The goal of this guide is to introduce the reader to the concepts of permaculture and food forest, and to introduce some of the basic ideas that make up these design methods. Tyler and I have learned so much from so many other knowledgeable people with websites, books, and blogs. So, I really just wanted to create an overview of the important topics we have learned about by applying to our own garden in Florida, and link readers to a lot of the information that is already out there. I am not sponsored by any of the people, blogs, or companies I link to here. Nor is this an official permaculture course. Rather, it is a reference document and a relaying of information and knowledge that has been of use to us. I just want to help others to get started as we have.

Permaculture & Food Forests

What is permaculture? Generally, it is a method of designing landscapes and settlements in a way that implements principles observed in natural ecosystems. Permaculture comes from the idea that growing food can be done in a sustainable and even regenerative manner by applying techniques found in nature, in a systems-based approach. Many of the principles can be applied to urban home settings such as ours, to parks and city spaces, and to existing farmland.

Many of the practices found in permaculture have been used by indigenous cultures long before industrial agriculture. Native Americans worked with nature to take advantage of practices that would yield bountiful harvests. For example, the “Three Sisters” planting practice involves planting corn, beans, and sweet potatoes. The corn acts as a trellis for the beans, the beans fix nitrogen and improve the soil, and sweet potatoes act as a ground cover, protecting the soil and helping to retain moisture. In Mexico, in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, chinampas were created by forming rectangles of rich organic matter on the shallow lake that existed long before Mexico City was built and the lake was mostly filled in.

Bill Mollison, an Australian biologist, and David Holmgren, an Australian environmental designer and educator, are credited with coining the term permaculture. They published a book in 1978 on the topic, and Mollison founded The Permaculture Institute in Tasmania to help teach the public about permaculture. Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual can be purchased directly from the publisher.

The amazing thing about permaculture is that it can be implemented on a small scale, even in the backyard of your average home, or on a community level for an apartment complex. It involves planting a variety of trees, perennials, and annuals to create a balanced and biodiverse ecosystem. Rather than relying upon a single crop, a permaculture design approach allows for many crops and animals to be grown together, and results in less soil disturbance. All of this adds stability to the system, as well as removes the need to rely on fertilizers and pesticides.

By including a variety of native perennial plants and trees, one can further increase the strength and resistance of the system. Native plants and trees are better adapted to the region they grow in than exotics, and are extremely important for local insects and wildlife. All of these factors are beneficial to a permaculture system.

Along with permaculture, the term food forest has gained popularity. It is pretty self-explanatory: an edible forest garden. Imagine a hundred different fruit trees, a hundred perennial shrubs, and a variety of annual crops all grown together. Instead of tilling hundreds of acres for a single crop and spraying all sorts of herbicides or fungicides with a plane or heavy machinery, all one has to do is let nature do all the work and pest control. Our job is to just expedite the natural processes by pruning and composting, and to shape it to our vision by planting specific species of fruit and vegetables we want to eat. The result is less time spent weeding, spraying, and doing pest/disease management, and more time spent harvesting. If one crop has a bad year, luckily there are a hundred more to choose from. Not a bad life for a gardener or farmer!

Reading Mollison’s text is a great place to start, and there are also Permaculture Design courses offered by various institutes and people. But one of the quickest and easiest tools at our disposal is YouTube. There are many qualified and experienced professionals who create and share content to teach the public. Andrew Millison is a permaculture and hydrology instructor at Oregon State University. I find his videos to be very informational and inspiring.

Everyone has to eat. Everyday. And everyone likes food that tastes delicious. I can’t begin to describe how juicy and sweet the heirloom black cherry tomatoes we grew tasted, or how fragrant and warm the turmeric powder smells, when I make it from our own plants grown at home. The only way to find out is to taste for yourselves. So start planting!

