(bright music) - [Announcer] "The Home-Scale Forest Garden" is brought to you by Brookfield Renewable, a provider of renewable power supports public television, reminding the public to make safety a priority.

Know the risks, use caution in and around water.

Information available at safewaters.com.

- [Narrator] Since 1979, Adirondack Fragrance has offered artisan-made place-based fragrance products made from our region's unique botanicals, providing aromas inspired by the mountains, forests, and fields.

Adirondackfragrance.com.

- [Announcer] And by Richard and Deborah Macsherry, the Northern New York Community Foundation.

And by these additional sponsors.

(cheerful music) Closed captioning sponsored by Reed's Incorporated.

- Welcome to "The Home-Scale Forest Garden."

I'm Loraine O'Donnell with Dani Baker, creator of the Enchanted Edible Forest Garden, and author of the book, "The Home-Scale Forest Garden," on which this series is based.

In these eight episodes, we are visiting Dani's garden in Northern New York at different times of the year.

We're also taking a peak in a subtropical garden in Florida.

Well, it's midsummer and the garden is full of life.

Everywhere you look, plants and insects are abundant.

Dani, with the proliferation of so many different plants this time of year, do you get rid of unwanted plants?

- Well, you know, Lorraine, when I started this garden, I used to weed out anything that I didn't plant myself.

But as time went on, I became more comfortable allowing nature to make some of those decisions.

As you'll see as we wander around the garden this summer, and some pests can be left, while others need to be managed.

(playful music) This is yarrow, the white flowers and bee balm.

I planted these.

They're both pretty drought-tolerant.

This is on a south-facing slope.

They're pretty happy here, and they're very attractive to pollinators and beneficial insects.

So there's a bee right now trying to land on one of the bee balm.

In a forest garden, we embrace nature.

So for example, this is Queen Ann's lace.

Rather than weed it out, which you would do probably in a more manicured garden, I let it grow.

It has many benefits.

It attracts beneficial insects, pollinators, and it brings a little beauty to the garden.

Another plant that nature decided to plant here is this one, milkweed.

When it's in flower, it attracts monarch butterflies.

Most people don't know that every part of the plant at various stages of its growth are edible for people.

These are black eyed Susans that moved in on their own.

And this is a beach plum loaded with fruit that's going to ripen in maybe three or four weeks.

This is another plant that just took up residence on its own.

It's a wild aster.

It's a beautiful flower.

When I was a child, these didn't flower until September, but the climate has been changing and it's just August 1, and here it is.

They are very attractive to pollinators and beneficial insects, and they're also beautiful.

We looked at this contraption right after we installed it.

This is a mason bee house and mason bees have come in and laid their eggs.

So if you can see where there's mud right out to the edge of these little cylinders, the mason bee comes in, lays their eggs and then packs it with mud to protect them until they hatch.

And when they hatch, they just fly out through the mud.

One of the principles of forest gardening as you wanna attract all the beneficial creatures of nature into your garden to do service for you.

So this was a caterpillar nest.

Most people would wanna destroy it as soon as they see it, but I left it so the birds have something to eat.

And sure enough, they found it.

And before it really did much damage to the bush, they ate all the caterpillars.

And the bush is already regrowing, so it didn't harm the bush and it fed the birds.

So this is the beginning of my second crop of prelude raspberries.

I had a huge crop in June, and now we're seeing the midsummer or late summer crops starting.

And I notice a bird already pecked at one of these ripe berries.

That's not really much of a problem because as soon as the crop really starts coming on, the birds hardly can touch it.

This is a pest of raspberries.

It's the Raspberry cane borer.

And what the mama borer does is she girdles the stem in two spots and then lays her egg in between.

And you can tell she's been there because the top wilts.

So the remedy is to cut the stem below where she's girdled it to get rid of the egg.

And that either burn that or throw it in the dumpster, don't compost it, 'cause then you're keeping that egg alive.

So I'm just gonna cut off the top of this raspberry.

