My first Food Forest Guild

I say I have a Food Forest in my garden. In reality it's just an orchard with lots of interesting wild "weeds" growing underneath them. After 3 years of living here, we installed a watering system in this orchard. Fruit up till then had been scarce to none (never saw a peach or khaki until we started watering).

Now that we are watering, why not have some more benefit from this water? Stacking functions, as one of the Permaculture Principles says.

So off to study companion planting and "Guilds", the layers of a Food Forest, the plants and families that go well together, the different functions and heights that one should take into consideration...

A Post on Facebook by Tuinsmakelijk.nl on a guild made me take things more seriously and I went to the garden centre with a list of the example guild in this post. It included some plants that I had in the garden already such as mint and it mentioned comfrey, for which I decided I could use borrage, from the same family. Had to hunt for the others... but none apart from the chives were available in this particular garden centre...

Going on the functiones and the plants available I have made my own guild under the apricot tree, which this year seems to be way too heavy with fruit (only had a mild trimming on the sides, none on top this winter). Let's see how it goes...

Centre: Apricot tree

(All the following plants are perennial/self-seeding/self-propagating)

Marigold: fights plagues (parasites and nematodes), up to 120cm high, spreads vigorously

Milefolium: dynamic accelerator, attracts beneficial insects, ground cover, medicinal, up to 60cm high

Mint: attracts beneficial insects, medicinal, edible, up to 45cm high, spreads vigorously when enough water going

Lemon balm: bee plant, medicinal, edible, up to 45cm high - careful, spreads vigorously

Borrage: mulch plant, attracts beneficial insects, provides sylicum to surrounding plants, medicinal, edible, up to 100cm high

Aloe Vera: medicinal, edible, up to 60cm high

Chives: pest repellent, attracts bees, medicinal, edible, up to 45cm high

Raspberry: medicinal, edible, up to 150cm high, will have to cut back - will it do well in this dry and hot climate, although in shade of apricot tree?

I also left the biggish plaintain that stands just outside of the straw mulched circle area, see if anything happens to that...

Read recently that straw needs nitrogen to be broken down, so is this using up the little nitrogen that gets deposited (although I don't really have a nitrogen fixer in this guild)? I have bio-indicators in the garden that might indicate there is a lot of nitrogen in the soil, lots of galium aparine (gardener's love - sticky weed) all around the plot. Does this mean I have enough nitrogen to break down the straw (and feed the plants) or would another nitrogen fixer be beneficial?

Final reflection: Will it become too crowded? Did I plant too close to the trunk? Is this a case of chop and drop when this comes to be? All the under-stories will become mulch plants more than producing plants? Time only will tell.