Your plants need their companions..

Companion planting is very important in permaculture and in food forest gardening. Although plants can survive without help, they do much better when they have other plants around them. Trees especially grow in nature among other plants and trees, or in Forests. Some trees are great dynamic accumulators on their own and some even fix nitrogen in the soil to fee the surrounding plants, but many not only need companion plants but also some will produce little or no fruits without another tree or plant to pollinate their flowers.

When you buy your plants, you should always read the information tags to find out if they need one or two other pollinators planted nearby. You may be fortunate to have another tree of the same species that will pollinate your tree, or maybe your neighbors do, but if not you are going to have to buy the pollinator for your tree or plant or you won't have any fruit.

First we'll talk about dynamic accumulators. What they are, are plants that send their roots deep into the soil and draw up nutrients from many many feet down in the soil and

make those nutrients available to themselves and to their companion plants that are around them. When the plant parts die such as the leaves or branches of a tree falling, or the leaves of a plant or it's fruit falling, the resulting mulch will feed the plants and worms and soil around them, and also they exude nutrients from their roots into the soil to feed nearby roots of trees and plants. Many dynamic accumulators are evident by their long spiked roots such as diakon radish, horseradish, burdock, chicory, mustard, etc. Here is a list taken from Gaia's Garden book chapter 6 of many dynamic accumulators, for more information on these see the book ISBN # 978-1-60358-029-8

Alfalfa, apple, beech, alyssum, bentgrass, birch, borage bracken fern, buckwheat, caraway, carrot, cattail, chamomile, chickweed, chicory, chives, cleavers, clover, coltsfoot, comfrey, dandelion dock,dogwood, duckweed, fat hen, fennel, fescue, flax, garlic,, geranium, hickory, horsetail, kelp, lambs quarters, lemon balm, licorice, maples, marigold, meadow sweet, mullein nettles, oak, parsley mint, pigweed, plantain, primrose, purslane, rapeseed,  salad burnet, savory, shepherds purse, sorrel, sow thistle sunflower, spurge, strawberry, tansy, thistle, valerian vetch, walnut, willow, yarrow.

You can see that forest floors are covered not only with plantlife but also fallen trees, logs, and brushpiles. These should be duplicated on your property as well if you have the room for them. Brushpiles will provide shelter and food and nesting grounds for beneficials, and logs are a great place for newts, lizards and snakes which will eat a lot of the damaging insects on your property. Also returning nutrients to the soil as they rot. Most people won't want to have dying or dead trees standing on their property but if you have an out of the way corner, please leave them for the wood peckers and tree nesting and cavity nesting birds and animals.

In another post we'll talk about other types of companion plants, such as nitrogen fixers, as well as other things we should have around our property including rocks, stones, gravel, mud, water, etc.