Whoops.

And I'm gonna put this in the dumpster.

The lifecycle of this pest is the first year they just stay in between the girdles.

And the second year, they actually go down inside the entire stem and come out the bottom and go on to live their life.

So if you're not sure what stage it's at, it's best to take the whole stem out.

Over here we have some ripe elderberries and rose hips.

Both are edible for people.

The rose hips, you can eat fresh or you can make a nice jam or even dry them and put them in tea.

They're very high in vitamin C. They're also trap crops for pests.

So for example, birds will prefer to eat the elderberries over other things that might be ripe at the same time, like my plums that we just talked about.

And the rose hips are a great trap crop for chipmunks, which will also eat them in preference to other things, perhaps like my plums.

So let's go see a chipmunk table.

This is an old tree trunk that the chipmunks are using as a table.

And you can see the remnants of some of the rose hips that they left on it.

(playful music) - Chipmunks are so cute.

It's hard to believe that they can be destructive in a garden.

- I have a really cute picture of a chipmunk sitting on a tree branch.

And yes, they look so cute, but they'll steal fruit and nuts before they're even ripe.

- Oh, growing up chipmunks were my father's nemesis.

He had a vegetable garden and was constantly fighting with them over the plants.

Now of course, pests in the garden can be destructive, but what about natural challenges, such as a lack of water, as temperatures really start to rise in the middle of summer?

Does this affect your watering schedule at all?

- You know, Lorraine, watering is really dependent on the season.

In the spring, the soil is cool and moist, and when I plant seedlings then, a thorough watering at planting is usually sufficient.

But in the height of summer, the soil is quite warm and dry.

Then frequent watering is often necessary to keep a newly planted seedling alive.

(playful music) I'm gonna plant these chives that I started from seed probably in late winter, and I've been taking care of them all this time.

So now I'm looking forward to getting them in the ground so I don't have to keep them hydrated out of the ground.

First thing is to dip it in water, so that it gets really well hydrated.

A plant like this, sometimes the soil contracts and there's space between the soil and the cup.

And if you water it, the water just runs down around the soil and doesn't get in.

So submerging it in water is a guaranteed way to wet the entire root mass.

So once I'm sure it's nice and wet, I'm gonna take it out of the pot and take a look at the roots.

Aha!

So these roots, it's been in the pot so long, these roots have been growing round and round.

So a plant like this is very resilient.

All you have to do is just rip the roots so they're not circling anymore.

And now I'm ready to plant it.

So I'm going to move the chips away and dig a hole that's just about the size of the root mass.

So let me... Where's the pot?

Put this in here up.

I hit, it's a root of something.

That's all right.

Okay.

Let's put this in the hole.

There we go.

Very good.

Now I'm gonna put this dirt in.

I'm gonna push it down around the plant so there's no airspace between that plant and the rest of the soil.

There we go.

Then I'm gonna water it.

Perfect.

I'm gonna cover it up the soil again with the chips that I moved at first, and then I'm gonna come back in a couple of weeks and water it, so that it doesn't dehydrate during this hot summer.

One of the chores that has to be done in the high summer is watering any herbaceous plants that you've put in recently.

It's very hot and dry this time of year.

And if you just plant these leafy plants and ignore them, they'll probably die of thirst.

So I'm gonna water, I have some chamomile here that I planted maybe three or four weeks ago.

I'm gonna give them a little drink, and then I have some yarrow that I'm gonna give a little drink.

So there's one, and this is the yarrow that I planted.

So give them a drink.

(playful music) - A watered plant is a happy plant.

- Sure.

- But once it's established, does it need to be watered all the time?

- That's a great question, Lorraine.

Ideally, in a forest garden, you match your plants with their ideal habitat.

So if you put a plant in a habitat where the water is to its liking, once it's established, it doesn't require any further watering.

Some plants like to be immersed in water all the time, while others prefer a dryer habitat.

(playful music) This is marshmallow.

The roots traditionally were used to make marshmallows.

