Amazing Surprise Guest - John Valenzuela!

Amazing Guest Speaker - Thanks John Valenzuela!

Who knew - our community had a food forest and food history expert on our hands. John Valenzuela joined the classes of Sustainable Agriculture this past Tuesday to give a pretty awesome presentation. Do you know what a food forest is? Or what a disturbance regime is? How about peaches, where did they originate from? Well, here is a pretty good opportunity for me to give you some knowledge not only about John Valenzuela, but also about something everybody loves: FOOD!

John Valenzuela grew up in the city, not being exposed to a vegetable garden until the age of 17. His first experience to a vegetable garden wasn't by choice either, it was used as punishment. A surprise to everyone when John decided to continue working with vegetables, permaculture, and food history. John's first book he read regarding agriculture was our own textbook, How to Grow More Vegetables. Mr. Stewart definitely picked the right book for us to learn by!

So, a food forest, what the heck is that? A food forest is as simple as it sounds - a forest of food. According to Robert Hart, there are 7 levels of a beneficial garden. The 7 levels (in order) include canopy (large fruit and nut trees), low tree layer (dwarf fruit trees), shrub layer (currants and berries), herbaceous (comfreys, beets, herbs), rhizosphere, soil structure (strawberries and vetch), and climbers/vines - vertical layers.

Another key term that I learned during this presentation was disturbance regime. This is the act of harvesting plants/crops in order to increase the plants/crops overall productivity. Bluedick Lillies are a common flower that this is done to. They sprout a nut that grows very close together in cliffs and rocks. The nut needs to reach its full growth, so disturbance regime makes the nut reach its full growth.

Some other fun facts that I learned from John Valenzuela were:

• 90% of crop loss occurred due to not enough "chill" in the atmosphere and because of this, a lot of cherries suffer.
• The Lewelling Family traveled from Iowa to Oregon (over 1,900 miles) and dropped trees along their way.
• Once the Lewelling Family was in Oregon, three brothers in the family decided to name the #1 cherry in the US - the Bing Cherry - after the Chinese worker who planted and took care of the trees along the way.
• The Bing Cherry has been around since 1875.

A huge thanks to John Valenzuela for his presentation!!

Until next time,

Jenny Resnick