Alright guys, today I’m excited to show you the progress of my Centropic Food Forest. One year ago, this was all grass. Since that time, I’ve put hundreds of trees and shrubs into this 100 foot by 100 foot space, hoping that someday it becomes an actual Centropic Food Forest. We’re going to talk about what that is, what my methodology was, and what it’s going to look like, hopefully, in 10 years. If we have that long. Let’s go check it out. This Centropic Food Forest slash orchard is comprised of 100 feet by 100 feet of space. It’s approximately 10,000 square feet.

On the outermost perimeter, we have a wildlife fence, which is cloaked with a wind fence. On the immediate interior of the perimeter, we have a line of conifer trees that go all around the orchard. In the eight rows inside, we have a layer of landscape fabric, and then we have underground irrigation. We also have mulch at every tree. We have mids, lows, and high trees, which are a combination of both perennials and annuals, ranging from rhubarb to asparagus, pumpkins, squash, cherries, blueberries, hascaps, blackberries, raspberries, smaller cherry trees, up to the bigger trees, which are apricots, plums, pears, apples, and a variety of different maple trees.

And we can’t forget about the hops. We’ve also had corn in here last year, but we didn’t do corn this year. In the northwest corner, we have three beehives that help pollinate the orchard, and of course, they produce their honey using the hundreds and hundreds of acres of surrounding canola fields that we have here. So on the outermost perimeter of the food forest, we have this fence, which is to keep out wildlife, keep the dogs out of here. And in addition to that, we also have this wind protection fabric, which is only meant to be a temporary solution until this row of conifer trees grows up to be big enough that it can naturally provide some wind protection.

This is also going to increase the diversity of the food forest, add a bit of softwood conifers in the mix. It is the boreal forest, so they like it here. A lot of the trees in this region, because of the strong winds, they get this bend to them, so I’m trying to avoid that. For the time being, we’re going to have to just rely on the artificial fence. So in the heart of the food forest, we have eight rows of trees and soon to be shrubs. So basically, a centropic food forest is comprised of your low-height vegetation, your medium-height vegetation, and your high-height vegetation.

The low-lying vegetation typically is annuals, so things like pumpkins or squash or something of that nature that’s going to basically cover the ground to suppress all of the weeds and grasses that are going to be getting in the way. Now, as you can see behind me, we’re in a side of the centropic food forest where I don’t have any lows or mids planted. That’s because on this side, it’s largely maple trees, which are probably going to take a decade, if not longer, in order to mature enough to actually harvest maple syrup from. We have some apple trees peppered in throughout here as well, but eventually next year, we’re going to put some mids.

So in between every tree, we’re going to have like a raspberry bush or a grape or hazcaps. We have about 15 maple trees, and then we have about 85 miscellaneous trees, be they apple, pears, crabapple, things of that nature. So this is kind of the ideal situation that we’re going for with all of the highs, mids, and lows. So we have the rhubarb, which is actually a perennial plant, and it’s great because it covers a lot of ground. It grows really fast and suppresses a lot of weeds. We have some grapes that are growing up this cherry tree, which is actually doing quite well.

This is its second year. It needs a bit of pruning. I don’t want to start pruning until things have really got established, but this is the ideal situation. And then we would actually put in some annuals in between these spots. Last year, we had squash. Next year, I’m thinking we’re going to have watermelon. We’re going to have cantaloupe in these parts here. Eventually, the grapes, the asparagus, those types of things are going to start to fill in these gaps. So a lot of these plants, because we just planted them, they have transplant shock. So you have to rough up the roots a lot so they don’t strangle themselves out over time.

So they don’t look like much this year. It’s important to remember that this is a multi-year process. The amount of growth that we’ve seen with our mid-tier plants in only one year is actually quite extraordinary. The first year is always going to be a write-off for most of the perennials that you plant. You’re going to be thinking, is it going to work? Are they going to die? And the next year, these things are just going to take off like a rocket. As long as they have the nutrients and the water and the sunlight and relatively good conditions, those things are going to grow.

So this orchard has in-ground irrigation. That means that we’re not going to be losing a lot of that moisture, which comes from a well to evaporation. So a lot of it is going to go directly into the roots of the trees. And the actual irrigation line is offset about two feet away from every row to force those plant roots to grow towards that water line. As you can see, we have this landscape fabric over top. And this is also only a temporary solution. Prior to having this landscape fabric, the weeds were just absolutely horrendous. So when I first broke ground for this orchard, I made the mistake of rototilling the entire 100 foot by 100 foot space.

The problem with doing that is you expose all the soil and it creates an opportunity for weeds to just take over. Before it, it was all the grass and the grass would prevent the weeds from being able to take root. So ideally what you would do is you’d have a non-creeping grass as your base that will keep the weeds down. And then you would auger your holes for your trees. You would surround that with mulch and you would mulch the rows. And so that would allow for your other perennials like your bushes, your shrubs, your raspberries.

They’re still going to have ways that they can expand and fill out all of this space. Okay, now the width of the rows is something which is likely going to change over time too. For the time being, I wanted to be able to fit a tractor or a quad or some kind of machine in here if I needed to do maintenance. I see a lot of great permacultural designs where everything is kind of randomized. Eventually I want to get to that point, but to build something out like this in a way that is practical, I don’t have all day to be out here every single day tending to the orchard.

So I need these systems to kind of be self-directing. All right, so there’s some rows in the orchard where it’s just mids and lows. So we’re trying to switch it up a bit. And this is all cherries, raspberries, hazcaps. And all of this last year, I was really depressed because I was looking at it and it’s like it’s not growing this year. It completely exploded in size. We might actually have to cut them back because as you can see, it’s already encroaching onto the space of this cherry bush, which grows a lot slower than the raspberries.

Not yielding a whole lot this year, but next year I have no doubt that we’re going to get a lot of fruit off of this. Okay, so this is an example of how fast these mid-tier plants grow. So this is a hops plant, and then we also have raspberry. Last year, I didn’t think this plant was going to survive. It was nothing. And this year, as you can see, it just exploded. In fact, it got so bad that it was completely choking out this tree. By next year, this is probably going to be out of control, and it’s going to be a problem.

No grapes this year. Next year, going to be a lot of grapes. So again, last year, this was a nothing burger. I didn’t think it was going to grow at all. This year, it’s completely taken over. That’s exactly what I want. Eventually, I’m going to have some sort of lattice that it attaches onto. Right now, it’s kind of using this tree for leverage, but it’s not choking the tree out. As you can see, at the base of the tree, the tree has ample space to do its thing. This is a crab apple, and there was a few apples this year.

Not too many. We had a lot of hail problems this year, unfortunately. It took out chunks of our swimming pool. One of the cars is right off. It was bad, okay? And so that our tree survived that at all is a miracle, because we’re talking like golf ball-sized hail, like literal. So that had a pretty negative impact on our trees, but I’m hoping next year they recover. And wasps are another problem. Of the 100 or so trees that I’ve planted, some were just duds. I would say about 10% I’m either going to have to uproot and replant something else in its place or it’s going to take a long time to really get established and start producing.

I’d say there’s still a lot of hope for this tree. Right now it looks like there’s some kind of fungal disease. One of the benefits of cold winters is that they completely kill everything. And so it allows the trees a second chance to come back next year even stronger. So this is asparagus, and this is another one of those plants that I thought nothing was happening last year. There was one of these stalks that was sticking out of the ground and falling over, and I didn’t think that was going to mount to anything. And as you can see, this year already it has multiplied into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 stalks just on this one plant.

One of the main takeaways here is that this is a multi-year, multi-phasic process. So you’ve got to look at this at least as a three to five year plan, especially if you want to grow fruit trees. Fruit trees are likely not going to yield for many, many years. So if you buy them when they’re one or two years old, don’t expect to get any fruit for about five to six years, realistically. They may produce sooner than that, but it’s not going to be that much, which is why I made the investment in buying trees that were already established seven to eight years old so that I only have to wait maybe two or three years before they start yielding something significant.

So in terms of mulch and wood chips, it’s going to take a long time to build up this organic layer of grass suppressant. They say that you have to keep layering it and layering it, and over time it is going to become more effective in terms of suppressing weeds and grass. Oftentimes, if you just put a little bit, the grass is going to grow right through it. So you’ve got to pull that grass out, you’ve got to put a little bit more mulch. And as you can see around every tree, we don’t mount because that could cause rot in the base of the tree.

So we don’t want to do that. So I’ve been using a combination of store-bought cedar mulch and wood chips from the predominantly deciduous aspen and poplar forest. Were it not for the mulch or the landscape fabric, the weeds would totally take over and nothing else would grow. So this is what a lot of food forests don’t have, and it’s bees. Now surrounding us are hundreds and hundreds of acres of canola and wild clover fields. So these bees are cranking out honey like more than I can even harvest. This year already in our first year of beekeeping, we got about 30 gallons of honey and just the nicest, darkest, richest honey that you can imagine.

Of course, a lot of these trees, half of them were just planted this year. We got the bees halfway through the season. So ultimately, I’m hoping that the bees are going to support the trees and the trees are going to support the bees. So some of these trees as indicated are suffering from transplant shock because I just planted them, but I’m going to go through a list of all of the different varieties of fruits and vegetables that we have in this orchard. This is a Norway maple. Over time, this will yield a moderate amount of maple syrup.

This taller maple tree is what’s called a silverwood maple. Once again, it’ll yield a moderate amount of maple syrup over time. So all of these five trees behind me are what are called sugar maples. They have the highest yield for any maple tree in terms of maple syrup. Now, judging by the looks of these trees, that’s probably going to take a decade or two in order for us to get to this point. But of course, I’m building this food forest out, not just for myself, but for future generations. An apple tree. A cherry bush.

Pops. Asparagus. Larger, sour cherry trees. Several different types of grape varieties. Rhubarb. And you know my favorite saying, never rub another man’s rhubarb. I think this is an apricot tree. As you can see, it’s been battered by hail. Other than that, it’s actually pretty healthy. Nice stalk. Probably about an eight to nine-year-old tree. Next year, I’m hoping that this baby cranks out them cots. Gooseberry. Juniper on the periphery. Jack pine. Different spruce varieties. We have several crabapple trees. One or two of them is ornamental. I can’t remember if this is the one. You could still probably do something with them.

It was a survival situation, but a little tart. Blackberry. Raspberry. Pears. Berry unsightly, sorry-looking Saskatoon berry bush. Maybe next year, bro. Honeyberry will fit right in with the bees. We’re going to keep experimenting. We’re going to add new things over time, but primarily the hardest of the hard work is done. A hundred big fruit trees are in the ground. I can’t wait to show you it next year. I hope that it’s teeming with life. I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s going to be pretty wild in here next year. Please go and watch the original Centropic Food Forest video where we take you through step-by-step all of the science that goes into making a permaculture-type forest like we aspire to do here today.

Thanks for watching. Take care. Canadian Prepper out. The best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at CanadianPreparedness.com, where you’ll find high-quality survival gear at the best prices, no junk, and no gimmicks. Use discount code PreppingGear for 10% off. Don’t forget the strong survive, but the prepared thrive. Stay safe. [tr:trw].

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