Soil

Soil is the starting point of any food-growing venture. Let me start by saying that the ground already contains the nutrients needed by your plants. The issue lies in the inability of plants to access those nutrients when the dirt is dead, compacted, and vacant of life. No matter where you are, all you need to grow food is soil. How do you build soil? With organic material rich in beneficial microbes, fungi, and many other organisms that are part of the soil food web. It’s these organisms that unlock the nutrients needed by plant and trees. Organic matter can be introduced in the form of compost made with local yard waste, food waste, manures, etc. Another key aspect to keeping soil alive is protecting it with mulch or cover crops and a living root system. Dr. Elaine Ingham has several excellent webinar series explaining the specifics of these topics. Understanding the complexity of soil and its role in the food web is the absolute most important thing you can start with.

Now, if you are a farm and have outputs, you’ll need some inputs of compost, manure, etc. If you use a water-toilet system, you also have an output of your humanure. These are things to consider when the basis of your success is enough organic matter to keep the cycle going. I believe it is possible to have a circular system (nature itself is circular), and this simply requires composting your humanure. I will confirm my beliefs once we implement a compost toilet ourselves, as well as figure out if we can grow enough food to support ourselves from our small piece of urban land.

So before you even buy a plant, start composting (you don’t have to start with your poop, start with kitchen scraps, leaves, grass-clippings, chicken manure, etc.). I recommend reading The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins (Joseph Jenkins, Inc., josephjenkins.com). I myself had many misconceptions and misinformation about the science of composting. Even if you don’t want to compost humanure (by the end of his book, I think you will), the information applies to composting any other organic material as well. The information is so well put together and thoroughly researched, that there’s no need for me to regurgitate it too much here.

Visit HumanureHandbook.com or buy it at Chelsea Green Publishing.

There are many designs for compost piles or bins to be found online. The main thing to remember is about a 50/50 mix of greens (nitrogen-rich) to browns (carbon-rich). Greens are fresh leaves, grass clippings, food scraps, coffee grounds, seafood, and yes, meat and dairy too (something I learned from The Humanure Handbook.) It can all go into the home compost. Browns are usually dried yard waste, but a little bit of cardboard works too. Even eggshells can go in the compost. Oh and get a thermometer for your compost.

So much food goes to the landfill, and so much yard waste gets thrown out. Then, people go and buy fertilizer and pesticides because their soil has no life except occasional outbursts of pests. All along they had the keys to a healthy garden, but they throw them out and waste money. Composting puts that “waste” to good use.

The second concept is how we think of plants growing in the soil. Industrial agriculture tills the soil for large single crop plantings, disturbing the ground, killing fungi and beneficial microbes, stirring up pathogens, and making the ground perfect for weeds. Instead, think of a forest. In a forest, leaves and fruit fall, animals live and die. For the most part, the soil is undisturbed. The forest recycles all its nutrients through the decomposition of plants and animals, layering on the greens and browns. Animals and insects break things down, and fungi helps break things down even further into its various compounds and elements. These various elements and compounds can then be taken up by the plants to work their way up the food chain once more, and the whole process happens over and over again.

Used in the garden, this method of growing is called no-dig gardening. The grower uses the compost to build up their soil every year or few months, feeding the insects, invertebrates, bacteria, other microorganisms, and fungi in the soil. Mycelium, the root-like structure of fungi, create a vast underground network, moving all the nutrients around as needed. Good soil provides support, nutrients, and water for plants. It’s a complex network of organic and inorganic substances, and life all functioning together.

The benefits of no-dig are almost immediately noticeable. No tilling means much less work in terms of renewing a garden bed or weeding. You can start with a layer of cardboard, and then layer on compost. The cardboard helps kill the weeds, especially if your layer of compost isn’t that thick, but it’s not necessary. It may take a couple years or a couple layers of cardboard/compost, but eventually the weeds lose strength with the lack of light. The only weeding you’ll have to do is the occasional pulling of weeds that started from a stray seed, and they don’t yet have strong root systems so they are very easy to pull out. If you’re planting in raised beds, I find cardboard at the bottom isn’t really needed, and save it for use elsewhere. The best benefit is that your plants will have long lasting nutrition thanks to the happily-fed soil life. You feed the soil with compost, and the soil feeds your plants.

