Those pictures remind me of when I lived on my farm overseas, best times I had!
Nothing I do is novel, its all been done before, its only new to someone who's never seen it before. I have not introduced the concept yet, but even three pecan trees that normally grow to a height of 70 to 100 feet planted in the same hole in a small suburban back yard has already been done before.
I find people can accept Bonsai in their reality, even espalier forms of food trees in their reality but for some reason have a harder time with dwarfed trees not on dwarfing root-stocks that are still productive enough for a single household.
I have a lot of grafting work ahead of me. I use traditional nursery stock grafted fruit trees where necessary or where I need to save years of time and effort. For example I've already bought a seven year old tree for the front yard where its on public HOA display. But at the same time I can't help but push the HOA CCRs which only wrote no growing vegetables in your front yard unless behind an approved screen. Approved screen section of CCRs is a fence. I will have the first edible fruiting tree as the front yard tree in this estate. Because HOAs are usually just a bunch of grumpy old men who want to tell others what to do or other various arm-chair pontificates in a given community. I may plant some of the Cannas out front because to the HOA/old grumps, in their ignore-ance its some sort ornamental plant they themselves may have growing in their front yard, but it has been an edible starch vegetable staple of the Incas for thousands of years as well as those peoples in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Oceania, et al.
What is likely also not novel by a long shot is my plan for the backyard of assembling various ideas into a new-to-me-only assemblage in a new-to-me eco-tone. This area is marked USDA zone 8, one of the colder zones I have grown in, and to me USDA zones are woefully inadequate to describe a growing area as they only take into account the average minimum temperature a region receives and that is it. Aside from winter lows you can take cities within USDA zone 8 and they will have drastically different climates. What is marked USDA zone 8 as a plant may grow in my area but not thrive and may die off in winter while it doesn't in another USDA zone 8 area.
Some of the most productive areas on the planet are edge-systems, the coalescence of two growing systems. Bjorn Wistrom wrote a paper in Swedish Agricultural Science but its been written up in many places over many time periods and if you observe nature you can see it yourself.
On an ecological zone level the crossing of two ecological zones is also more productive than within either zone itself. What I have here to experiment and learn from is being placed right in the middle of two strong ecological zones. Here the growing season is mid-April through Oct/Nov. Warm Gulf Coast air and colder continental/arctic fronts both play a major role in this eco-tone; their unpredictable interplay results in a wide range in annual rainfall (22″ to 52″) and winter lows (20 degrees to 0 degrees F/-7 degrees to -18 degrees C). Summers are muggy and hot. This is a challenge as I have not grown in this before but I think it will keep me on my toes. Regardless of anyone's stance on climate change the trend over the past two decades is this area is having winters that are growing shorter in length but at the same time growing deeper in cold intensity.
What I am planning for assemblage is a Forest edge system that has been removed, miniaturized and inserted into a row cropping system. I will be removing the final over-story canopy layer from the design and have the low tree-layer as my canopy within a miniaturized suburban back yard design. Though with the 3 tree per hole technique I can now bring large fruit & nut producing trees down in scale and into a suburban back yard system, it is just I will be missing the large over-story canopy trees sizes, but not the productive contribution to the design.
The idea here is to give up maximum production on a per crop or plant basis but to exceed mono cropping by 200% or more in total weight and volume of food production for a given sized area that is produced.
I also have a strong preference for multi-role plants. Cannas being both an excellent biomass accumulator but also a food crop although slightly less tasty than a potato due to missing the bitter chemical compounds that give the potato a more complex taste. I have Chinese yam in the design, a traditional Chinese medicinal as well as a food crop and will thrive all the way down to zone 4.
Main mainframe design so far for the rows is the following blueprint:
Rows can be as long as you like, you just repeat the basic pattern within and between rows.
It is basically a forest edge assembly mirrored onto itself and then repeating with annuals food production inter-cropping. Trees are in the design in diagonally offset inter-planting and the beauty is if I don't continue with the design the trees if un-managed will grow out naturally into standard orchard spacing.
The rest of my life is too short to not think and design and try new things.
Keeps my mind engaged!
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