There's an old saying that a society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they know they'll never sit in. Agroforestry is that idea put to work: weaving fruit and nut trees, shrubs and other perennial plants into a homestead so the land feeds a family for generations.
It asks for a different kind of thinking. A vegetable garden runs on a calendar of weeks. A food forest runs on a calendar of decades. Plant well this year, and your family can be eating from those trees for most of a lifetime, and passing them on.
- 1Explain what agroforestry and food forests are.
- 2Know roughly how long common fruit and nut trees take to bear.
- 3Plan quick harvests and slow ones together.
- 4Space trees for their full grown size.
- 5Start a family orchard record that lasts for decades.
Trees that work
Agroforestry simply means growing trees together with crops, animals or both, on purpose, so each helps the other. The USDA's National Agroforestry Center describes five main practices. Most homesteads use a few of them at small scale.
Windbreaks
Rows of trees and shrubs that shelter homes, gardens and animals (Permaculture Lesson 1).
Alley cropping
Rows of trees with crops growing in the wide alleys between them.
Silvopasture
Trees, pasture and grazing animals together: shade for the animals, fertilizer for the trees.
Riparian buffers
Trees and shrubs along creeks that hold the banks, filter water and shelter wildlife.
Forest farming
Growing crops like mushrooms, herbs and berries under an existing forest canopy.
The food forest
A food forest (or forest garden) is the home-scale version: a planting designed like a young woodland, with tall nut and fruit trees, smaller trees beneath, berry bushes, herbs, groundcovers, roots and vines, all chosen to feed people. Once established, it needs far less work than a vegetable garden. Lesson 2 explores its layers.
How long trees take
This is the heart of thinking in decades. Some plants reward you next summer. Others take ten years or more to come into their own, and then bear for generations.
When will your trees feed you?
| Plant | First harvest | Full crops | Kids' ages |
|---|
Uses the middle of each range above. Many fruit and nut trees keep producing for 30 to 100 years or more.
Plant the slow trees first and the fast ones alongside them. Berries and figs give your family a harvest while the walnuts and chestnuts quietly grow. By the time the children are grown, the land is shaded, productive and full of fruit, and they helped plant it.
Space for the future
The most common orchard mistake is planting little trees too close together. They look sparse for a few years, and then crowd and shade each other for the rest of their lives.
Fill the gaps while you wait
Wide spacing doesn't have to look empty. Between young trees, plant berries, perennial herbs, flowers for pollinators, or short-lived nitrogen-fixing shrubs you'll remove as the trees fill in. Lesson 4 builds these into guilds.
Starting now, starting small
- Buy bare-root in winter. Dormant, bare-root trees from a nursery are cheaper than potted ones and often establish better. They're sold from late winter into early spring.
- Plant a few, well. Three healthy, protected, watered trees beat twenty that struggle. Add more each year.
- Protect them. Fence or cage against deer, wrap trunks against rabbits and sunscald, and use wire baskets where gophers live.
- Water the first years. Deep, regular water for the first two or three summers, with a mulch basin (Permaculture Lesson 4).
- Ask the neighbors. The best guide to what thrives where you live is the old orchard down the road.
- Soak the roots in a bucket of water for a few hours
- Dig a hole wider than the roots, but no deeper
- Spread the roots over a small mound of soil
- Keep the graft bump a few inches above the soil
- Fill with the native soil, water deeply, then mulch (not touching the trunk)
For every tree: the date planted, the variety and rootstock, where it came from, who planted it, and its spot on your map. Add a photo each year from the same place. In twenty years, this record will be a treasure.
Plant a tree and start the orchard record
Go on a tree walk to learn what grows well near you, choose and plant one tree together, and begin the family orchard record you'll keep for decades.
You'll need
- One bare-root or potted fruit or nut tree (or berry bush)
- A shovel, a bucket, mulch and a hose
- A tree guard or wire cage
- A notebook or binder for the orchard record
- A tape measure and a camera
- Your permaculture base map, if you have it
Do it together
- Take a tree walk. Visit an old orchard, a park or a neighbor's yard. Note which fruit and nut trees look healthy and ask what they grow.
- Run the calculator and talk about which trees the family will plant now and later.
- Choose the spot on your map: full sun, room for its full size, out of frost pockets.
- Plant it following the checklist, then water it in and mulch it.
- Protect it with a guard or cage.
- Start the record: date, variety, rootstock, source, who planted it, and the first photo with a child standing beside it.
Little planters
- Help dig and spread the roots
- Water the tree in
- Draw the tree and stand beside it for the first photo
Older planters
- Measure the trunk and height and record them
- Work out how old they'll be at full harvest
- Add the tree to the base map to scale with its future spread
Take the photo from the same spot every year on the same day. It's one of the simplest and best family traditions there is.
A gift that keeps growing
A vegetable garden feeds you this year. A tree feeds your family for a generation, and sometimes for several. When you plant one with your children, you're giving them more than fruit. You're teaching them patience, faithfulness and care for people they'll never meet.
Next, we look up and down through a food forest, from the tallest trees to the roots, and see how every layer adds to the harvest.
Your Lesson 1 worksheet
Work through these together. Your answers save on this device as you type, and print cleanly for your records.
Progress record
What this lesson practices:
- SciencePlant life cycles and growth over time; how plants and animals depend on each other (NGSS 3-LS1-1, 5-LS2-1).
- MathElapsed time, ranges and scale drawings (Common Core 3.MD.A.1, 7.G.A.1).
- HistoryPlanting for future generations; orchards and farming traditions.
- Life skillsLong-term planning, record keeping and caring for living things.
Standards mapping is a draft. If you use charter or ESA funds, confirm it with your education specialist.
Sources for this lesson
- USDA National Agroforestry Center — agroforestry practices
- NC State Extension Gardener Handbook — tree fruit and nuts
- Iowa State University Extension — how soon a new fruit tree bears
- University of Maine Extension — rootstocks and dwarf fruit trees
- Stark Bro's — fruit trees: years to fruit
- Cummins Nursery — time to productivity and maturity