Maintaining Your Food Forest

Months 18 to 36

By this time, the branches of the three fast growing trees should touch each other—during this period, the food forest is maintained heavily with weeding to ensure the plants you want to grow are able to do so without competition from unwanted plants.

Run poultry through the forest regularly as soon as the trees leaves are out of their reach.

Years 3 to 5

Maintenance decreases over the first five to six years. As your canopy begins to close, the labor required will decrease.

Leguminous support trees should be removed until there is only one left among the lumber and fruit trees. You should have packed the interior fruit and support trees so closely that you have to remove many of them as they begin to impact tree growth.

When the trees are out of the reach of sheep and pigs (2 to 4 years) you can run them through the forest, but you should monitor their impact on the area. If you plant forage crops for them, they might be less likely to damage the trees.

Years 5 to 6

By now, most of the understory bushes and plants will have died off due to lack of light. Replace with understory plants like cacao, coffee, or berries.

Around this time or perhaps earlier, your canopy will fully close. With a closed canopy, your forest requires no regular maintenance, because weeds can’t grow under such dense overhang.

From here on out, simply remove all stunted or scraggly trees that are not doing well, opening up light and space to allow further growth of the forest. This should be done every couple of years as needed to promote the healthy growth of other trees.

When the canopy closes there will be little pasture for sheep (if you tried to pasture them here, they wouldn’t thrive), but pigs can still forage there if you plant ground crops for them to harvest. Be wary, though; if there is insufficient forage for them, pigs will eat the roots of your trees and affect their production.

Year 25 and beyond

Harvest the fast-growing lumber trees at year 25. This opens up more space for light.

Replant the lumber trees with fast-growing leguminous support and hardwood trees for future lumber.

Be careful with goats, cattle or horses until the trees are very well established. Once nearly or fully mature, though, you can allow these animals to graze in the forest. Just make sure to monitor their impact—if they are hungry or deficient in certain nutrients, they can strip and eat bark that can damage or kill trees.

Benefits Of The Kooyman System

• Allows the selection of up to 11 species of trees in a small area.
• Once established, this system will provide lumber and food forever.
• Tree saplings are cheap or free if you grow them yourself.
• Ensures you can select from a large variety of fruit trees so you are able to keep the strongest specimens.
• This tight packing of the trees shades out weeds that could grow, removing the need for maintenance after the first couple of years.
• As the leguminous support trees grow in size, you can remove most as the larger trees provide sufficient nitrogen for the soil.