Rob: I am here with Ron McCord
in San Diego, California,
and he is going to show us how he turned
his neglected patch of desert
into a thriving food forest.
Ron: So six years ago, the land was bare,
scraped with a bulldozer.
Very little life in the soil, no worms
and almost no food being produced on site.
After six years of working the earth,
we have an abundance of food.
We are sharing with our community.
We are creating habitat for local wildlife.
Rob: So in front of us is tree collards.
And this is actually a perennial collard.
And I am curious, how old is this patch?
How old is this plant we are in?
Ron: It is about four years old.
And it has probably created ten times
this amount of food that we see here.
Rob: So this is a four year old Collard plant.
Ron: Yes
Rob: That is pretty cool.
So I lived in San Diego for about 5 years,
and I know that San Diego is a desert
and I see bananas growing here.
So do these actually produce bananas?
Ron: Yeah, we get about three to five
racks of bananas a year just off of this
stand of bananas here.
Rob: Bananas in the desert.
Ron: Five years ago, we planted this mulberry.
It was in a 1 gallon pot, maybe 2 feet tall,
and now it is over 20 feet.
Rob: Mulberry is one of my favorites
because both the mulberries
and the leaves are edible.
So it is a super productive tree.
Ron: So this is the African walnut.
It is also called weeping boer bean.
And one of its benefits is that
it provides canopy for the food forest.
This was one of the original trees
on the property when we got here.
And in a food forest and in permaculture,
every plant has multiple purposes,
and this one has a pretty unique one.
Ron is going to help me out.
So this produces an incredible amount of nectar
which is enjoyable for us,
but it is great for the bees as well.
So I am all sticky from the last plant still,
the African walnut.
There are over a hundred species
of plants that are edible, medicinal
and beneficial to the other species
that we share the earth with.
And what do we have here?
Ron: Here we have popcorn cassia,
which is a nitrogen fixer.
It is chop...
We use it for chop and drop
for bringing fertility to the soil.
And it is the host plant for
the cloudless sulfur butterfly.
Rob: Plus, it gets the name popcorn cassia
because it smells like buttered popcorn.
Ron: Here we have bouillon bush.
It gets its name because it literally
smells and tastes like bouillon cubes.
Rob: That is a first for me.
This here is Mexican honeysuckle,
Ron: and the leaves can be boiled down
to make an indigo blue dye.
Rob: And you can suckle on the flowers.
Ron: Here we have the macadamia nut tree.
It was one of the only trees on
the property when we moved here.
It produces about 600 pounds
of macadamias a year.
And it always has fruit or flowers year round.
So here we have a fuerte avocado.
When we moved on to the property,
it was not producing at all.
It took about three years.
But now we are getting up to 200 pounds
of avocados a year from this tree alone.
Rob: So all of this abundance that you see
that has been created over the last six years,
all of the food, all of the medicine,
all of the plants that are beneficial
to other insects and animals,
all of the plants here are made possible
through food waste, mulch,
and harvesting rainwater.
Ron: We have used no additional fertilizer
for any of the plants on the property.
It is all made using bokashi food waste
and local arborists waste.
100% of the food waste produced
on site goes back into our soil.
We also get food waste from the local community
that goes back into the site here.
Rob: So that is keeping all of this food waste
out of the landfill emitting methane,
and instead turning it into soil.
Ron: Which turns into food for us to eat.
Rob: And the other ingredient is mulch.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Ron: So there are multiple sources of mulch
that we get here in the city.
One is the local arborists.
They produce all of the waste
from the tree systems
and that would otherwise go to methane digesters
or local compost producers.
But we try and get it fresh here on site
so it can go straight back into the soil.
Rob: Today, most houses are designed to actually
flow the water away from the land.
But here on Ron's property,
his job is to keep all of the water on the property.
Ron: Yeah. So first we use the roof
and the downspouts
to draw water into the grow zones.
We also use terraces and swales
to direct water into the key planting areas.
Rob: So virtually every drop of water
that falls on this property
stays on this property, right?
Ron: Yes.
Rob: But you have also come up
with a really creative way to get
more water onto this land, right?
Ron: Yes.
Our house is strategically placed
where the run on from the street
can be directed onto the property.
So we get almost double the water
that we would normally get in some areas
where we grow our plants.
Rob: So that is how Ron worked with this
neglected plot of land and turned it into
the abundant food forest that you see today.
So, Ron, when you got started with this,
did you know that you could do this?
Ron: Not at all.
I had a little garden.
We moved here.
And watching videos like this inspired me
to try some things and learn as I went
And now look where I am today.
Rob: So Ron is proof that with some hard work
and dedication, that the power is in our hands
to regenerate our soil and our earth.
Thanks, Ron.
Ron: Thank you.
Rob Greenfield Films