top of page

How to Start a Food Forest in the Florida Panhandle

Jim Alvilhiera
5 days ago
4 min read

A food forest is an edible garden built like nature designs a forest: tall trees, smaller fruit trees beneath them, then shrubs, vegetables, ground covers, vines and root crops, all sharing the same ground. Once it's established, it needs far less work than rows of annual vegetables. This is how we plan them for the Panhandle, based on the plants we've actually grown at our nursery in Port St. Joe. Our free 10-page guide, Field-Tested Food Forest Design, goes deeper, and you can download it any time from our Resources page.

What makes our area different

  • Sugar sand. Our native sandy soil typically holds less than 2% organic matter; good growing soil has 5 to 8%. Nutrients wash straight through in summer storms.

  • Feast-or-famine rain. Most of our rain comes in summer thunderstorms and tropical systems, and fall and spring can go weeks without a good soaking.

  • Summer heat and humidity from June through September.

  • Real winter cold fronts. Port St. Joe (ZIP 32456) sits in USDA Zone 9a/9b, so every design has to plan for a freeze.

  • The upside: a long growing season. Perennial greens produce most of the year, and Figs and Bananas grow fast.

Start with the site, not the plants

Food forests work because the grower observes the land first, builds the soil, and manages water, wind and sun before planting anything. Before you lay out a single path, look at:

  • Microclimates. Find the wetter and drier spots, the windy and sheltered corners, and where you get full sun, dappled sun or mostly shade.

  • Water movement. Watch the property during a real rain. Use paths, mulch basins, swales and raised planting areas so water soaks in without drowning tree roots.

  • Sun over time. Young trees leave room for sun-loving crops underneath for the first few years. Plan for the shade they'll cast in about five years.

  • Soil building. Cover cropping, chop-and-drop mulch, and pairing high-value trees with nitrogen fixers are the low-cost ways to build organic matter and soil fertility over time.

  • Access. Lay out paths, irrigation and harvest access for the mature size of every tree.

Our guiding principle: build the site first, then let the plant layers follow the land. Good access, steady moisture, deep mulch and enough sunlight solve more problems than adding more species or paid-for inputs.

The seven layers, with plants we've grown here

Links go to trees available at our nursery.

  • Canopy (large, long-lived trees): Avocado (Fantastic, Winter Mexican, Mexicola Grande), Ice Cream Bean, Mulberry. Chestnuts (Dunstan and AU-Cropper) are popular in Florida too; we don't grow them, but the guide covers them.

  • Understory (small trees): Loquat; Fig (Celeste, Brown Turkey); Papaya; Banana (Dwarf Cavendish, Dwarf Orinoco, Red Cuban); Citrus (Carney Orange, Key Lime); Carambola (Arkin); Jaboticaba; Persimmon; Moringa.

  • Shrub (harvest height): Pigeon Pea, Chaya, Katuk, Barbados Cherry, Grumichama, Surinam Cherry.

  • Herbaceous (seasonal and perennial vegetables): Roselle, Okra, Molokhia, Lagos Spinach, Society Garlic, Seminole Pumpkin.

  • Ground cover (living mulch): Sweet Potato, Perennial Peanut, Strawberries and low culinary herbs.

  • Vines (on trellises at first): Passionfruit, Muscadine Grape, Chayote, Malabar Spinach, Runner Beans, Luffa.

  • Roots: Cassava, Sweet Potato, Ginger, Turmeric, Yams, Jerusalem Artichoke, Jicama.

A note on Bananas: for fruit here, grow Dwarf Orinoco, Dwarf Cavendish or Red Cuban. Blue Java, the “Ice Cream” Banana, is a beautiful plant, but it won’t fruit in our climate. We grow it as an ornamental and for chop-and-drop mulch.

Build from the surface down

The fastest way to lose a new planting is to put it in before the water, drainage and mulch plan exists.

  1. Test the soil in each management zone before making pH-sensitive plant decisions, and start building organic matter.

  2. Mark drainage paths and standing-water areas during a real rain event.

  3. Install irrigation or confirm a hand-watering plan before planting the first tree.

  4. Add organic mulch on the surface, keep it off trunks, and replenish it as it breaks down.

  5. Plant canopy species only after paths, access and mature spacing are marked on the ground.

Grow your own mulch

Chop-and-drop plants feed the system for free. Pigeon Pea and Perennial Peanut fix nitrogen; Moringa, Blue Java Banana, Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia diversifolia), Comfrey and Sudan Grass produce large amounts of biomass you can cut and leave where it falls. Keep them on a defined cutting cycle in a managed strip, and treat every cut as a deliberate step that covers the ground and feeds the soil.

Plan for the cold

Design for recovery, not for a promise that a hard freeze will never come. Keep tender trees like Papaya, Banana and Citrus on the most protected side of the site, mulch before cold snaps, put the hardiest plantings in the most exposed spots, and keep a few frost cloths handy.

What to plant first

Keep the mature size of each tree in mind, and plant in this order:

  1. The permanent tree framework (canopy).

  2. Support species, to help the canopy trees establish.

  3. Understory and shrub species, where they'll grow to a managed size.

  4. Herbaceous and root-layer plantings, to fill the gaps.

  5. Chop-and-drop plantings along the edges.

  6. Vines, on trellises until your trees are big enough to support them.

Year-one harvests are mostly annuals and perennial vegetables while the fruit trees and shrubs settle in. In years two and three, watch the shade and drainage, prune for access and airflow, and expand only the plants that thrive on your site.

Common questions

How much space do I need? Less than you'd think. Even a small yard can hold dozens of edible perennials when you stack the layers.

When should I start? Fall is a great time to mulch and plan. Plant hardy trees like Figs, Loquats and Persimmons in fall or winter, and wait until spring for cold-tender plants like Bananas and Papaya.

Get started

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page