I actually did that once. I cleared a patch of mixed forest, cut the stumps FLUSH, and covered everything with about one foot of topsoil I brought in. I covered the existing organic matter and everything was fine. I only occasionally hit a stump lol. Be sure and test your soil, those conditions sound like you have acid soil, most veggies prefer neutral/basic. And make sure your contractor doesn't cheat and dump subsoil on top. Just curious, what veggies are successful in your climate?

I had to import topsoil for my teeny-tiny urban garden (no soil - just builder's rubble) and just to fill the built-up raised beds in my 36square metre yard required 3 tonnes of soil. Since 1 tonne, at 30cm deep will only cover 3 square metres, the amount of usable soil (not subsoil) will need to be in the region of many, many tonnes. However, you can certainly cover existing stumps and tree wood - look up hugelculture - one of the (cultish) permaculture groups better ideas.

Topsoil composed of dropped fir needles use to be pretty poor and acidic, you will have to mix it with pretty large amounts of manure if you want any vegetables. Potatoes might grow without manure though.

Sounds good. It will need lime and manure or seaweed though. We had the dozer bury remains of an old barn that burnt in the 80's and it brought up mostly subsoil scraped right off the bedrock. Many loads of seaweed and manure later, it is starting to grow decent crops. Since we only had the dozer here in 2009, it's coming along not too bad. The firs/vars will not resprout and the wood will rot over time. Expect a poor crop the first year or two, but it will improve fast as the manure and stuff bring up the organic matter and nutrient levels. The rotting wood will hold water too, a bonus in a dry summer.

Yep - it is a long-term project for sure. Tons of compost. The areas where we have conifer cover in the UK does tend to be in places with the thinnest, most acidic soil. Even in our woods, I am concentrating more on berries and nuts rather than ground crops. There has been a lot of interest in ;'forest gardening' in the UK...but the crops tend to be greens and potherbs - not tomatoes and potatoes (which is obvious - calories in, calories out)...unless crops are grown on the absolute forest/wood edges. Nutrition can be more easily bumped up than sunlight.

It's not as trendy here to grow in the woods, but stuff does grow :) In large clearings, we have vegetables and berries, and in small ones, chestnuts and other tree foods. Still, hazels will grow in a small opening, strawberries spring up on their own, elder berries too. Then, all the different brambles....

Oh yeah, it surely does, but different crops than would be grown in open arable fields. Growing for food has never been the major motivating force for me, but given the choice between a plant which is beautiful or a tree which is productive, I have a utilitarian leaning towards secondary uses. I have also been exploring the rubus (and ribes) family (if you can't beat them, join them). ..and am loving the names of these underused fruits (at least in the UK) - Farkleberries, Saskatoons, Chokeberries, Thimbleberries , Salmonberries et al.

No till method would work combined with a lasagna garden concept.....also hugulkultur can be used with excess woody material

I believe it is wrong to believe that vegetables will not grow in a woods. If they did not there would be no one here today. Much of the area east of the Mississippi was wooded. People went into these woods, cut down the trees built their cabins and planted their crops and gardens. The results is the large farms you see today.

The downside of a garden in the woods is that it is in the woods. There are many animals that live in the woods and will love your garden. Opossums, raccoons, rabbits, deer, squirrels, skunks, to name some of the smaller ones. However one must not forget the birds. They love any crop with seeds, and some will eat other vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, etc could also be the targets of the borrowing animals like moles, voles, etc.

If enough land has been cleared to grow crops such as potatoes and cereals, then they aren't woods anymore. The issue (for me) is making the most use of available light within a wooded area...and certainly, within the micro-trend for 'forest gardening' (which also goes hand in hand with 'foraging' ), this issue is disingenuously swerved by making beds either outside or just on the perimeter of the wooded area. I emphasise that (my scepticism) is not in relation to your garden, Jocelyn or Lance (the OP) but specifically applies to this relatively recent fad which has sprung up in the wake of permaculture and other less mainstream farm and garden practices in the UK (and elsewhere, I think..

No problem, Campanula. Things differ in different places. Saskatoons, ummm, umm, yumm, munch, munch. Almost time for fiddleheads......partially grown ostrich fern, really good.

krnuttle, haven't been able to grow unblemished beets or potatoes ever, darn voles! They eat all my cauliflowers too. At least with the nuts, they are not ABLE to eat all of them.

Thanks everyone for the advice. It turns out that the price I was given for the excavation included grubbing off the entire area of cleared land. I previously thought it was just for the part that the house is on. I'm going to get him to remove all the stumps to avoid the risk.