Hügelkultur

One other technique I want to mention is Hügelkultur, because it’s one of my favorites. This method of German-origin involves layering on wood debris and other biomass. Larger logs or branches get placed at the bottom, and other sticks and leaves or compost get added on. The logs will decompose more slowly than the rest, so you’ll have a longer source of food for insects and fungi. I also like it because it doesn’t require processing of logs or wood debris: just throw it into your new empty garden bed and save space, time, compost, and soil.

No-Dig Resources

Charles Dowding is the go-to resource for all things no-dig. He has tons of videos on YouTube, as well as a website and several books. He is in England, so the climate and weather are quite different from Florida, but you can take many of the same concepts he teaches and apply them to your own garden.

https://charlesdowding.co.uk/

https://www.youtube.com/c/CharlesDowding1nodig/playlists

Holistic and Practical Systems Thinking

Richard Perkins also has many videos on no-dig gardening and regenerative agriculture techniques. But the greatest value he offers is teaching you how to approach and think about your own unique setting and circumstances. He has a book called Regenerative Agriculture for more in-depth information on optimizing small farm production while reducing costs and restoring soil health. The book sounds like a lot for a backyard gardener, but you never know what you can learn when you open your mind to more complex topics. Even if you don’t read the book, his videos offer ideas, knowledge, and inspiration that you can easily apply to a small backyard food production set-up. It all stems from regenerating the land; the rest will follow.

https://www.ridgedalepermaculture.com/about-us.html

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3111rvadtBPUY9JJBqdmzg

Additional Soil-Building Methods

Biochar

Biochar is formed by burning dried wood and organic biomass materials at high temperature to leave behind pure carbon with a porous structure, the perfect house for beneficial bacterial. Make sure you’re not burning treated or toxic woods. We bought a galvanized steel trash can from the store and used that to burn wood. We drilled a hole towards the bottom beforehand so that once everything had burned, we could quickly cool it with water and then let the water drain out. The carbon that remains should be black and crumbly, and leave no residue on your hands. Inoculate the carbon pieces by adding it to your compost. The bacteria and life already in your compost will happily make their homes in this substance with its high surface area.

The Weedy Garden YouTube channel was started by David Trood, an Australian photographer. He has a lot of artistic and informational videos about permaculture. With a climate similar to Florida, his videos are great inspiration for your own tropical food forest.

https://www.theweedygarden.com/

Watch his biochar video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAJt5tGwNVM

Worm Castings

Worm castings are rich in nutrients and a great way to improve soil structure and help water retention. Add it to your compost or garden beds. If you buy worm castings, I recommend buying organic, good quality brands. Or make your own! Vermiculture is the method of using worms to break down organic matter. We have been caring for worms in an old galvanized steel bin with a hole drilled in it for drainage and the lid left ajar for airflow for some time now. The population, which began from a handful of worms from a friend, has grown greatly and the worms are happy and thriving. We feed them a variety of food scraps, excluding onions and citrus (things worms don’t like). I’ll be adding a blog page with more details about our worm bin in the future, but in the meantime, browse the internet and you’ll find all sorts of ideas and information on the topic. Note: vermicomposting is a misnomer. Composting involves internal biological temperature, human management, and aerobic conditions. Keeping worms is simply vermiculture and the resulting product is worm castings, not compost (The Humanure Handbook, Jenkins).

Compost Tea

Compost tea is basically water mixed with nutrients, bacteria, and everything good from your compost. It makes a good organic and natural fertilizer to add to the garden. We haven’t made any ourselves yet, but there are lots of videos and information online.

Fertilizer

Our personal goal is to eventually have a fully circular system, that includes a composting toilet and the ability to compost anything. For someone starting out building their soils or having outputs from their garden, inputs are needed. This can be in the form of food waste that gets composted, but it can also be from organic fertilizer sources like cow manure, seaweed, earthworm castings, bat guano, and similar products.

