Food Forest Folks LLC

24/07/2025

Mountain View Mangos! 🥭 We got 12 mangos this year and we are so stoked. I'm not sure but we may be the first to have a fruiting mango in rainy Mt.View. What's even more amazing is that this is only a 4 year old seedling!

This is Mangifera rubripetala, a species of mango from Borneo which has a similarly wet climate to Hawaii. Other "jungle" mangos are Kasturi, Kuini, and Lalijiwa. Mango seedlings can take over a decade to fruit if left unmanaged, but if you prune them properly and fertilize with lime and potassium you can have them fruiting almost as fast as a grafted tree!

We currently have Kasturi mango seedlings for sale in the nursery, which is the best variety for high elevations! We will have a select few rubripetala and Lalijiwa seedlings for sale in a few months, and maybe some grafted ones too! And we are always happy to help prune your mango trees 🌿

22/07/2025

Year 4 of our homestead and we are in abundance, check out how much growth has happened on our driveway berm in only 5 months! 🌴 We built this berm out of local soil and rock using an excavator and it's insanely fertile! It's a Syntropic-lite system that relies only on local mulch, we've never fertilized it and it honestly surprised us how fast everything is growing. The berm has bananas planted every 20ft, and alternating every 20ft between them is a fruit tree, including: Kuini mango, kasturi mango, lychee, santol, Mt. Apple, and more. 🥭 There's also tithonia, crotalaria, bele spinach, and some natives like pohinahina and hibiscus. It feels really good to use the excavator as a tool for food foresting after battling the jungle with a chainsaw for 3 years. We also cleared an acre of guava and albezia, dug 2 ponds, built a stick pile barricade/privacy wall/fence, stopped flood runoff, and started a road to the back acre. We also made piles of soil, of which we have the equivalent of multiple dump truck loads. We are eating our first cacao fruits and they are super sweet with almost no bitterness, and the cassava/uhi/air potato garden is going bananas! 🍌 Our property is for sale, if you're interested contact Dayna at DaynaRobertson.com. If you are interested in consultation, design, buying fruit trees, landscaping, or excavation work dm us or email at [email protected] 🌿 more YouTube content is on the way including a before and after tour of our excavation process, stay tuned!

11/06/2025

Our new video series with Off Grid Neighbors is live! We were shocked and honored at many people saw our Food Forest 101 series, it's been wonderful to share our knowledge with the community and people across the globe! We always have a blast talking about agroforestry with Tony and Rain. This is part 2 of our updated food forest tour, check out part 1 if you want to see how we are building food forests with an excavator. Also our property is for sale, send us a message if you're interested 😃

This land is for sale!https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/16-1588-Io-Kea-Rd-Kurtistown-HI-96760/2052937515_zpid/

01/05/2025

Are you tired of growing mangos that don't produce? Tired of watching your flowers and fruit succumb to the rain? If so you might enjoy growing jungle mangos! We are over 1000ft ft in rainy Puna, and it's a little early to say but it's looking like we will get some fruit this year! And this is only a 4 year old seedling!

Technically some would say these aren't mangos as they are a different species than the common Magnifera indica. Rapoza, Kona King, Keitt, Julie; these are all cultivars of the same species, of which there are hundreds or thousands. But Magnifera indica is native to the Indian subcontinent which features a long yearly dry period that the mango prefers to flower in. That's why they don't do particularly well in rainy places, especially when the rain comes in the winter/spring when they are flowering. But there are many other species of Magnifera that are from rainy, tropical environments that are much more adapted to anthracnose, the dreaded fungus that molds the flowers and fruit. These species such as Kasturi, Kuini, Lalijiwa, and the featured Rubripetala, are much more resistant to anthracnose.

These jungle mangos are often polyembryonic, meaning the seed produces multiple trees. Polyembryonic seeds are really neat because the vigorous sprouts are actually clones of the parent tree, meaning you can grow them without worrying about inferior fruit(and you get 2-4 trees per seed). Mango seedlings can take many years to flower and fruit if left untended, but ours is only 4 years young! The key to inducing flowers is pruning/tipping and giving them lots of Potassium. We tipped this plant a few months ago, piled a bunch of coconut husks around the base, and peed on the husks. This made the coconut husk compost much faster and release the abundant Potassium they hold. If you'd like to buy jungle mangos seedlings from us send us a DM or come see our booth at Maku'u market, we are there every Sunday! We are also for hire to come prune your fruit trees and do consultations as well as excavating your property to build a food forest!

