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A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Atlantic White Cedar: Diversity Discovered

One of my favorite evergreen trees at my farm is the Atlantic White Cedar, Chamaecyparis thyoides.  At first I grew the plant from seed collected at an arboretum in the midwest. Then eventually I made two small plantings at my farm which then produced seed after a decade or so. I wasn’t sure what to …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

The Sloe Plum is Not that Slow

One of the most unusual fruits that I grow is the sloe plum. It is not rare or some sort of magical fruit hard to cultivate. It is quite prolific in terms of its fruit prodution and colonization of the landscape with its runners. I was perplexed on how to use it.   Over time it …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Peaches From Pits: Peach Nirvana

For the last couple of years I have been sending free samples of seeds of Iowa peach seeds out to everyone that has ordered from me. Who doesn’t love a surprise seed?  I was fortunate to receive these seeds from known provenances isolated from other peaches in Iowa. Many of these go back to the …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Questions on Quince: Quizzical Quandary of Fruit Proportions

A few years ago one of my neighbors near my farm was arriving home late and decided to turn on the news before bed. Lo and behold, here was her mailbox featured front and center on News 8.  Here was a newscaster talking about an event in front of her home just prior to her …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

The Hog Peanut

  Every now and then you find a unique wild food that from all practical appearances and applications  is not going to ring anyone’s plant bells or create a new food of great magnitude.  The hog peanut is a shade loving trifoliate, nitrogen fixing plant hunkered down under the oak trees here at my farm. …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Medlar-Pear Sauce on a Tree

It is not a common fruit within the United States.  There are several grafted trees of it offered by nurseries. At one time I decided to plant as many as I could find. I grew eight varieties of the medlar which was all I could find. The trees were usually on hawthorn rootstock. Even if …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Wildlife 2024 Retrospective

Every year brings in new plants and animals at my farm. Here are a few of them captured in a moment of time most of it from 2024.             That is wild.  

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Green Blanket Wild Gourd

One of the great mysteries of growing annual fruiting or vegetable plants is why there are so few self seeders in the lot. Finding species that self seed without having to be replanted every year is not a common experience with most species of cultivated food plants. There are few types of what would be …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Cloud Lima Beans

Cloud Lima represents four distinct lines of perennial and annual lima beans. This collection combines the thicket bean-Phaseolus polystachios, and three types of hybrid crosses using the true lima bean, Phaseolus lunatus. This was a process taking upwards of two decades of growing the thicket bean and eventually creating a hybrid cross using the pollinators …

Author: admin

A life long passion for plants helped me create Oikos Tree Crops. A wise man once said only a new crop can come from new seed. This was the beginnings of my tree crop farm with the use of the great diversity found in the world today. Starting with my families Christmas tree farms, I began an attempt to weave ecology and agriculture together and find plants that would also fit this type of permaculture and agroforestry design. After completing my degree in biology and working in both retail and wholesale nursery trades, I started a small farm to produce a wide variety of woody plants along with numerous food plants. From there I began the process of creating a repository for seed production. Today my farm is used for the production of seeds of many woody plants, fruits, nuts, perennial, and wild crops of global use in and out of cultivation. Each year I begin new grow out of plants that could be part of this ever changing world we live in.

Neosinte Teosinte

Neosinte is my first generations of developing and using teosinte as a grain crop. Similar to corn teosinte combines the drought tolerance of a wild grass with the corn we know today using a heirloom blue corn and the Mexican Highland teosinte. Neosinte was born from this cross done at my farm with help of …