The Food Forest Handbook - by Darrell Frey & Michelle Czolba (Paperback)

About the Book

The Food Forest Handbook is a comprehensive guide to creating abundance though low-maintenance, high-yield, sustainable food production based on perennial polyculture management.

Book Synopsis

Grow a Thriving, Edible Backyard Ecosystem

Turn any yard into a productive, low-maintenance food forest that produces fresh fruit, nuts, and vegetables year after year--while regenerating soil, attracting pollinators, and building climate resilience. Perfect for urban lots, suburban yards, or rural homesteads.

What You'll Learn

Grounded in permaculture principles and decades of hands-on experience, The Food Forest Handbook gives you the tools to: Plan and design your forest garden for any space--from tiny urban plots to sprawling rural yards. Choose perennials, fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and vines that maximize biodiversity and ecological balance. Build healthy soil naturally using composting, mulching, and succession planning. Manage your food forest year-round with pruning, water systems, pest management, and maintenance strategies. Harvest and preserve your bounty with crop profiles, storage tips, and delicious recipes.

Why It Matters

Food forests work with nature, not against it, giving you sustainable abundance, beauty, and resilience for generations. By following these strategies, you'll grow your own food, support local ecosystems, and create a backyard that benefits people, wildlife, and the planet.

About the Authors

Darrell Frey -- Owner of Three Sisters Farm, author of Bioshelter Market Garden, and permaculture teacher for 30+ years. He has inspired thousands of gardeners to create regenerative, productive landscapes.

Michelle Czolba -- Co-owner of Pittsburgh Permaculture and co-founder of the Hazelwood Food Forest. With decades of experience in perennial design and sustainable systems, Michelle brings deep practical knowledge to every step of creating a food forest.

Call to Action

Start your edible ecosystem today--get The Food Forest Handbook and begin creating a regenerative, resilient backyard that feeds your family and nurtures the planet.

From the Back Cover

Create ongoing abundance with low-maintenance, high-yield, sustainable food production

The Food Forest Handbook is an outstanding work that should be in the libraries of urban planners, designers, gardeners, property owners, naturalists, and even survivalists.
-- JOSEPH JENKINS, author, The Humanure Handbook , The Slate Roof Bible , and Balance Point

What happens if we were to drop the boundary between the built environment and nature? Wouldn't we all be much better off? The Food Forest Handbook guides our first steps along that path .
-- ALBERT BATES, author, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and The Biochar Solution

A FOOD FOREST is a productive landscape developed around a mix of trees and perennials, helping increase biodiversity, protect valuable habitat for beneficial insects, and promote food security and resilience, all while providing an abundant annual harvest.

Rooted in permaculture principles, this integrated approach to gardening incorporates a variety of plants such as fruit and nut trees, shrubs, vines, and perennial herbs and vegetables. Authors Michelle Czolba and Darrell Frey bring years of experience building and maintaining food forests to provide this practical and accessible guide to creating your own food forest landscape, whether you're urban, suburban, or rural.

This practical manual for the design and management of a home-scale perennial polyculture garden covers all the steps to guide the reader through the process, including:

• Getting started - site assessment and planning
• Tending the forest garden - maintaining soil health, succession planning, mulching, pruning and more
• The fruits of your labor - crop profiles, harvest, storage, nutrition and recipes.

This timely book makes the concept of food forests accessible to everyone. Focusing on the potential of perennial polyculture to enhance local food systems, The Food Forest Handbook shows the reader how to mix and match plants in unique combinations to establish bountiful landscapes and create genuine self-reliance in years to come.

Frey and Czolba share the valuable fruit of their decades of experience with this carbon-friendly gardening form.
-- ERIC TOENSMEIER, author, The Carbon Farming Solution

DARRELL FREY is the owner and manager of Three Sisters Farm, a 5-acre permaculture farm, solar greenhouse and market garden located in Western Pennsylvania. He has been permaculture teacher for 30 years, and is the author of Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm .

MICHELLE CZOLBA is co-owner of Pittsburgh Permaculture and co-founded the Hazelwood Food Forest.She has extensive experience in the design and maintenance of perennial polyculture.

About the Author

Michelle Czolba is co-owner of Pittsburgh Permaculture and co-founded the Hazelwood Food Forest. She has extensive experience in the design and maintenance of perennial polyculture. Her formal training includes biology, chemistry, and herbalism, and she has earned a B.Sc. in Environmental Science and a M.Sc. in Sustainable Systems. After obtaining her Herbal Certification Michelle founded Wildly Natural Skin Care, and developed her own full line of handmade, wildcrafted and organic skin care products.

Darrell Frey is the owner and manager of Three Sisters Farm, a 5-acre permaculture farm, solar greenhouse and market garden located in Western Pennsylvania. He facilitates workshops and delivers keynote presentations on permaculture design, perennial polyculture management and ecological land use planning, and has been a sustainable community development consultant and permaculture teacher for 30 years. Darrell writes extensively about the principles involved in regenerative, organic agriculture and is the author of Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm .