REVITALISING a 2 year old LINEAR FOOD FOREST | PRUNING BIOMASS PLANTS for WEED CONTROL & FERTILITY

We have several linear food forests or forest garden tree rows here on the farm, all planted in different years, starting in 2017.
This small (15m) row was planted in spring 2021 and is the youngest of all our rows. It sits above a veg plot in our market garden and consists of plum, cherry and apple as the canopy species, blackcurrant, autumn olive, jostaberry occupy the shrub layer, rhubarb, comfrey, take their place in the herbaceous layer and strawberry grows as the ground cover layer.

There is a lot of growth at this time of year and we need to do some pruning to make use of the available biomass.
It's taken a couple of years for the comfrey and the autumn olive (planted for the fact it is a Nitrogen fixing shrub as well as having an edible berry) to really establish and now we can cut back their leafy growth to feed the soil, mulch out the grasses, retain moisture and reinvigorate the whole forest garden system through the pruning. Pruning allows in greater air flow to the soon fruiting trees, reducing the possibility of fungal problems and also allowing a greater solar gain to the fruit trees by reducing shade.

About Tap o' Noth Farm:
Hi, we're James and Rosa! Welcome to Tap o' Noth Farm, an 8 acre permaculture designed food forest farm/homestead in Aberdeenshire, NE Scotland. We practice home scale to small farm scale agroforestry and regenerative agriculture methods to produce organic fruit and vegetables, raise dairy goats for all our raw milk needs, geese to graze our silvopasture and coppice systems and laying hens, moved around in a Chickshaw, for an abundance of eggs.
Our videos aren't 'how to's' - more videos to give a glimpse into our lifestyle and hopefully inspire you to bring aspects of what you see into your own life.

HEDGE + FURROW
Come and stay on the farm in our traditional shepherds hut, complete with pizza oven, wood fired outdoor bath and sauna, set amongst fields, trees and beside a beautiful pond.
You can book through AirBnB here - https://airbnb.com/h/hedgefurrow


Social Media links:
INSTAGRAM -   / tapfarm  
FACEBOOK -   / taponothfarm  
TAP CHAT FB GROUP -   / tapch.  .
WEBSITE - www.hedgeandfurrow.co.uk

#permaculture #foodforest #syntropicagriculture