It loves the wet, and here it's next to what I call the swamp.

So it's the about the only thing I've been able to grow in this location.

It's a big plant, and the leaves and flowers are edible.

You can use them in salads.

These are highbush cranberry bushes.

They're native bushes.

They love the wet.

This ground is quite saturated.

They're very happy here.

They grow quite large, as you can see, would make a wonderful hedge to block a view if you have something you don't wanna see behind them.

And the berries are edible, but they're very tart.

Even after several frosts, you have to add a lot of sugar to make a sauce, kind of like a cranberry sauce.

But the cool thing about it is these bushes will hold their berries all winter long, and the returning songbirds will have something to eat.

(playful music) - Understanding a plant's needs is crucial to the health of the plant then.

- That's right.

- So we've seen how certain plants thrive in wet habitats in northern climates, but what about a tropical climate like Florida?

- That's a great question.

In Florida, gardeners have a wet summer, really wet summer, and really dry winter season.

We visited the pike food forest in Jupiter, Florida, where Amanda Pike explains how she matches plants to habitats there.

(playful music) We're here in Jupiter, Florida with Amanda Pike in her amazing forest garden.

And the climate here is so different from where I am in northern New York state.

I'm wondering what kind of habitats you have and what plants thrive in those habitats?

- Well, among the permaculturist here in South Florida, we like to joke that in summer we have more of like an Asian type climate.

And then in winter it's a little bit more of an African type of climate.

So this side of the yard, when we first moved in, it flooded up to our knees in the rainy peak season of September, October.

So we planted lots of thirsty plants here, treating it kind of like a wetland area.

Cyprus, we did the fakahatchee grass, we did bananas, malonga, sugar cane.

we've got privet senna, balancing the natives with the edibles because we want that ecosystem.

And we also wanna think in terms of restoration.

So the bananas are gonna last about 25 years.

So we're planting natives, including mulberry, that will outlive them to help regulate the water and provide the next lineage of food.

- What do you mean by restoration?

- So we're planting native edibles and native pollinator plants along with our edible crops.

- Okay, to restore the natural environment that was here before.

- And to create an ecosystem that is truly healty and biodiverse.

- I see.

- So a lot of the natives that we're planting create a habitat, are host plants or significant nectar sources.

And then in our dry regions we plant nitrogen fixers, like pigeon pea or crops that can handle drought conditions like cassava.

And we balance the two.

We just identify the drought-prone zones and the flood zones.

Even on one property, we have both.

- Interesting.

(playful music) Planting a variety of native species in northern gardens is excellent for supporting a healthy ecosystem there.

- Well, besides plants that offer nectar to insects and birds, are there any native northern plants that produce fruit?

- Absolutely!

This time of year we're harvesting native plums, currants, aronia berries, and much more.

There's so much food to pick in the garden in midsummer, sometimes it's hard to keep up.

But what we don't harvest ourselves, the wildlife will definitely enjoy.

(playful music) This is a borage plant.

It's a self-seeding annual.

The beautiful little lavender flowers are edible as are the leaves, and it tastes like cucumber.

I planted one of these in this area once, 12 years ago, and every year it comes up in unexpected places.

This is a plum tree, and as you can see, it's absolutely loaded with fruit this year.

And many of them are ready to pick.

So I'm just gonna pick a few.

When the outside is just a little soft to the touch, they're perfectly ripe.

But you can also ripen them by just leaving them on the counter for a day and they'll soften up.

This is a clove currant, it's a native currant bush that's pretty resilient.

And the black currants are ripe right now.

They're not as pungent as the European black currants.

They're pretty sweet and tasty right off the bush.

And I'm just gonna harvest a few using this picker, and I just slide it up and you can hear the berries falling in.

It's a pretty quick way to harvest a large quantity of berries if they hang the right way.

So there, there's one more.

Got it.

Okay.

(gentle music) These are red currants.

They've been producing pickable berries for about a month now.

They're definitely past prime, but I wanted to show them to you because they love the shade.

