One thing I’ve learned building my food forest is that plant selection starts with the site—not the plant. For example, I didn’t start with serviceberry and build a row around it. I started with a location: • Moderately moist soil• Good drainage• Pond influence• Native ecosystem fit Then I looked for plants that naturally belong there. The result became a row built around: 🌳 Serviceberry🌿 Bayberry🍂 Spicebush Instead of asking: “What plant do I want?” I try to ask: “What plants want to be here?” I’ve found that question leads to better designs, healthier plants, and fewer future problems.

Yesterday I finished the first two rows of the food forest. I’m officially in maintenance mode until late fall, which is a great feeling. It’s not perfect, and not everything rooted, but the system is established and, most importantly, there are roots in the ground. There are still a few small projects left—building borders, weed eating, and continuing to move mulch to create a thick layer that suppresses weeds and feeds the soil. If I end up with a surplus of wood chips, I’ll start laying out future beds now to give them a head start for fall and spring planting. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to start with a manageable plan. It’s far easier to successfully establish a few beds than to spread yourself across ten. Another lesson: grass pressure is no joke. The sooner you address it, the less maintenance you’ll have down the road. Progress in a food forest isn’t measured by perfection. It’s measured by roots in the ground, soil being built, and systems becoming more established each year. 🌱

We have been talking about checking moisture before watering, usually down around 2 to 4 inches. That is a good habit to maintain, although as we move into the strongest sun and longest days of the year (summer solstice), there are also daily surface clues we can notice on our morning garden walks. The soil surface itself can teach us a lot. The surface takes the first hit from heat, hard rain, wind, and foot traffic. If it crusts over, water may start running off instead of soaking in. This tells us the surface structure is closing up. If it cracks open, the bed is telling us it has dried, tightened, and started pulling apart. This is most common in clay soil, especially when bare soil gets wet, then dries hard in the heat. If the soil under the mulch feels heavy, stays wet too long, or smells stale instead of earthy, it may need more air and less moisture. Roots need water, but they also need oxygen. If the mulch is thinning, the soil is slowly becoming more exposed to heat, evaporation, weeds, and pounding rain. At the same time though, if the mulch is disappearing, that can also be a good clue that worms, fungi, insects, and microbes are working it through. As organic matter becomes thin between plants, those open spaces become weak points in the garden bed. They lose moisture faster, heat up quicker, invite more weed pressure, and take the hardest hit when rain comes in fast. These are simple clues, but they teach us a lot about how the bed is functioning. We do not have to diagnose the whole garden at once, although it is important to notice these clues as they begin to appear so small corrections can be made before they become large issues. This week, pick one area and look closely at the surface. Lift the mulch in a few places, smell the soil, and look for crusting, cracks, worms, roots, dry pockets, soggy spots, thinning mulch, or bare patches. Then take one small action. Add a little compost or fresh mulch where the surface looks tired. Keep mulch pulled back from plant stems if the rain pushes it too tight. Gently loosen a sealed surface around the plants cultivating lightly to help water enter and air return.

That word gets used a lot, and it can mean different things depending on where someone is standing. For me, regenerative starts with one question, "Is this system gaining life over time?" Is the soil becoming more alive? Is water soaking in better? Are roots going deeper? Are worms, fungi, insects, and birds showing up? Is the garden becoming less dependent on constant rescue? In a backyard, regenerative does not have to mean a perfect system. It may start with one covered bed, one compost pile, one perennial plant, one pollinator patch, or one family learning to observe before reacting. When you hear the word “regenerative,” what comes to mind first?

As America celebrates 250 years, it’s worth remembering that the Revolutionary War wasn’t just fought on battlefields—it even changed what people drank. After the Boston Tea Party, many colonists boycotted imported British tea and turned to local plants to create what became known as “Liberty Tea.” These herbal blends were gathered from forests, fields, and homesteads across the colonies. Some of the most well-known Liberty Tea herbs included: 🌿 New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus) – Perhaps the most famous Liberty Tea plant, its leaves were dried and brewed as a direct replacement for imported tea. 🌿 Sweet Fern (Comptonia peregrina) – A fragrant native shrub with a warm, earthy flavor that was commonly used in herbal beverages. 🌿 Bee Balm (Monarda didyma) – Also called Oswego Tea, this mint-family plant offered a bright, aromatic flavor and became a popular substitute for black tea. 🌿 Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) – Known for its refreshing taste and aroma, wintergreen leaves were often blended into colonial tea mixtures. 🌿 Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) – The roots and bark were widely used for teas and tonics long before and after the Revolution. What fascinates me most is that these plants weren’t chosen simply because imported tea was unavailable. They represented a return to local knowledge, regional plants, and self-reliance. In many ways, Liberty Tea was an early expression of the homesteading spirit that many of us are rediscovering today. I plan to incorporate all these plant into my system!