Nitrogen-fixing plants are also important and better than having to purchase synthetic sources of nitrogen. These plants have a symbiotic relationship with Rhizobium bacteria, which infect the host plant’s roots. In exchange for energy from photosynthesis, the bacteria pull gaseous nitrogen from the air and convert it into a compound usable by plants. All legumes, edible or inedible, fix-nitrogen, some more than others. Most of the nitrogen goes to the plant, but excess will go into the surrounding soil. Later, the nitrogen in the plant will also go to the soil once it dies and decomposes. Planting lots of nitrogen-fixing plants and ground covers can help the growth of your other plants.

Too many people spray liquid nitrate or ammonia fertilizers all over their grass, when most of it drains through the soil to the water table, or into the Indian River Lagoon here in Brevard county, causing algal blooms. A record number of manatees, over 1000, died in 2021, mostly due to starvation. Algal blooms block out light from entering the water, preventing the growth of seagrass that manatees so depend on for food.

Let nature do the work: use nitrogen-fixing plants, compost, and use organic natural fertilizers as needed on specific plantings, but not in excess. Try to minimize the use of synthetic fertilizers, and know about bans on fertilizers during certain seasons where you live.

Water

Water is needed for all life to flourish. Other than soil, it is the most critical aspect to design for in a food-producing system.

Andrew Millison has some great information on water in his videos. Yet another person making a huge impact in the field is Brad Lancaster. In this Kirsten Dirksen video, Brad gives a tour of his own property, and explains water harvesting in an arid landscape. He also has a book called Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond which is on my to-read list.

Imagine you don’t have city water or electricity to pump water from a well. How will you optimize water use and storage on your landscape to ensure that you can grow food, and have enough to drink? Rainwater can be a potable source of drinking water when the catchment-system is designed properly and and filtering is done as needed. (PFAS and PFOAs are found in rainfall over the entire planet at this point, unfortunately.)

I notice a lot of evidence of erosion during heavy rainfall events in our neighborhood: pounds of sand end up in the street gutters. My guess is that this comes from the generally barren or mostly grassy sloped yards. The surface texture of these lawns when you consider the mini rises and falls of the land is pretty smooth; there is little to no texture. Soil particles easily wash away, along with the water. Now, imagine a landscape full of established perennials, wildflowers and native grasses with deep root systems, and trees. For one thing, the roots help hold in soil. Secondly, on top of the soil base, you also have leaf litter, fallen branches, twigs, old flowers, a whole lot of organic matter. This organic matter holds a lot more moisture itself. And thirdly, all this natural mulch helps keep the water from rushing downhill when it makes landfall during a rain event. Overtime, large logs and mounds of organic material help create a surface texture that is bumpy and lumpy. The water slows, spreads, and sinks, penetrating the ground and helping to recharge the water table and aquifers below. If your landscape captures and holds more water, you’ll need to water your plants way less often, and you’ll have less erosion. So remember: Slow it, Spread it, Sink it, and Save it.

How do you save it? This can mean utilizing an existing water feature like a pond on your property to hold and store water, or even building one if appropriate. It can also mean implementing a rain-barrel system to save water from the rainy season for use in the drier months. I’ll be adding information on how we implement our own rain-barrel system once we finish it. Also think about reusing water. Water from dishwashing or showering, for example, can be redirected to be reused for watering plants.

Sprinklers tend to waste a lot of water to evaporation, so I don’t recommend them. Hand watering plants is a great way to start, and uses much less water. Even better are drip irrigation systems that put out only what you need, especially if sourced from stored or reused water, and automating it makes it less time consuming. Make sure you know about watering restrictions in your area, whether it’s limits on rain barrel volumes or when you can run sprinklers.

Mulching plays a very important part in helping vegetable growing areas retain moisture, especially on those warm sunny days in Florida. As you build your soil, and your trees get bigger, and you have a good mulching routine, you’ll find your garden needs less and less water.