You can see they're in a shady area under this locust tree and shaded by this hedgerow.

And they're doing really great here.

Now these are very soft and they're easily bruised.

These are very juicy.

I don't use the berry picker that I use on the clove currants that have a much tougher skin.

So I'm just gonna slide them gently off of there.

And you can see they left some juice on my hand.

This is aronia, also known as chokeberry.

Because the berries are very tannic, they make your mouth pucker and feel very dry if you eat them fresh.

But if you cook them, that goes away.

You can tell how dark in color they are means that they have very high in antioxidants and nutritional value.

This is a native shrub and you can see how abundantly it's just draping with these berries.

They're so heavy, they're holding, they're bringing the the stems right down to the ground.

I'm gonna leave them on the bush for another couple, three weeks to let them sweeten up and soften up.

And then I'll pick them.

I like to mix them with a berry that has some pectin in it, like raspberries that we saw, they'll be ripe around the same time, or some red currants that I've frozen and make a really tasty jam.

These are daylilies.

There are thousands of varieties and they're edible.

You can tell a daylily, because it grows from these slender leaves that bunch out on all sides.

Asiatic lilies, star lilies, the ones that grow from a bulb straight up on a stalk with leaves on the stalk.

They're poisonous.

Do not eat them.

These are all edible.

They're beautiful, and they form a nice border.

So you can use them as a border and they might keep grass from intruding into your bed.

So I'm gonna just look at this.

Oh, beautiful.

They are gorgeous in salads.

They're crunchy, they have a very flowery flavor.

Sweet.

A great addition.

So this is a peach tree.

Earlier in the season, we thin the peaches so that the ones that remained would get bigger and better.

And I think they did.

So I'm going to pick one today.

First, I wanna just tell you, peaches are very difficult to grow in this northern climate.

I chose the best drained sunniest spot I had to put this peach in, and I waited six years for fruit.

But here it is.

So I'm gonna pick this one.

I know they're ripe, ready to pick when they give with some gentle pressure, which this one is.

So I'm gonna pick it just by twisting it.

Oh look, see, it's so ripe that I just rubbed off some of the skin and you can see how juicy it is.

And of course, now I have to eat it.

(chuckles) Mmm.

Delicious.

This is an Illinois everbearing mulberry tree.

And as you can see, there are several large, long, juicy ripe berries at the moment, but there's also a lot of immature berries.

So this plant will continue producing berries over about a six week period.

They're very juicy and sweet and it's extremely hearty.

This is a variety of thornless blackberry called Triple Crown.

And it's been producing for about two weeks now.

It ripens gradually.

The berries are big, fat, juicy, delicious berries.

And as you see, I've trellised it.

I've planted it right in front of this tree and I'm trellising it over the branches of the tree, so I didn't have to build a trellis.

This is a pear tree.

And look at the abundance of the fruit this year.

These are not quite ripe.

When pears are ripe, you lift them up and they come right off the tree.

And you wanna harvest them before they're really soft because they rot from the inside out.

So if you wait till they're soft, they're be rotten on the inside.

But I just wanna demonstrate this tool, how you can pick pears from pretty up high without using a ladder.

So you just get like that and you lift up.

This is not ripe, so it's not gonna come off.

But if it were ripe, it would come off when I lift it up and land in the basket, and then I can just lower it and take it out.

(playful music) - All that makes me hungry for a delicious fruit salad.

I'm looking forward to lunch just thinking about it.

- Me too.

There's nothing like a fresh summer salad, but I confess, often I can't even wait to make the salad.

I just eat the fruit fresh off the vine.

I also love to make jam with clove currants and red currants.

- Oh, I'm imagining red currant jam, on toast or on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

But even with all the summer harvesting, there's still opportunity to ready new ground for future crops.

- If you wanna prepare ground for planting, there are several ways you can do it.

You can till the soil, you can manually dig out the weeds or sod, you can use a herbicide or, my favorite, you can sheet mulch.

