If you’re like next to a pond or if you have a, um, built pond as part of your garden, that is an edge that you can take advantage of.

[00:19:02] You can grow, you know, aquatic plants or plants that you know, like their feet a little wetter. There’s a whole edge ecosystem that, you know, you can grow things like wasabi or watercress and things like that. Or you can grow duckweed for your fowl and, uh, all kinds of things.

And then, the ninth layer is the mycelial or the fungal layer.

[00:19:31] This goes back to kind of what I was saying with the nitrogen-fixing and the mulching with the comfrey and things like that. Those practices all help build and sustain that mycelial layer. As I mentioned in my basics of soil biology episode, fungi are such an integral part of the health of the soil and the whole ecosystem that you’re trying to build.

[00:20:06] You can also plant edible mushrooms. If you can, you know, there are a lot of growers that actually sell spawn, I know of at least three in Washington, uh, in western Washington, that sell spawn. I just actually got some at the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival this year.

[00:20:32] I put it out in my raspberry beds because in the summer the raspberries provide enough shade that it doesn’t completely dry out and cook the spawn, but it also gives it enough sun that, hopefully, they’ll fruit. So, um, I just put ’em in on the ground this spring and covered them up with some straw.

[00:20:53] So I don’t know how they’re going to do yet. This is my first attempt at actually cultivating mushrooms. So I’m giving it a shot. So that is an option too.

[00:21:00] So just to kind of sum up the options of a food forest. In my food forest, I have four apple trees as my canopy layer. There were two existing trees and, um, two newer planted trees, and we’ll probably plant one more, uh, fruit tree on the other corner, but we use the two existing trees as the basis of the food, the edge of the one edge of the food forest, and I will post a video in the show notes of a walkthrough I did of my food forest a couple of years ago, but it’s always a work in progress.

[00:21:38] I should qualify this with, a food forest is not a neat and tidy garden system. It’s not something you build for aesthetics. It may make some people who prefer manicured yards and gardens uncomfortable because it is not a neat and tidy system. So, that was kind of a rough overview of a food forest.

So finally, um, the third one I want to talk about is a fedge or in some cases, it’d be considered it like an orchard row.

Fedges in Edible Ecosystems

[00:22:15] If you wanted to do, you know, a row, there is a guy up in Canada who has a permaculture orchard. It is a commercial fruit orchard, and he used the concepts of guilds to grow his commercial fruit, uh, with little to no inputs and it’s quite impressive.

So basically, you’re using plant guilds, like I said, to create either like a boundary on your property or an orchard succession.

[00:22:55] So if you’re doing an orchard succession, the recommendation is every third tree is a nitrogen fixer, and that would be something like a Honey Locust or a Red Alder, a Golden Chain, I have a golden chain is the center of my food forest because that’s a nitrogen-fixing tree. I had wanted one for a very long time.

[00:23:19] Stefan, I’m going to butcher his last name, Sobkowiak, I think, S O B K O W I A K. I will link to his website. Uh, he has the permaculture orchard. There was actually a whole documentary made about him.

His orchard is, like I said, every third tree is a nitrogen fixer. He uses primarily Honey Locust and then there’s the fruit tree of your choice. In between he uses semi-dwarf trees. So each tree is about eight to ten feet apart then each row is 12 feet apart. He uses apples, pears, and Asian pears. Then he uses primarily Honey Locusts for his, um, nitrogen fixers, as I said.

[00:24:04] But then in between each tree, he will put at least two shrub fruits. So he has raspberries, gooseberries currents, and yellow raspberries. Then to fill in the rest of this in and around the trees and the shrubs, he uses herbaceous plants, like thyme, Egyptian walking onions, that would be a root plant, not an herbaceous, but uh, garlic chives, what else, oregano, uh, Echinacea, which is a great flowering plant, but you could also put some comfrey in there.

[00:24:44] And for the shrubs, instead of fruit-bearing, you could do herbs like rosemary or sage. So there are tons of possibilities. And then you just do, like I said, you do each row 12 feet apart. And then he has some thyme.

