Sustainable Food Forest: The Garden of My Dreams | Grandma Kouzi
The dream of a lazy foodie is to create a self-sufficient lazy garden—a sustainable food forest where the harvest is as bountiful as possible and the labour as minimal.
Years ago, while studying permaculture in Taiwan, I first encountered the concept of “food forests”. I had heard the term before, but I had instinctively dismissed it, assuming that a “food forest” required the ownership of an actual forest—a luxury far beyond my reach. In reality, it is a companion planting system that makes three-dimensional use of space; it can be implemented in the smallest of plots, which, naturally, is perfect for me.
By layering edible plants and making rational use of sunlight and soil, a food forest allows more plants to be grown within a specific area. While providing food, it also fosters a healthy ecosystem in the land.
One particular insight during my studies truly resonated with me: in a mature food forest system, the primary task for humans is harvesting. This is music to my ears. As a lazy foodie, I am determined to put this into practice at Villain Valley.
I. The Food Forest System of Villain Valley
Back when I had just finished clearing the land—in the era when there wasn’t so much as a gate—I spent a considerable sum on two bayberry trees to plant on either side of the entrance. I imagined a day when their canopies would reach across the path and meet in the air, forming a bayberry archway. This would be the most poetic portal to Villain Valley. Such a gateway is not only a sight to behold but also provides fruit; I paid double the price just to ensure I’d have large, sweet bayberries to eat.
Two lonely bayberry trees weren’t enough. To achieve a comprehensive ecosystem that utilises sunlight and land through high, middle, and low layering, I added hibiscus cuttings and medium-height edible shrubs beneath the trees, followed by pumpkins. I consciously guided the pumpkins to crawl along the ground to suppress weeds. By making integrated use of sunlight and soil, I had my food forest.
In the second year, I planted peanuts and soybeans under the canopy, and French beans beside the hibiscus. The beans climb the hibiscus branches directly, removing the need for separate trellises. All of these are nitrogen-fixing plants; the peanuts and soybeans cover the ground to suppress weeds, creating an even richer food forest system.
Returning the peanut and bean stalks to the soil serves multiple purposes: providing mulch for weed suppression, returning nitrogen, and adding humus. When the life nourished by this land returns to the land, the soil becomes richer with every planting. All the elements for the sustainable operation of a food forest are here.
Beside the loquat tree, I planted ginger and maize. I had originally tried beetroot and fennel, but the germination rate was too low, and only a few survived. Since I cannot leave the soil bare and wait for weeds to grow, I planted soybeans, pumpkin, and sweet potato leaves. Legumes are my go-to “emergency substitutes”, but I will continue to cultivate fennel, as it is a perennial.
By the river, about half of the dozen black locust trees survived; by the second year they were five metres tall, and by the third they began to bloom, meaning they were ready to eat. The banana plants beside the locusts are low-maintenance, and the fish mint on the ground is exceptionally hardy and virtually maintenance-free. Closer to the ditch are golden needle mushrooms and torch ginger. As a side note, torch ginger is not an ornamental plant to me, but an ingredient—an essential part of my mixed vegetable soup.
From the riverside food forest, I have already enjoyed locust flowers, golden needles, torch ginger, and fish mint. I pray that next year I can harvest water bamboo, lotus flowers, lotus seed pods, and lotus root.
II. Lazy Plants
Fruit is the best investment for the long-termist farmer—a true first-class citizen of sustainability. In Villain’s Valley, I also cultivate large quantities of mint, dandelion, plantain, *Lysimachia clethroides*, and fish mint. These are all perennial rootstocks that serve both medicinal and culinary purposes. Not only do they provide a lifetime of harvests from a single planting, but they also act as living ground cover to prevent soil erosion and suppress weeds, reducing the need for weeding.
Other similar perennials include golden needle, bamboo shoot, and wild ginger. These are tall riparian plants that require more sunlight; they need some management and weeding in the first year, but once established, they can be left to their own devices. Their tillering ability is strong; by the second or third year, a single plant becomes a thick clump, leaving no room for weeds to take root.
Over time, the ranks of my low-maintenance plants expanded to include some self-sustaining annuals. For instance, the Yunnan wild tomato: as long as the fruit falls on the ground, new seedlings will sprout automatically the following year. Even the undigested tomato seeds in the droppings of curious birds can act as “sowers”.
