The man who turned 3 hectares into an abundant Bay of Plenty food forest
From cherimoya and white sapote to Brazilian cherries, Kris Edgington is growing a mouth-watering array of food on his productive Bay of Plenty property.
Most of us have heard of a veggie garden, but what exactly is a food forest? Kris Edgington knows more about them than most.
He's got a thriving, self-sustaining property filled with nutritious and delicious kai in Te Puke, Bay of Plenty.
Edgington is a police detective by day, but spends the rest of his time spreading the word about something called syntropic agroforestry - a form of food forestry.
Kris Edgington cutting a biomass plant - Mexican sunflower - at his Te Puke property.
Kris Edgington
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A food forest is a sustainable system, which uses successional planting to build soil health, he told RNZ’s Afternoons.
“It's not a veggie garden where you have to tend to it every year, it's something that is going to just get better and better and better as time goes on,” he said.
Edgington has recently returned from a study trip Brazil, a world-leader in sustainable food production, where he honed his food forestry skills.
He’s putting those skills into practice on his Te Puke property, where what was once a relatively barren 3 hectares is now full of food.
“It's second-stage Kanuka, the majority of it with a nice, big gully.
“When I first arrived there, there was only about two or three edible plants, fruit species on it, and now it is absolutely just chockers.”
So, what is the secret? A kind of layering takes place, he said, allowing the soil to build in complexity and quality.
“As the soil starts to build and move from a bacterial soil through to a fungal component, it then lays the next succession for the next variety of plants to thrive.
“As the system just builds and builds and builds, the soil becomes better and better, and then the plants in it just thrive and evolve – it’s called ecological succession.”
The system is allowing him to grow a surprisingly wide variety of food.
“Plants that a lot of people may never have heard of before like cherimoya, white sapote, black sapote, also known as chocolate pudding…the inga bean, which is the ice cream bean, if you mix those two together - absolutely amazing.
“Pawpaws, apples, ugli fruit, dragon fruit, jaboticaba, which is a Brazilian grape, Brazilian cherries.
“I've got over 10 different varieties of different bananas growing here, and a number of pineapples - the list just goes on.”
Once set up, a food forest system doesn’t require much on-going work, he said.
“It's actually a lot less work, once the initial inputs have been done, than mowing the lawn.”
Kris Edgington's property is abundant with food plants such as banana, pineapple, strawberry guava, Arabica coffee, jaboticaba, papino, and macadamia.
Kris Edgington
Some occasional strategic pruning will be needed, he said.
“As the systems grows, because we're looking at trying to optimise photosynthesis through all the different layers, or what we call in syntropic agroforestry, strata.
“Each plant has its own unique need for a certain type of light, whether it be direct sunlight or partial sunlight, so, when you do a reset, basically you're pulling the plants and pruning them into where they want to grow, for optimal growth, where they want to be.”
From farm to small garden, food forestry could make the country more food self-sufficient, he said.
“If we can get food forests growing in every single backyard, the amount of food production we’ll have in times of need, and of course, every other day as well, we're going to have a sustainable food production system.”
Kris Edgington will be talking about syntropic agroforestry at the Flavours of Plenty Festival running 27 March to 13 April.