23/04/2025

Happy Earth day! To celebrate we planted a mamey sapote, Jamaican cherry, dwarf wi apple, puakenikeni, Maui purple dragon fruit, lilikoi(purple x Jamaican), and some cherry tomatoes. We've been really busy the last year learning to run an excavator and it's finally paying off. We used the machine to build this 300ft berm of soil and rock and trees, which has kept the pigs out and allows us to plant trees much more easily. Everything planted in the berm really loves the deep soil and the drainage. Our goal is to use the excavator to build food forests for our clients in record time!

05/03/2025

If you want to grow food without a lot of time or inputs, you might want to try growing cassava. Simply stick a cassava cutting in the ground and its stalk will grow to around 7ft while a starchy tuber forms underground. It has quite a few vitamins and minerals, has some protein and not much fat, and is full of resistant starch which is good for blood sugar and gut health. It has twice the calories of a sweet potato and can fare well in poor soil conditions. When given optimal conditions one plant can produce over 50lbs! It's also delicious and makes a great gluten-free flour and wheat replacement.
We like to fry cassava wedges in coconut oil, super delicious and very filling.

When spaced together tightly cassava can outgrow and shade w**ds. Knowing this I planted them very close together, 6 inches x 3ft rows. They successful shaded out any w**d trying to creep into the garden, and we havent pulled any w**ds since we planted them 6 months ago. Now we are thinning them out in phases, allowing the remaining plants to grow bigger. Every time I dig a plant out I fill the hole with rotten wood and coconut husks. This system has produced so many delicious meals with such little effort, we will definitely always be growing this amazing plant.

25/02/2025

Is it Bunchy Top Virus? Though the symptoms appear similar I believe it's a different pest: the banana weevil. The banana weevil burrows through and feeds on living tissue of the corn and stems of a banana plant. When a banana patch has been growing in the same spot for multiple years, there are most likely banana weevils there. Here are a few different helpful methods in management:

When a banana rack is harvested, the culm(stalk) and corm(root) should be cut into small pieces. The goal is for the plant material to dry out and no longer act as food and lodging for the pests. The pieces can also be used to make a weevil trap. I made the mistake of not chopping up the last culm properly and it was absolutely full of weevil burrows.

Move your banana patches to reduce weevil density. Adult weevils are not good fliers and do not travel too far. If you have the space you can place banana bunches strategically around your land while quarantining them from the other bunches. Once a patch has been going for a few years it can be moved and something else can grow there.

To avoid transporting weevils when planting a new banana bunch, it's best practice to carve the roots and corm back until there are no signs of weevil burrows. The corm(roots) can then be additionally soaked in a bleach or hydrogen peroxide solution diluted in water for a few hours. The corm should then be allowed to dry and scab over before planting.

Heavily feeding your bananas will help to compensate for the weevil damage done to the plant. As long as the plant gets large amounts of mulch, compost, or fertilizer it can "outgrow" the destruction of it's tissues. This also reduces the stress chemicals released by the plant that can attract pests. As the saying goes: "a healthy plant is an invisible plant". Mexican sunflower has been shown to have weevil repelling effects, there may be other helpful mulch crops with insecticidal properties as well.

21/02/2025

This is one of our biggest banana racks to date, but it's also the least cared for. How did it get so big considering we basically ignored it? This banana grows right next to where the muscovies eat their dinner every night. All of the bits of layer feed that fall on the ground and would normally be wasted are effortless fertilizer for the nearby banana plants. It's also adjacent to a frequented pathway the ducks use daily to get to their pond. By utilizing animal psychology you can design a system that saves you time and energy. If you have any kind of animal pen, you can plant directly adjacent to it and the plants will use the excess nutrients that could otherwise be lost as gasses(such as Nitrogen and Carbon) or to rain runoff. Some of this can be fed back to the animals: for example you could plant Mexican sunflower next to rabbit cages, this creates a cycle where the sunflower taps into the fertilizer that falls to the ground which is recycled as rabbit food.

