Low Maintenance and Edible Landscapes for Residential Homes
Whether you want a vegetable garden and food forest, or a chicken coop and bees, we can help you figure out the details, and we know what works from experience.
Food Forest – A Food Forest produces more food from a smaller space than normal orchards or gardens. By planting crops that occupy different vertical spaces, we can take advantage of many layers of production.
Food Forests are a fun and family oriented way to grow your food. By mimicking a natural forest, we can create edible gardens that are adventures in foraging.
7 layers of a Food Forest:
- Roots and Tubers: ex. potato and yacon
- Mushrooms: ex. shiitake and oyster
- Annuals, Herbs, and Grasses: ex. squash, marigolds, strawberries, and lemongrass
- Shrubs: ex. guava and blueberry
- Small Trees: ex. citrus and
- Upper Canopy Trees: ex. avocado and macadamia
- Vines: ex. grapes and kiwifruit
We use only organic methods, so you can be sure that your food will be healthy and nutritious. Furthermore, we will help your to maximize the health and quality of your soil through proper composting and fertility management.
The Food Forest is treated as an ecosystem, and is designed to create a balance between pests and predators. Flowering plants offer beneficial insects habitat so that other not so beneficial insects are kept in check.
Certain plants grow better near each other, and others do not. Commonly called
Companion Planting
, plant selection is vital to ensure that each plant is assisting its neighbor.
Animals are an important part of the system. We create habitat for lizards and birds, who also help with pest control. Bees and chickens are a great addition, providing other ecosystem services while giving us food.
Santa Barbara Organics has over 15 years experience designing and planting Food Forests. Please contact us to create your own Edible Oasis.
- Chicken Coops – Not only do chickens provide you eggs and meat, they are wonderful creatures to have around. They are also a great addition to your landscape as they can help you prepare your land by weeding and fertilizing it with manure. Their foraging also functions as a great pest control because they will eat almost anything: from fruit flies to fallen fruit.
- Compost Systems – In Nature, there is no such thing as waste. Everything is food for something else. From worm bins (vermicompost) to Soil FoodWeb® style hot piles, we can help you turn your waste into valuable soil!
- Hardscaping – Hardscaping refers to landscape features such as walkways, decks, fences, ponds, firepits, and more. Wherever possible, we utilize sustainable and local materials to reduce our carbon footprint.
- Rainwater Harvesting – California is currently experiencing a massive drought; therefore, it is more important now than ever to harvest as much rainwater as possible.
- Greywater Systems – In California you can legally install Laundry to Landscape greywater systems that water you yard with your wash water. Water is so precious we must use it as many times as we can before we send it back into the earth.
- Irrigation – We can help you install or retrofit your irrigation system to maximize efficiency and even deliver fertilizer through the system (fertigation).