Malabar spinach is similar; although it is an annual, it has the ability to self-seed.
Similarly, any peanut pods missed during harvest that fall into the soil will grow back on their own. For this reason, I planted some on the riverside slopes. The steeper areas are harder to manage and difficult to harvest, so I simply leave them be and wait for the new peanuts to appear next year.
I later discovered with delight that some rhizomatous crops can overwinter in the ground and sprout on their own the following year without needing to be replanted. Ginger and turmeric are used as seasonings and in limited quantities, so any leftovers are left in the earth to sprout in situ next year. What began as an unexpected surprise turned into a deliberate effort to experiment with more rhizomes.
Betel nut taro, a local speciality, can be planted on the field ridges to utilise sunlight in layers with the rice, creating a food forest system. Once harvested in autumn, their shelf life is limited; a slight oversight can lead to spotting and mould. However, if left in the ground, they can be dug up and eaten as needed and will remain fresh for half a year. That said, they require some care before winter; the parts exposed to the surface are susceptible not only to frost but also to rats, so they must be covered with soil to overwinter safely. While betel nut taro sprouts on its own the following year, there is one downside: although the tubers that grow after sprouting are edible, they lose their starchy, fluffy texture, which greatly diminishes the taste.
In Villain’s Valley, taste is the gold standard for truth, and laziness is a close second. If a crop is both delicious and low-maintenance, it is the absolute truth—something that must be grown in abundance. I have planted them all around the four sides of the paddy fields; except for one side of turmeric, the rest are betel nut taro, making full use of the available land to ensure a saturated supply.
III. Taste is the Only Thing That Matters
My dream is self-sufficiency—moving from the basic version of “eating whatever is available” towards the ideal version of “having whatever I want to eat”. Fruit is the hardest part to achieve. Most fruits take years to bear, but a foodie’s cravings cannot wait; this is the biggest hurdle to total self-sufficiency.
Foodies are naturally greedy for delicious flavours. Fresh flowers and fruits are often hotspots for pesticide contamination. I have never bought fresh flowers, so I don’t worry about that, but I cannot live without fruit. After achieving self-sufficiency in vegetables and staple crops in Villain’s Valley, the contradiction between insufficient home-grown fruit and the pesticide pollution of store-bought fruit became more pronounced. The cleaner my other daily foods became, the more conflicted I felt—until the hibiscus stepped up in its second year, saving me from my fruit famine.
I initially planted hibiscus because it is a die-hard low-maintenance crop; it provides a steady stream of blooms throughout its four-month flowering period and is versatile enough for stir-fries, omelettes, soups, and congees. I later discovered it could be eaten raw. Since “fruit is a plant’s edible reproductive organ intended for raw consumption”, the refreshing taste and pleasant texture of raw hibiscus placed it in the top tier of Villain’s Valley’s home-grown fruits.
For a foodie, merely being “edible” is not enough; it must be “delicious”.
Hibiscus not only serves as a direct fruit substitute but also pairs exquisitely with cold-soaked Roselle jam. The annual Roselle herb was the first species to achieve self-sufficiency in Villain’s Valley. After brewing the calyces into wine, they make a delicious cold-soaked jam, though I dare not eat too much of it—plain, low-sugar jam is so sour it sets your teeth on edge, while too much sugar makes it cloyingly sweet. With the addition of hibiscus, the jam’s sweetness and acidity are perfectly balanced, with each complementing the other. This year, I added perilla bayberry jam, providing another companion for the hibiscus and doubling my happiness.
I bought a mature waxberry tree, and it bore fruit in its second year, though the fruiting window is short—only a week. This is the third year of harvest, and over half the yield from my two trees has rotted away.
Waxberries are so tart that eating just a few can set your teeth on edge. I could manage a small handful a day at most, and I felt a growing sense of helplessness watching the rest rot. It wasn’t until the end of this year’s season that I finally discovered the best way to enjoy them: blending waxberry juice with perilla leaves.
Without adding any water, I put only waxberries and perilla into the food processor. A kilogram of waxberries yields one glass of additive-free juice, which I downed in one go. The waxberry season falls in mid-May, when the heat has already set in across Fujian; waxberry and perilla make for an exquisite summer cooler. My processor has adjustable speeds, and after some trial and error, I found a setting that extracts the juice from the pulp without crushing the pits. After juicing, I sort through the pits to feed the chickens, and the perilla-waxberry pulp is combined with sugar to brew wine. The pomace remaining after brewing is turned into a cold-steeped jam. Spreading that perilla-waxberry jam on hibiscus flowers, with a touch of passion fruit, is simply heavenly.
