My mentor: I wanna do a wall garden, because it doesnt take up too much space
Me, already vibrating from the dopamine and adrenaline: Let’s talk about espaliers
okay, so espaliers are beyond sexy, they are so unbelievably productive
The basics are just… pruning growing trees so they are more 2 dimensional, usually placed against walls. It takes a few years to form/ raise, but they are much easier to maintain than free growing trees in the long run.
Not only is it more accessible, easier to harvest fruit, but the design has a double purpose; the walls hold and release heat that can keep warm-weathered plants alive during Northen winters!
MY favorite espalier concept involves grafting, such that each section of the tree grows a different fruit!
so you take a tree concept like this
but you graft it like this
one professor somewhere created The Tree of 40 Fruit, a single tree that grows forty different types of stone fruit including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and almonds. If you were gardening a courtyard or small backyard, you could have a grafted espalier tree on each wall or fence and use the space in the middle for veggies
do some herb towers designed like this
keep a couple chickens to eat the bugs and give you eggs, keep a couple goats to give you dairy and maybe the occasional mutton chop, the goats and the chickens return nitrates to the soil in the form of manure, hire your goats out to local property management teams that need blackberries and stuff dealt with (goats will even very happily eat poison oak) to defray the cost of feeding and caring for the goats.
next get one of these
but don’t swim in it put a bunch of catfish and freshwater mussels/clams and then use the pool for green waste (almost anything you would put down the garbage disposal will either be happily eaten by the catfish or be food for bugs that the catfish will then eat) and the mussels and clams filter the water to help maintain a healthy environment for the catfish and then you can have some fish and shellfish in your diet too.
Between the fish, the goats, the chickens, and maybe a small compost box, all your biodegradable waste should now be used up as a resource, meanwhile you’re providing a huge chunk of your own diet.
Vertical wheat growing designs are currently still somewhat lacking I believe, but would round out things nicely. Keep a couple bee boxes and you’ve got pollinators and sugar too.
I mean, not that I’ve spent any time on this fantasy or anything. Carry on.
