Over the coming weeks we’ll be showcasing our various food forest mounds. The back portion of our property is literally a swamp with a high water table. In order to grow fruit trees of any kind we had to construct mounds that sit up to three feet above the ground to prevent root rot and other issues caused by water-logged soil. This particular mound has a triple canopy of edible plants with peach and pear trees at the top, a sprawling patch of Florida highbush blueberries in the middle layer and edible Florida-native purslane as the bottom layer.
In the month of April, this mound hits peak production with ten fruit-laden trees, a dozen fruit-laden berry bushes and blooming purslane which also serve as excellent pollinators. Later this year we’ll be adding edible mushroom spores on the log barriers of the mound to tap into yet another food source from this rather small plot of land.
We’ll admit that the path to this final design was a rocky one. Six months ago a 500-year flood event destroyed the fruit trees and edible plants we initially installed here, which prior to the storm were showing mixed results. In the aftermath of this flood we took a new look at this mound and made several changes. We cut down any surviving swamp ash trees to allow more light and air flow. We built up the soil even higher which we amended with more sand and perlite for better drainage and a lower PH more suitable for peach trees and blueberry bushes.
Though serious work went into the initial construction and then re-construction, this mound is now, and will forever hence be, a low-maintenance mini-ecosystem that will provide our family fruit in the spring, mushrooms in the summer and purslane for our salads all year round. This “Yellow Mound” is only one of a dozen other mounds that make up our growing food forest all working together as a functioning ecosystem. Stay tuned to see what else we’re growing and experimenting with.