Another home-grown pairing that doubles the deliciousness is the white groundnut. Although both the white groundnut and the sweet potato are underground tubers, they are fundamentally different. The white groundnut, also known as the white tuber, is a legume. Its seeds are flat, resembling small broad beans—slightly larger than a soybean but smaller than a peanut—and it produces blue-purple flowers similar to those of the kidney bean.
This legume tuber is juicy and slightly sweet. Besides eating it plain, it’s wonderful in a mixed fruit salad. Dice the white groundnut, pair it with the perilla-waxberry cold-steeped jam, add a few scoops of passion fruit pulp, mix well, and chill in the fridge for two hours—absolutely unbeatable.
IV. Animals in the Food Forest
I have experimented with many types of yam. The first was a local variety called “Dàshǔ“, also known as the foot-board tuber. It has a high yield and a fluffy, mealy texture; both the white-skinned and purple-skinned versions are delicious. The only drawback is that they cannot overwinter in the soil—they rot after the first frost. To save them, they must be dug up, but the upside is that they store longer than taro. Even with my rather haphazard storage methods, they are easy to manage.
True yams are frost-resistant; whether they have white or red skin, they are fine. I can dig them up and eat them throughout the winter until May. Even as the yams begin to sprout in the ground, their texture remains largely unchanged.
As it turns out, the biggest challenge with yam-like crops isn’t planting, but harvesting. “In a mature food forest system, the primary job of the human is to harvest” sounds effortless, but with yams, it is quite the opposite. The better they grow, the deeper they dive into the earth. Yet they are delicate; a slight touch can bruise them, and a sharp tug can snap them. In my first year, not knowing what I was up against, I used every tool and gadget imaginable to dig up the Dàshǔ, only to end up surrendering in defeat on the ground.
Later, following a friend’s advice, I began growing them in woven bags filled with soil, so I could simply slice the bags open at harvest time. However, the yams didn’t seem happy inside; they all turned into miniature versions. If any expert has a clever trick for coexisting with yams, please do enlighten me.
Yams are climbers, and these “strangler” types shouldn’t be intercropped with other plants; they can only be paired with ducks. Fearing the ducks might ravage them if planted inside the coop, I planted a ring around the exterior. Once the vines grew tall, they climbed up to claim the full sunlight, while simultaneously providing shade for the ducks. In turn, the duck droppings fertilise the yams. It is a symbiotic relationship—another expression of the food forest.
In the Valley of Villains, the first thing I do upon waking is release the ducks. The moment the door opens, these flat-billed fellows rush out, flapping their wings as they charge into the pond, while I busy myself collecting eggs.
My second morning routine is a circuit of the garden. Patrolling the grounds in the early light is a pure joy; I can’t help but sing. Lately, the song is “You’ll cross the mountains, see the endless blue sky, as birds soar over the sea.” As I sang, I saw the ducks wobbling up the dam, attempting to cross the net. The lyrics gave me a start—I dare not let the ducks hear them. If this gang ever managed a jailbreak, I’d be in serious trouble.
From there, a never-ending day begins: planting this, harvesting that, endless weeding, and catching the apple snails (those rice-field killers that are a duck’s favourite snack), interspersed with plenty of daydreaming. My final task every evening is to herd the ducks, driving the happy pond-dwellers back to their coop. One must never let the ducks stay out overnight, otherwise, the eggs will be laid in the water. Here is a bit of obscure trivia: ducks lay their eggs at night, very close to dawn. My source for this? I naturally wake up around five and open the coop by six; ninety per cent of the eggs I collect are still warm.
Reflecting on it, my relationship with this tiny farm is entirely reciprocal. This land nurtures me; in return, I sow, harvest, weed, and prune the food forest, and use a dry toilet to return my own output to the soil as fertiliser. The life on this land sustains me, and I give back to the land. My very existence is a link in the food forest.
*Editor’s Note: Grandma Kouzi’s next piece is titled “Living in the Countryside: From Anxiety and Guilt to Peace of Mind,” where she will explore this topic further.
Editor: Xiao Dan