Pay attention to the shape of your land, and where the water flows. Plant trees and plants according to their preferences, and both you and the plants will be better off. If you have natural bodies of water on your property already, don’t fill them in, but rather plant native aquatic species and create a paradise for the local insects and animals, especially the amphibious type.

One last note, we use these hoses from Gardner’s supply, as I was concerned with the components in hoses made from recycled rubbers and plastics found in the big box stores. Again, not sponsored, but these hoses have held up the best so far out of any others we’ve tried.

https://www.gardeners.com/buy/lifetime-58-in-hoses/8611498.html

As for rain barrels, I am looking at polyethylene tanks since they are UV stable, that are FDA approved for storing potable water. But again, I’ll write more on this when we implement our system.

Planning a Food Forest

Whether you are planting on every available inch of your property, or just starting out with a few garden beds and trees, even a little planning goes a long way. Thinking about the many variables that change throughout a calendar year, as well as thinking about how your forest or garden will look 10 years down the road can save you from having to make big changes later, and help you get better harvests sooner.

But even planning a little bit as you go by learning about every plant you acquire is helpful. And don’t stress too much; the garden is like a living art project that never ends and always changes.

Growing Climate

In the U.S., the Department of Agriculture created zone designations for plants’ hardiness, or their ability to survive in certain climates. Brevard county is mostly zone 9b, where we can see an extreme low temperature of around 25°F to 30°F. Looking up a plant’s growing zone before acquiring it is recommended, to avoid wasting money and time on a plant that won’t survive, or to know what extra care and work it will need to ensure its survival.

https://ffl.ifas.ufl.edu/resources/usda-hardiness-zones/

Within your general USDA zone, knowing your very specific micro-climate is also important. For example, locations more inland will usually get colder temperatures, while spots surrounded by water often offer slight protection by a few degrees from a potential freeze. Those few degrees can make a big difference sometimes in how well more tropical plants will survive in your yard.

Plant Height

Know how tall each plant, tree, or shrub will get, and try and think about how much pruning you’ll want or have to do. You also don’t want coconuts falling over a walkway one day, but you may want people to be able to grab some grapes or passionfruit as they walk by. Planting with height in mind is also important for visual aesthetics of course, in the case of a border bed by a fence, for example. But probably one of the most important reasons to plan for height is because of the next factor: the sun. Tall trees block the sun from smaller plants.

Sun

We all know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but its trajectory across the sky changes a little every day. In Florida, the sun goes from high overhead in summer, to low in the southern sky in the winter. So, if you plant tall trees on the south side of your property, the rest of your land won’t receive much sun for parts of the year.

On our property, we’ve planted our taller trees like mangos and avocados on the northern side of our house. They are, or will be one day, tall enough to have access to all the light they need. Smaller trees like a tangerine and lime we planted slightly to the south of our large oak tree, which luckily was planted on our most northwest corner long ago. Our first papaya was planted on the south side of our house, between a fence and wall. It gets good sun, is out of the wind, and is a narrow tree that fits in small spaces.

Shrubs, small trees, or palms can still be placed on southern sides to create shady nooks for sitting or for shade-loving plants, or to create more filtered sunlight to protect garden veggies from the harsh sun as it moves overhead.

Using trellises or arches can be used to grow vines, and create temporary shade during the summer or be thinned out during winter as needed.

Wind

Think about which areas of your property get the most wind, especially during hurricanes and which way things will probably fall if they do. Planting a new tree right before a week of high winds might damage it or even kill it. So, make sure to stake it, or if it’s one that probably won’t survive the winds, plant it somewhere else.

Soil

Look at the soil around your yard, and see what’s growing already. Most of Florida has fine sandy soil. In fact, Myakka soil is the state soil of Florida. Many things grow extremely well in the loose sands of the typical Florida yard: sweet potatoes, strawberries, passion fruit vines, root vegetables, pigeon peas. Mangos, avocados, papaya, bananas, turmeric, ginger, and so many others also do well in our soil and climate, and usually need only a little help from added compost and organic matter. Soil also ties in with water.

