Create Your Own Florida Food Forest – David The Good

When she was a kid, my brother once built her a cool playhouse out of scrap wood. After the first week, however, she didn’t want to go into it any more because there were “lizards in there.” As a gift, since I found this hilarious, I painted her a little painting titled “We Miss You.”

In it, two lizards are enjoying a meal of insects and being sad because my sister – whose portrait they’ve hung on the wall of the playhouse – is no longer visiting them. Though you may be like Jess and not like lizards, they do eat a lot of insects and also fit into a complete food web. Making some habitat for them doesn’t have to be a big deal.

You certainly don’t have to build and then abandon a nice playhouse. Just leave brush around, pile up some rocks or logs, or let your grass get tall here and there. Depending on your location, the variety of lizards and their habitats will vary. Some like open sandy patches and others like piles of flowerpots behind a shed…

just see where you witness the most of them and try to recreate those conditions in your food forest. In south Florida you’re going to be invaded by iguanas whatever you do. In that case, I recommend buying some curry and a pellet gun. Iguana meat pies, mon! But… of course…

when you make space for lizards, you’re also likely to get their reptilian cousin as well… the oh-so-terrifying SNAKE! Snakes Snakes are greatly underappreciated. I understand that one of their forefathers screwed things up for us by pulling a fast one on Eve, but still – they do add a lot to the natural environment. Snakes consume lots of rodents that would otherwise wreak havoc.

Some also devour cockroaches, bird eggs and even other snakes.

Copyright © 2015 by David Y. Goodman Published by: Florida Food Forests, Inc. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Florida Food Forests, Inc. PO Box 1044 Sparr, FL 32192 www.floridafoodforests.com Find out more about the author and read his daily gardening blog at www.floridasurvivalgardening.com.

Dedicated to my parents, Bill and Jenni. See what you two started? Introduction Imagine transforming your yard into a Garden of Eden. Fruit trees sway overhead, berries and flowers burst forth from the shade, and alongside soft paths sweet potato vines intertwine with passionfruit and native wildflowers.

Though the air, bees and butterflies buzz and flutter, spreading pollen and beauty in their cheerful wake. You can do this in less time than you think. You don’t need to over-plan or over-think. Spacing isn’t all that important. You can start with seeds, cuttings or potted trees. You could even plant a decent food forest just by visiting your local international market and collecting seeds and roots to plant. Your limitation is your imagination. Florida WANTS to grow forests. Before development and clearing, our region was a verdant jungle – a land of flowers.

We can create that flowering jungle again – and tailor it to serve us by growing plants and trees that provide food, beauty, wildlife habitat, building materials and fuel. With a food forest, your garden stretches into the sky. No longer will you be fighting with infertile sand and nematode-knotted tomato roots in a sandy patch of sun-burned ground that eats compost like a sinkhole eats houses. Instead, your garden is the forest.

In Florida our abundant rainfall and warm climate allows for the rapid growth of trees and plants, provided you choose the right species. Though I’m no Geoff Lawton, Bill Mollison or Robert Hart… I am a native Floridian, a forest gardener, a relentless experimenter and a great lover of nature. Thus far I’ve planted two food forests in Florida; one a little south of Gainesville in zone 8/9, the other in tropical urban Fort Lauderdale.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 9dfb84f263dfac3b
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 430,222 bytes (0.41 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 120
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 76.17 minutes
• Total Words: 15,235
• Total Characters: 88,745
• Average Words per Page: 126.96
• Average Characters per Page: 739.54

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