Animals often like to hang out at high points in the landscape to give them a better view of predators and/or prey. So if you plant something on a small mesa or mound you may find your animals frequenting that spot more(and depositing fertilizer exactly where it's needed). You can observe where your animals prefer to hang out and plant something nearby. Some animals like to hide in cozy safe spaces, and pretty much every animal at some point will take refuge from the midday sun. Muscovies don't like the hot midday sun and will often take shelter under a vehicle. Recently I got tired of stepping in the copious land mines that were surrounding our vehicle,(I mean come on that's the last place we want duck turds!😜). We started throwing food in the cassava garden and in only a week it's become their favorite hangout spot. Now their "deposits" are getting cashed at the appropriate location, that's how you work smarter, not harder 😎 if you want your animals to frequent a certain area, simply feed them there daily and they will start checking that area for food regularly.

17/02/2025

Exciting times on our homestead, we are seeing some precocious flowering from our seedling fruit trees! Most mango and avocado seedlings take 7 - 10 years to start flowering; these trees are both less than 4 years old. If you want to understand why pruning induces flowering, then read on!

You may have heard that a mango seedling will take over 10 years to start fruiting, which is somewhat correct. In the wild a large tree like a mango will direct its energy into growing as tall and wide as possible before fruiting. The tree must compete its way to obtain a certain amount of solar real estate so it isn't overgrown and shaded by other trees. Once the tree is less concerned with outcompeting nearby trees for a physical niche, it can focus its energy into reproducing and spreading its seeds. But if some sort of disturbance like a wind storm breaks a significant amount of branches before the tree has fully grown, that tree knows it cannot reach its full height capacity and must start its reproductive journey earlier before it becomes shaded.

The apical meristems of a tree's branches send giberellin ("plant growth hormone") down to the tree which encourages it to grow leaves and stems. So if you "tip" the end of each branch (as seen in the mango photo) you reduce the giberellin and increase the chance of flowering. Tipping vertical branches is especially important. I could go into more detail but I'll leave it there for simplicity's sake. I also put coral around the base of the mango to add calcium, but more importantly raise the pH to increase bioavailability of cations like P and K. And also gave it rabbit p**p and urine. The avocado seedling has only been fertilized with stick and log mulch including charcoal tree, albezia, and Mexican sunflower. It's never gotten any manure or lime, pretty impressive!

I hope this inspires some folks to prune your trees! If you'd like assistance with fruit tree pruning or you'd like a consultation send us a dm! We also sell anthracnose resistant mango seedlings like Kasturi and Kuini. 🌿

09/11/2024

Check out part 2 of our rare fruit tour! Did you know cinnamon is the bark of a tree? Did you know there is a purple relative of the rambutan called pulisan that tastes even better than rambutan? Did you know the Wi apple was brought here by the Polynesians, and tastes like mango and pineapple? The rare fruit rabbit hole is so fun and interesting 😍

We talk about Cinnamon, his various Artocarpus family members (Marang, Kwai Muk, and Lacucha), Sacha Mango, Pulasan, Bolivian Mangosteen (Achacha) and there'...

24/10/2024

Today's harvest: 2 racks of dwarf namwah and the first white guava of the season. I'm so thankful to past me for planting these! It's hard to believe I planted this guava 3 years ago, when I planted it 3 years seemed so far away. It's always a good idea to plant early bearing food first when you start your food forest. The pure and natural dopamine hit you get from harvesting such an abundance of food from your own backyard just makes you want to plant more! The thing I'm most proud about is that these fruits were grown with very little monetary inputs. For the last year our plants have mostly been fertilized with byproducts of our homestead: water from the duck pond, whatever duck poo was deposited under the plants(the guava is growing in the duck pen), our urine and composted humanure, and w**d mulch like albezia and tithonia. A little coral and coconut husks are the only other input.

21/10/2024

Check out our first food forest tour ever with rare fruit specialist Oscar Jaitt!!! This mature food forest features rare fruit from all over the world. We also get into the nitty gritty details of how to grow some of the trees; pollination, soil, fertilizing, sunlight preference, etc. The final video in the series will be focused on homesteading. There's a lot of reasons to grow rare plants as we learned firsthand from Oscar. Some of them taste as good or better than common commercial fruits, and therefore have potential as future cash crops. Some of them have medicinal uses, and some have rare nutritional qualities that make them excellent for self sufficiency. If you enjoy this, subscribe and stay tuned for part 2!!!

Join us on a walk about with rare fruit collector Oscar Jaitt in his orchard! In part one he talks about Jaboticaba, Lychee, and Durian, with much, much more...