Grow Your Own Fertilizer With Chop and Drop
Ryan uses fast-growing support plants to create mulch, green manure, shade, and nutrients directly inside the food forest.
Central Florida Agroforestry Tour: Ryan’s Productive Growing Systems
Florida
Central Florida
Food Forest Tours
Agroforestry
Syntropic Gardening
Tropical Fruit
Food Forest Florida
Tour Ryan’s Central Florida food forest and explore syntropic planting, Grocery Row gardening, chop-and-drop fertility, cold-tolerant fruit trees, rainwater harvesting, and a diverse mango orchard.
Keywords
Central Florida food forest, Food Forest Florida, Florida agroforestry, syntropic agriculture, Grocery Row Garden, chop and drop, Florida fruit trees, cold tolerant avocado, tropical fruit trees, Florida permaculture, rainwater harvesting, mango orchard
Touring Ryan’s PRODUCTIVE Agroforestry Systems Outside Tampa!
Florida
Central Florida
Food Forest Tours
Agroforestry
Syntropic Gardening
Tropical Fruit
Food Forest Florida
Tour Ryan’s productive Central Florida food forest and explore syntropic planting, Grocery Row gardening, chop-and-drop fertility, cold-tolerant fruit trees, rainwater harvesting, container growing, and a diverse mango orchard.
In Part 2 of our visit to Food Forest Florida, Ryan guides us through several productive growing systems designed for Central Florida. The tour includes a young syntropic garden, a Grocery Row Garden, biomass production, cold-tolerant avocados, low-chill fruit trees, container fruit, rainwater collection, a pineapple island, and a diverse mango orchard recovering from a winter freeze.
Garden
Food Forest Florida
Host
Ryan
Location
Central Florida
Climate
Subtropical Florida
Growing Systems
Syntropic and Grocery Row
Primary Strategy
Grow Fertility On Site
Rain Storage
Approximately 400 Gallons
Primary Focus
Productive Agroforestry
Inside Ryan’s Productive Agroforestry Systems
Ryan’s property contains several different growing systems, each designed to test practical ways of producing food in Central Florida. Some areas are planted with established named fruit varieties, while others are filled with inexpensive seedlings, rooted cuttings, bananas, nitrogen-fixing trees, and fast-growing biomass plants.
The systems are designed to do more than simply hold fruit trees. Support plants create shade, protect sensitive crops from Florida’s intense sun, reduce moisture loss, produce organic material, and help build fertility directly within the landscape.
Instead of purchasing every input, Ryan is working toward a system that produces its own mulch and green manure. Mexican sunflower, vetiver, bananas, eucalyptus, nitrogen-fixing trees, and fast-growing grasses are repeatedly cut and returned to the soil around productive fruit trees.
What You’ll Learn From This Central Florida Food Forest
How Ryan combines target fruit trees with fast-growing support
species in a young syntropic garden
How Mexican sunflower, vetiver, bananas, and grasses can produce
chop-and-drop fertilizer
How a three-row Grocery Row Garden fits fruit trees and biomass
production into a compact space
How seasonal avocado varieties may extend the Florida avocado
harvest across much of the year
Why Ryan keeps certain mangoes, apples, and avocados growing in
containers
How seven rain barrels store approximately 400 gallons of water
for the garden
Four Highlights From the Food Forest Florida Tour
A Pear Soaked in Brown Sugar?
Silas Woods sapodilla remained productive through the freeze and produces sweet fruit with a rich brown-sugar flavor.
Ryan’s Grocery Row Garden System
Two productive tree rows surround a central biomass row that continually produces organic material for the fruit trees.
Growing Fruit Trees in Containers
Container-grown mangoes, apples, and avocados can remain productive while still being moved when freezing weather arrives.
Building Fertility With Syntropic Agroforestry
Ryan's newest planting area is inspired by syntropic agriculture, a style of agroforestry that focuses on producing fertility directly inside the garden. Rather than relying primarily on purchased compost or fertilizer, the system grows fast-growing support species whose biomass is continually recycled back into the soil.
Nitrogen-fixing trees such as Enterolobium establish the future canopy, while Mexican sunflower, vetiver grass, bananas, and other rapid-growing plants provide a continual supply of organic material. These plants are repeatedly cut and returned to the soil through chop-and-drop, helping retain moisture, feed soil biology, reduce weed pressure, and gradually improve fertility.
Ryan also incorporates perennial vegetables and understory species beneath the developing canopy so the garden begins producing food long before the larger trees reach maturity. The result is a system where every layer serves multiple purposes—from food production to shade, mulch, pollinator support, and nutrient cycling.
The Grocery Row Garden System
One of Ryan's signature projects is the Grocery Row Garden, adapted from David the Good's design. The concept is simple: two rows of productive fruit trees surround a center row dedicated almost entirely to biomass production.