[00:25:05] Each section has the fruit trees ripen at the same time so the whole row or two rows can be harvested altogether. So that’s kind of an idea of how to use guilds and to create orchard rows.

Now a fedge is very similar but it’s more based on kind of the old English hedge rows that acted as a property boundary, but they are primarily food-producing plants.

[00:25:37] So we’re actually in the process of building a fedge at the back of our property to kind of hide what’s behind us. So how we’re doing that is we are using our base tree as hazels or filberts. You can use native filberts, or you can use commercial cultivars of hazels. So then in between those we’ll plant them fairly dense and let them grow in their natural shrubby form instead of pruning them up to a tree like they do commercially.

[00:26:11] Then we will plant underneath them with a variety of plants. Now, in that book that, or in that eBook, I was telling you about with Midwest Permaculture, they actually have a tree hazel guild.

In this guild, it’s a lot of very shade-loving, damp-loving, uh, companion plants. So they have nettles, elderberries, which need shade, and mushroom logs underneath the elderberries. And then on the sunny edge, they have sunflowers to kind of act as a screen.

[00:26:40] So that’s one option. Where we’re doing it, it’s pretty much a wide-open sun. So we need things that are going to be very drought tolerant and easy to manage.  Our hazelnut fedge plan will be a canopy of hazelnuts/filberts, and then shrubs in between currants and blueberries.

[00:27:13] And then we will have a native strawberry that makes a great ground cover. It doesn’t really produce many berries, and the birds usually get them before we can ever get a chance at them, but they make a great ground cover. So that will encourage the strawberries there. We might plant some daffodils because they help protect the root growth from voles and other, um, critters under the soil.

[00:27:41] Snowdrops. That’s one I haven’t even mentioned before. Snowdrops are great. They spread and will fill in and they’ll look great in the spring. They’re a nice little bulb. Another one, there are a couple of wild plants that will probably be included for the herbaceous layer.

[00:27:59] Our property is prairie or was prairie. So we have a lot of camas, which will fill in around there as well. And I’m sure I’ll come up with other herbs and possibly some shrubs. Um, goumi or goumi and goji berries are great additions as well.

So as you can see all of these concepts of fedge, orchard rows, food, forest guilds, they’re all kind of based around the same concept of creating an ecosystem that replicates a natural forest succession but provides resources, primarily food, uh, resources for people.

[00:28:40] And the other key is to choose plants that support each other and complement each other. So, like I said, you’ve got all these different functions. You’ve got nitrogen fixers, you’ve got insectaries, plants, and, um, you know, deep tap-rooted plants and ground covers and, you know, make sure that you’re getting a broad selection and that are working together and complimenting each other. Start small, you know, putting together this system and it’s great to start with an example that’s already been, you know, built for you.

[00:29:12] So like the book that I mentioned Midwest Permaculture is a great place to start to get a jumping-off point and to get some ideas of what you want to, to design for a guild or an entire food forest.

So I would say, you know, if this is something you’re interested in, start small. As I said, when we started our food forest, we started with the two existing fruit trees and planted in and around them.

[00:29:34] We planted shrubs around them and herbs and then we planted additional fruit trees with you know, in the adjoining area, to gradually grow it out. So it took several years and it’s always, it’s still a work in progress. Like I said, we’ll probably add at least one more tree, maybe more.

And then the food forest is going to transition into an orchard row that runs along the fence line.

[00:29:53] I hope this was useful to you, you know, we talked about plant guilds. We talked about fedges or food hedges, orchard rows, food forests, and how to build these systems. They become more or less self-sufficient as they mature.

Closing Thoughts on Edible Ecosystems

[00:30:14] So I’m curious, have you heard of any of these ecosystems, edible ecosystems before? Do you use any of the concepts in your gardens?

Comment or send me an email to hello@theevergreenthumb.org. Ask me questions about food forests or edible ecosystems. Let me know your experiences. Have you had luck? Have you tried this?

[00:30:36] I encourage you to start exploring and, and experimenting and, and see how much you can grow. I hope this was useful to you. Thanks for listening.

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