Water

Is there any gradient in your land? Spots uphill or on slightly higher elevation may cause water to drain or runoff very quickly, and dry out in the hot summer sun. This might be a hard spot to keep a banana tree happy. A small depression or other spot that blocks water from running off will probably have better permeation of water into the soil, resulting in better water access for plants. A spot like this, or even a very flat spot, would be better for a banana tree, especially once you add some compost to it. On the other hand, a spot that doesn’t drain at all wouldn’t be good for something that can’t survive in standing water.

This factor also ties back into the sunlight. Our western facing slope in our front yard gets very hot and very dry quickly in the afternoon summer sun. The surface quickly loses all moisture, so it takes just a little more care and water to make sure new saplings or other plantings get properly established.

Time

Think about what fruit you’ll want in five years. A lychee tree grows very slowly and will take a while to get large harvests, so the faster you get one growing the better. A mulberry tree gives almost immediate satisfaction, and you can often start eating berries right away. A mango is somewhere in between; you might get a couple fruit after 3-5 years and with increasing yields in the years that follow. I love to imagine and visualize our food forest as it will look in the future.

The time of year also matters for many things. A brand-new planting might not survive a surprise cold front. On the other hand, lettuce, spinach, and cilantro have a rather narrow window of growth in the short Florida winter.

What to Plant

Florida is an amazing place to garden, and Brevard often feels like the goldilocks zone. With the right micro-climate, you can grow all sorts of tropical food that wouldn’t survive the freezes of central and northern Florida. Yet, the winters are a little longer, and fall/spring are a little cooler than south Florida, so we get good vegetable and herb growing seasons. On top of this, Florida has so many native edibles. You could probably only plant natives and still grow enough food to live off of with minimal work.

I’ll list many of the trees, shrubs, vines, plants, and vegetables we are growing ourselves in Melbourne, Florida. I’ll also list some other sources of ideas and information on what to grow. The possibilities are innumerable.

NOTE: Make sure you do your own research on anything you plan to eat. Some things need proper processing before eating, need to be cooked, only have certain edible parts, have lots of oxalic acid which isn’t safe if you have kidney issues, or have some other compounds that isn’t good for everyone or in excess. And be especially careful if foraging or trying something for the first time, especially if the edible plant has dangerous look-alikes. Only taste a little bit of a food new to you, and ask your doctor if any new food will interfere with any medication you take.

What We Are Growing in Our Food Forest

Fruit Trees

Dwarf Everbearing Mulberry

Donnie Avocado

Canistel

Dancy Tangerine

Persian Lime

Lychee

Laurel Oak (native, acorns require processing to remove tannins)

Elderberry (native, berries require processing to remove cyanide)

Moringa

Coconut Palm

Sugar Apple (sweetsop)

Goldfinger Banana

Kent Mango

Glenn Mango

Papaya

Black Sapote

…and still plan on planting more!

Shrubs, Cacti, Vines, and other Perennial Plantings

Pigeon Pea (nitrogen-fixing)

Nopal (Prickly Pear Cactus)

Dragon Fruit

Passion Fruit

Maypop Passion Fruit (native)

Katuk

Longevity Spinach

Okinawa Spinach

Blue Butterfly Pea (nitrogen-fixing)

Poor Man’s Pepper (native)

Cranberry Hibiscus (caution: high in oxalic acid)

Abutilon pictum

Fragaria virginiana wild strawberry (native)

Scrub Blueberry (native)

Cuban Oregano (can spread easily, best grown in a pot)

Turmeric (Harvest rhizomes once a year after plant dies back, keeping some to replant)

Ginger (Harvest rhizomes once a year after plant dies back, keeping some to replant)

Porterweed (edible flowers if blue or purple variety, based on info from EatTheWeeds)

Elephant Bush (Portulacaria afra, edible foliage)

Wild Sweet Basil (native)

Thai Basil (reseeds in spring)

Cassava (rhizome requires processing to remove cyanide)

…and still adding!