Rather than planting another row of fruit trees, the middle bed grows species whose primary purpose is producing organic matter. Fast-growing grasses and chop-and-drop plants are harvested multiple times each year and spread beneath the surrounding fruit trees as green manure. This continually feeds the system while reducing dependence on outside inputs.
Ryan begins new Grocery Row plantings by loosening compacted soil a single time, adding compost to quickly reintroduce soil biology, and covering everything with deep wood chips. Once established, biomass plants become the primary source of fertility for the surrounding orchard.
Growing Fruit Trees for Long Harvest Seasons
Another theme throughout the property is extending harvest windows. Instead of planting only one avocado or loquat variety, Ryan selects multiple cultivars that ripen at different times. Winter Mexican, Mexicola Grande, and Brogdon avocados together can provide fruit over much of the year, while carefully selected loquat cultivars extend the spring harvest beyond a single short season.
Many additional trees are grown from seed as long-term experiments. Some will eventually be grafted with improved varieties, while others may prove to be worthwhile selections on their own. Seedlings also provide inexpensive rootstock for future propagation.
This willingness to experiment allows the property to function as both a productive food forest and an ongoing learning laboratory.
Container Fruit Trees and Freeze Protection
Not every fruit tree grows in the ground. Ryan intentionally keeps certain mangoes, apples, and avocados in large containers so they can be moved during freezing weather.
Low-chill apple varieties such as Anna and Dorsett Golden continue to produce successfully in pots, while compact mango cultivars including Honey Kiss and Pickering remain portable enough to protect when necessary. Even Wurtz avocado can remain productive in containers for many years with proper care.
Container growing gives gardeners an opportunity to expand the number of species they can grow while reducing the risk associated with occasional Florida freezes.
Plants Growing in Ryan's Agroforestry Systems
The agroforestry systems include named fruit cultivars, seedling experiments, nitrogen-fixing support trees, perennial vegetables, biomass crops, tropical fruit, and low-chill temperate species working together as an integrated food production system.
Avocados
4 featured varieties
Mangoes
6 orchard cultivars
Support Species
Nitrogen fixers & biomass
Water Storage
7 rain barrels
Bananas
Multiple cultivars
Fruit Trees
50+ discussed
Growing Style
Agroforestry
Focus
Self-produced fertility
Featured Plants
Show Complete Plant List Hide Complete Plant List
Support Trees & Biomass Plants
- Enterolobium
- Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia diversifolia)
- Vetiver Grass
- Mombasa Grass
- Corymbia torelliana
- Dwarf Poinciana
- Jack Bean
- Lucaena
Avocados
- Winter Mexican
- Mexicola Grande
- Brogdon
- Wurtz
Mangoes
- Honey Kiss
- Pickering
- Orange Sherbet
- Angie
- Sweet Tart
- Maha Chanok
- M-4
- Glenn
Bananas
- Dwarf Namwa
- High Noon
- Dwarf Goldfinger
- Venti Cohol
- Cuban Red
- Tall Namwa
Fruit Trees
- Silas Woods Sapodilla
- Yehuda Loquat
- Florida Prince Peach
- Tropic Beauty Peach
- Scarlet Beauty Plum
- Saijo Persimmon
- Hachiya Persimmon
- Anna Apple
- Dorsett Golden Apple
- Oliver Loquat
- Ruby Supreme Guava
- Pitangatuba
- Miracle Fruit
- Peanut Butter Fruit
- Grumichama
- Dragon Fruit
- Pineapple
- Macadamia
- White Sapote
- Longan
The Green Yard Takeaway
Ryan’s property shows that productive agroforestry is not only about growing more fruit trees. The larger goal is to design a system where shade, mulch, fertility, water, protection, propagation, and food production reinforce one another.
The most important lesson is Ryan’s effort to grow many of his own inputs. Fast-growing grasses, nitrogen-fixing trees, bananas, Mexican sunflower, vetiver, and other support plants produce material that can be cut and returned directly to the soil. Over time, this can reduce dependence on purchased fertilizer while improving moisture retention and soil health.
The property also demonstrates the value of diversity. Cold-tolerant avocados, low-chill temperate fruit, tropical species, container-grown trees, seedlings, grafted cultivars, rainwater storage, and multiple planting systems create several different paths to productivity within the same Central Florida landscape.
Connect With Food Forest Florida
Ryan shares more of his Central Florida growing experiments through Food Forest Florida, including agroforestry systems, tropical fruit, propagation, freeze recovery, and practical strategies for building a productive landscape.
Watch Part 2 on YouTube
Open the complete Food Forest Florida agroforestry tour directly
on The Green Yard YouTube channel.
Food Forest Florida on YouTube
Follow Ryan’s videos about tropical fruit, agroforestry,
propagation, and growing food in Central Florida.
Food Forest Florida on Instagram
See current garden updates, fruit trees, harvests, experiments,
and behind-the-scenes growing progress.
Explore More Food Forest Tours
Browse additional food forests, edible landscapes, and growers
featured by The Green Yard.
Return to Food Forest Florida Part 1