My two gardens will be 1155 sqft and 1530 sqft. It's a pretty big jump going from two 4'x8' raised planter boxes to almost 2700 square feet of garden but the main part of this entire project is to me more sustainable and self reliant.

You might investigate Lonicera caerulea-the honeyberry. A true fruit of the north, there is a very large firm in Nova Scotia specializing in growing, harvesting, and marketing a wide array of products derived from this fruit. Check it out if you haven't. Could be ideal.

I'm growing a few plants on my land. It's too early to tell how this is all going to go, but for gardeners and farmers in the north, it offers much promise I think.

mmm this has been getting some traction in the UK (for fruit growers). Apparently easier than blueberries with no restricting demands for highly acidic soil and vast amounts of water. It's on my list to try.

Same here, you read about them increasingly often. But the real new "miracle berry" seems to be the chokeberry - aronia melanocarpa. Full of nutrients, antioxidants and whatnot. Also good for the north and can do with poor soil.

I've audited both Aronia and this plant-Lonicera caerulea-and by my sources, it is the latter that is the up and comer. Of course, time will tell. Evidently-and this is just stuff I've read, not direct experience-a lot of the taste claims for the chokeberry (Aronia) have been, shall we say, a bit exaggerated. Aronia is a common landscape plant in these parts so I suppose I'll just go munch a few sometime, if the birds let me. But that honeyberry is going to be huuuuge...if you'll pardon my obvious reference to Donald Drumpf. Drumpf? Yes, that is the real family name of "the Donald", lol!

If you like honeyberries, you can try phytocultures on PEI too, for small plants. The flavour is a little tart in some selections, sweet in others, and very easy to grow. They like sour soil, lots of shelter from wind, and lots of organic matter. Birds will eat them when still green, so you will need to net them before they are ready, if you want to get any. You might find some wild ones known here as twin berries....and those will pollinate the tame ones. I planted an Indigo Gem in the woods next to a wild clump and got berries. They are self barren, so I will net the plant this year and hope for viable seeds. The local clump is much sweeter, doesn't take mildew, but a much shyer bearer than the tame ones.

A few additional comments about honeyberries which also have the name haskap-and I won't get into the details of the various naming conventions, although they do have to do with the fact this plant is much more well-known in northern Japan, parts of Russia and eastern Europe, etc. So with that out of the way, I disagree strongly with Jocelyn's stating that this plant requires sour soil. It is exactly the fact that it does not require soil acidity that makes it so suitable for large areas of the north. Just normal soils, it is actually adapted to a very wide range of soil acidity/alkalinity. In this way-as Camp has said-it differs greatly from blueberry culture. The very large Nova Scotia grower, BTW, mulches their fields with clam shells!

Second, the fruit turns blue as it ripens, but.......be aware, much additional ripening happens after the skin has turned blue. Thus, many folks mistakenly eat what looks to be a ripe fruit, but it's still a week or two away from full ripeness. Common misunderstanding.

Additionally, what Jocelyn reports about the need for a co-blooming pollinator plant is true. All the vendors I've dealt with-I've been looking at this thing for a number of years now-are very good about making suggestions of good compatible cultivars for pollination.

Next, this plant flowers early. In many case, few bees are active yet (insect-pollinated) when the plants bloom, so some care may need to be taken to insure there is good habitat for things like mason bees, bumblebees, etc. Few honeybees are active when haskap blooms.

Also, the plant is, well, a honeysuckle. As such, it would be entirely reasonable to expect individual plants to live and fruit for 40 years or more.

In nature, the plant often shows up in wet areas. Millions of cultivated plants however show that any normally well-drained soil is just fine.

And this plant is indeed native to areas in Canada as well, so when I grow mine, I feel like I'm using a plant that is almost native to where my land in northern Wisconsin is. We've just got a little pond called Lake Superior between us and the native range of honeyberry!

Lastly, it has been oft reported that when the fruits of honeyberry are ripe, birds-especially American robins and grossbeaks will all but take the fruit right out of the picker's hands when harvesting! This is no exaggeration-these birds really want this stuff! So bird netting and that sort of thing end up being a necessity. My plants are young yet and I'm not even trying to get fruit out of them yet. But in just a few years, they'll be ready and I'm sure some kind of netting is going to be required.

As you can see, I'm more than just a little interested in this plant, and I do believe it is going to be a star of the emerging fruits market. Taste is said to be somewhere between a blueberry and a raspberry by some. I've eaten just a couple but they weren't really ripe yet. This was while my plants were still in the pots the vendor shipped them in, sitting in my backyard. Squirrels were eating the fruits as fast as they'd develop and it was only for this reason that I sampled a couple.

I've got way more info on this exciting new fruiting shrub, should anyone be interested.