Episode 4 of the VIVA Quinta transformation. Why we're planting poplar, eucalyptus, and casuarina to build soil for our future food forest in the Azores.
The thing about building a food forest is that you can't start with the fruit trees. You start with the soil — and if the soil isn't ready, you start with the trees that will make it ready. In Episode 4, Tiago and I walk through the part of the quinta we're preparing for agroforestry, and we talk about the three trees doing the quiet, unglamorous work underneath the project. None of them are trees we'll harvest from. They're the trees that will feed the trees we harvest from.
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Three species are doing the soil-building work on this section of the farm:
These are fast-growing biomass trees. They pull nutrients up from deep in the volcanic soil, fix nitrogen, hold water through their root systems, and produce enormous amounts of organic matter year over year. They're not in the ground because of what they yield — they're in the ground because of what they leave behind.
The principle is straightforward — and old. Instead of trucking in synthetic fertilizer to feed the soil, we plant fast-growing trees that build fertility on their own. Then we chop them back. The mulch breaks down where it falls. Worms move in. Fungi colonize the wood. Microorganisms get to work. Carbon goes into the ground instead of into the atmosphere. The soil gets richer with each cycle.
The farm doesn't import fertility. It grows it.
You're not feeding the plants. You're feeding the soil that feeds the plants."
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In a few years, the biomass trees will have done their job. We'll thin them out — selectively, gradually — and the fruit trees, the nut trees, and the layered canopy of a real food forest will already have what they need to thrive. The biomass trees won't be the legacy. The soil they built will be.
This is slow farming. It's also, we believe, the only kind of farming that makes sense on land like this. The volcanic soil of São Miguel rewards patience, and it punishes shortcuts. Doing it the long way is the only way it works.
Watch Episode 4 above. If you missed the earlier episodes, you can find the whole series on our channel. Subscribe to follow the transformation as it unfolds.