Earlier this month, I disappeared from social media (and much of the world!)

Not because I was taking a break. But because I thought I might be losing the food forest.

Back in early spring, everything looked incredible, lush and healthy!

But by the end of May, the fruit trees were stressed, the greens were covered in aphids, and diseases were showing up where I’d never seen them before.

Then the shoelace acacias, trees that are supposed to thrive in the desert, started dying.

That’s when I knew something was seriously wrong.

So I spent nearly all of June with my hands in the soil, taking time to listen to what the garden was trying to tell me.

And the answer surprised me.

The very thing I’d been recommending for years…had quietly become part of the problem.

Since starting this food forest in 2020, woodchips were exactly what the garden needed. They protected the soil from the wind and sun, held moisture through our long dry summers, fed fungi, and slowly increased the soil’s fertility. It’s hard for me to imagine creating this food forest without them, they were so essential to kickstarting life (without spending a fortune) in this extremely sandy soil.

But over time, I kept adding more woodchips faster than the old layers could break down.

And eventually, the thick layer of partially decomposed woodchips became almost like a giant hard sponge sitting on top of the soil. Moisture stayed trapped in the mulch while the soil beneath became bone dry.

But the lesson here isn’t that woodchips are bad.

The lesson is that the practices that help a young garden thrive aren’t always the ones a mature garden needs.

What I learned spending most of June in the garden is that the food forest has entered a new stage. It doesn’t really need woodchips anymore and instead it’s now ready to support more plants to do that work instead.

One in particular is vetiver grass.

I recently brought home a Sunshine cultivar of vetiver grass, divided it into dozens of slips, and planted them along the contours of the hillsides in the food forest and within ~50cm of each fruit tree.

Vetiver grass is often called a miracle grass. They naturally create terraces that help prevent erosion and runoff, and their incredibly deep roots help guide water deeper into the soil. They can also be chopped and dropped in place to add mulch to the garden.

I broke up the matted mulch, worked in composted manure and added these grasses and a bunch of annual vegetables to food forest. Not only does this mean a bigger harvest in the summer and fall, but it also gets more roots into the soil, which creates more pathways for water to infiltrate.

It’s been more work than I usually put into the garden this time of year, but I’ve really enjoyed spending the early mornings with the birds, connecting with the plants, and seeing the garden quickly spring back to life. And the work has reminded me that gardening isn’t really about mastering techniques. It’s about building a relationship.

Every season the garden changes. Every year it asks different things of us. The work is paying close enough attention to notice when yesterday’s solution has quietly become today’s problem. As it’s easy to mistake “worked before” for “will always work.”

As I was pulling back the layers of mulch, I couldn’t stop thinking about how often this happens outside the garden too.

We hold tightly to the things that once helped us grow. We assume that because something worked before it must always be the right answer. But life doesn’t really work that way because living things don’t stay the same. Gardens don’t. And neither do we.

This summer, I’m using a lot less woodchips and instead focusing on grasses and ground covers that can do the same job but better. And it’s left me wondering: What else am I still holding onto simply because it once worked?

Maybe that’s the real work, not finding the perfect system, but staying present enough to notice when it’s time to let something go.

🧡 Erin

P.S I've recently revamped my Food Forest Design Workbook with new exercises to help you hone your observation skills and make the most of the resources in your garden. You can get that for free over at Goldifarms.com. Happy gardening.