This technique doesn't disturb the soil and it doesn't add any chemicals.

And it provides organic matter for the soil life to decompose.

(playful music) Today we're going to do a little sheet mulching.

Now, sheet mulching is a great way to prepare ground for planting.

You take thick cardboard, appliance cardboard is my favorite 'cause it's really big.

You lay it on the ground.

I like to use two layers 'cause it's nice and thick then.

So if you have perennial weeds, they won't come through.

And it cuts the light so it kills eventually everything underneath.

And then on top you add organic matter, seedless organic matter.

All I have right now are wood chips.

If I have later in the season, I'll have leaves, I can use them too, but I just have wood chips.

So you put that on top and then you just leave it.

And let the fall rains and the winter snow melt, decay everything.

And then when you come in the spring, you're ready to plant.

So today I just wanna show you a little section.

So this is a nice big appliance cardboard, and I wanna show you a little trick.

There is a seam somewhere here.

(chuckles) Where is the seam?

I lost the seam.

Here it is.

There's a seam on one of the corners.

And it's much easier to rip down the seam like this than to try to cut the cardboard to open it up.

So there that was so easy.

So this right here, I only have one layer, and I ran outta cardboard when I did this the other day.

So today I'm going to put this second layer down and throw a few chips on top just to demonstrate.

And now I'm gonna take this nice new piece of cardboard.

So can get a double layer and lay it on top.

Whoops.

There we go.

Get it nicely positioned.

Okay.

Oh, I see.

I need to fold it back right there.

Okay.

And I need to fold it back so it makes room for the tree trunk.

Much better.

All right.

Fits really nicely.

Now, I wanna point out, you need to overlap by at least eight inches.

Otherwise sneaky weeds like quackgrass are gonna come up through.

So you notice the overlap there.

Okay, so now we're ready to pour some mulch on.

Now the best kind of wood chips are called ramial wood chips.

They're the chips that come from the little branches and the leaves because they decay the quickest.

And that's what these are.

So these are actually partially decomposed already.

So first thing you wanna make sure is that you get the seams covered well.

So I like to hold it down with my feet, so that I don't get any chips under.

So there's a good seal between the two pieces of cardboard.

So I got the seams, and then I'm leaving the edge because I'm gonna be adding cardboard on both sides.

So I don't wanna cover the edge.

I wanna leave it open so I can either tuck something under it or on top.

Now I'm just gonna spread a little bit here.

All right.

And so on.

And then I'll continue to spread the chips in the whole middle.

And then I'll add more cardboard.

(playful music) You know, Lorraine, instead of using cardboard for the base layer, you can use newspaper or even a rug that's made of natural fiber like wool.

These materials will also decay and do the job of cutting the light and killing the plants below.

- You know, I like the fact that you don't necessarily have to buy supplies.

You can actually recycle things from your house that you already have.

Well, next time we'll visit the garden in early fall and enjoy autumn's abundance.

I'm Loraine O'Donnell with Dani Baker.

Join us next time on "The Home-Scale Forest Garden."

Thanks for watching - [Announcer] "The Home-Scale Forest Garden" is brought to you by Brookfield Renewable, a provider of renewable power, supports public television reminding the public to make safety a priority.

Know the risks, use caution in and around water.

Information available at safewaters.com.

- [Narrator] Since 1979, Adirondack Fragrance has offered artisan-made place-based fragrance products made from our region's unique botanicals, providing aromas inspired by the mountains, forests, and fields.

Adirondackfragrance.com.

- [Announcer] And by Richard and Deborah Macsherry, the Northern New York Community Foundation.

And by these additional sponsors.

(cheerful music) Closed captioning sponsored by Reed's Incorporated.

- [Presenter] Dani Baker's award-winning book, "The Home-Scale Forest Garden: How to Plan, Plant and Tend a Resilient Edible Landscape" is available from Chelsea Green publishing at chelseagreen.com and wherever books are sold.

(gentle playful music) (gentle music)