Vegetables, Herbs and Leafy Greens

So many vegetable crops grow well in Florida in no-dig beds, raised beds, or pots. These are ones we have grown. I’ll mostly list general names, as there are hundreds of varieties and heirlooms to choose from. Spring and fall are the best growing seasons, with most leafy greens like lettuce and most herbs like cilantro or dill doing well from late fall to early spring.

Carrots

Kales (Dinosaur Kale and Blue-Curled Scotch Kale are two of my favorites that handle the hotter weather too)

Eggplant (Black Beauty is a small delicious heirloom variety)

Peppers

Tomatoes

Watermelons

Squash

Garlic Chives

Green Onions

Parsley

Cilantro

Black Beans (Black Turtle Beans seem to do really well here)

Green Beans

Peas

Sweet Potatoes

Potatoes

Radishes

….and, again, planning on trying more than I can possibly list.

Other Inspiration and Resources

Florida Permaculture

Rob Greenfield has a ton of info on permaculture landscaping in Florida on his YouTube. He even lived off of his food he grew for a whole year while maintaining body-weight. He started a lot of food forest community plantings in Orlando, and so has lots of ideas for Florida-friendly edibles.

https://www.robgreenfield.org/

https://www.youtube.com/user/RobJGreenfield

Local nurseries are also valuable source of plants and information for anyone getting started with a garden. With permaculture and native plants becoming more popular every day, nurseries are more often supplying things like native milkweeds for monarchs, many specialty fruit trees, organic soils, composts, and amendments, and lots of heirloom seeds for vegetable growing.

My favorite local places:

Nature’s Art and Garden Supply

Sun Harbor Nursery

Rockledge Gardens

Banana River Yard

Another nursery we’ve been to is Green Isle Gardens. They are a bit farther away from Melbourne but worth the drive. They are a native plant nursery with hundreds of native flowers, trees, shrubs, and edibles.

Permaculture in other Locations

Mark Valencia has a YouTube channel called Self-Sufficient Me. He is an Australian gardener and has tons of fruit trees and raised garden beds. With a similar climate to Florida, his garden offers good ideas and inspiration on things to plant.

https://selfsufficientme.com/about-us/

https://www.youtube.com/c/Selfsufficientme/about

Again, the Weedy Garden is a good channel for plant ideas or inspiration.

https://www.theweedygarden.com/

Biodiversity, Native Plants, & Pest Controls

When you’re gardening or designing a food forest, no matter how big or how small, you have to work with nature. There are always going to be pests, periods of drought, storms, animals that like to eat your fruit or vegetable, you name it. Instead of fighting it, you have to design with these things in mind, and build a system that balances out any loss.

Relying on spraying synthetic pesticides wastes money, consumes extra resources for production of the chemicals, and poisons the wildlife, waters, and the very food you’re planning on consuming. Luckily for us, there are already hundreds of ways to mitigate pests and disease by designing properly and having a biodiverse landscape. If you have to use some controls early in the growth of your garden stick to natural ones like neem oil, bacillus thuringiensis, or similar products.

Planting a wide variety of plants and including many native flowers is the best way to start building a biodiverse garden. Sunshine mimosa has cool puff-ball flowers that the bees love, and makes an excellent walkable ground cover for a grass replacement or filler in a flower bed. It is the larval food source for the Sulphur butterfly, and fixes nitrogen! One plant has so many benefits. Many insects are only attracted to one type of flower or plant. Monarch butterflies need native milkweeds because it’s the only food source for the caterpillars. (Don’t plant tropical milkweed, the kind you usually find at big box stores, as it can harbor a parasite that infects Monarchs). There are many types of native bees in Florida, such as the leafcutter bee. It’s a solitary bee that uses parts of leaves to build under-ground structures for laying eggs. It’s an important pollinator, and planting a variety of native plants helps it survive. Parasitoid wasps prey on aphids, caterpillars, sawflies, beetles, leafhoppers, true bugs, thrips, psyllids, and flies. Predatory stinkbugs also eat many of the common garden pests. Ladybugs love to eat some aphids, but they won’t come if you don’t have any aphids at all. Pesticides don’t discriminate: spraying them will kill all the insects you want in your yard too, and you’ll have to keep spraying every time you have a bad case of pests, because no other insects will be in your yard.

The best part of creating a biodiverse landscape is that you’ll always have something to harvest. You can have food every month of the year. And if one tree produces a smaller crop one year for some reason, well you might have 20 other things producing at the same time so it’s okay!

The efficient gardener is the best gardener. Our job is only to expedite nature’s processes. Also, Florida has so many native edibles, so you can feed yourself and the insects (and thus the snakes, frogs, lizards, birds, etc.) at the same time. Some I already mentioned, like native strawberries and blueberries. There’s native passionfruit, cocoa plums, sea grapes, red mulberry, gooseberry, yaupon holly, native persimmon, muscadine grapes, Chickasaw and flatwoods plum, and beautyberry. And for the efficient gardener, native plants are as low maintenance as you can get!

Lastly, avoid planting any invasives, even if it is edible. Invasives will not only take over and require more work from you to maintain and remove, but it can easily spread outside your property. Florida’s protected areas already face so many threats from development, climate change, and pollution. Conservation groups do a lot of work removing invasives that have become a problem since they were introduced. There are so many options to choose from, and it’s so easy to opt for species that won’t decimate entire ecosystems.

Summary

There is a lot of information out there about gardening and it can feel overwhelming. But the best way is to just start!

My recommendation is to start with easy trees like mulberry, banana, and papaya, as well as mango if you have the space. Start with one garden bed and plant radishes, carrots and beans. They grow quickly and easily and you’ll feel successful right away. Add some straw or mulch to help with water retention. Plant some sweet potatoes from the store once they’ve sprouted and let them go crazy in your yard. Think about what you like to eat and go from there. If you want to try growing something, go for it! Your garden and yard are unique in its climate, soil, light, water, and only you can see what will be successful.

Visit a native plant nursery and pick out whatever catches your eye or sounds yummy! Native strawberries are very easy to grow and form nice patches. It can fill in flower beds nicely and be a source of food.

The joys of starting a food forest are many, from enjoying nature to growing quality food. If you like delicious, flavorful food, there’s no better way to get it than to grow it yourself.

Additional Resources & Sources of Inspiration

• For our raised beds, we have some we made out of wood, and treated with a natural garden-safe citrus oil. But for more durability, as well as the ability to move and change size if needed, we use Birdies Garden beds. They can be purchased on Gardener’s Supply.

https://www.gardeners.com/buy/modular-raised-bed/8586930.html

https://birdiesgardenproducts.com/

• Attend plant swaps at local nurseries or trade with family, neighbors, and friends.

• Native Plant Society

https://www.fnps.org/

• UF IFAS websites and extension offices

https://ifas.ufl.edu/

• Southeast Foraging, by Chris Bennett

• https://www.eattheweeds.com/

• Florida Food Forest and Seed Exchange groups on Facebook

• Syntropic Farming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBPLrr9Hph0

• Farmland Restoration in New Zealand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZSJKbzyMc

• Farmland Restoration in Wisconsin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRPP4Ilpxso

• Andrew Millison also has many instructional videos on permaculture and hydrology.

https://www.youtube.com/@amillison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vKAPL_WfBA

• We don’t have a composting toilet yet, but since reading these books, it’s now moved up in priority on the to-do list.

The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins

The Compost Toilet Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins

• Kirsten Dirksen’s YouTube channel features tours of various properties all over the world, and interviews a variety of interesting people. Covering topics from self-reliance and permaculture, to homemade artisanal crafts, these videos and the people in them are sure to provide a diverse array of perspectives and inspire creative solutions to all sorts of problems.

https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen

Written by Heather Martin, 05/17/22

Updated 3/24/23