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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.
The Unexplored Explored: Minor Becomes Major
One of the most exciting and little known areas of fruit growing falls into the category called minor fruits. When I first started publishing my catalog in the early eighties, the minor category was front and center. The unknown possibilities of minor fruits are the unexplored. To me it was very exciting. The category name …
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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.
New Seed Selections-Diversity on a Global Scale
This year was a great surprise of both quantity and diversity of fruit and nuts. I focused my attention on some of the most difficult to find selections as well as improvements I have done or found over the years on new woody and perennial crops. Some of these crops are not found within the …
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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.
New Seeds-The Pits, the Acorns, the Nuts
It is the beginning of something good and beneficial for all of ecology and the integration of all plants and animals. Every year brings in a different selection of fruits, nuts and other edible plant seeds from around the world all harvested at my farm in southwest Michigan. Even the Wild Texas white peach above …
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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 Teosinte Plant
Teosinte expands outward. It’s an omni-directional force starting from a pin point and then outward like an exploding star. This makes it impossible to define by a small sample. Too late it has already exploded and is expanding at exponential speed. You can only gather so many fragments. The dust is too fine to recreate …
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 Corn Plant
I always wondered why corn was so luxurious in growth and existed in such wonderful dense green fields. It was so perfect to me and completely uniform. In this uniformity I experienced corn as a single magnificent and powerful force of nature able to feed millions of people and animals alike. That was its super …
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.
One Potato Creates an Expanding Universe
It can happen. It was the daily activity of a bumblebee searching the flowers of the horse nettle at my farm. Nearby my potato patch resided filled with heirloom red, white and blue selections all in full flower. The flowers are remarkably similar. There was no goal or thought of a potato fruit or berry. …
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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 Dunbars Plum: Wild and Domestication Combines
Every now and then I find some interesting plants at my farm which seem to have unique possibilities. Such is the case for the unassuming hybrid species Dunbarii plum. I view it as an opportunity to create a diverse mixture of plums that you can create a population from as well as create new varieties. …
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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 Yellow Ussuri Plum
Growing plums is a very easy way to sneak into the world of fruit growing without a lot of effort and fanfare. It starts with the seed. From seed you can find out just what is going on within a selection outside the grafted and clonal restrictions put on by previous plant breeders. I view …
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 Ecos Purple Potato
Thriving in the midst of crown vetch in my mother’s flower garden, the Ecos Purple potato benefited from its nitrogen fixing capabilities while demonstrating its perennial capabilities for over a decade. The Ecos Purple Potato Once at a plant auction at a horticultural event, I purchased a few tubers of a purple fingerling potato. 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.
The Wonderous Beauty of the Mirabelle Plum
It started as a small seed packet. I really had nothing to go on. My Hillier tree manual gave it a subspecies heads up. It said variety syrica. This alpine plum was considered a cultivar species and protected in its homeland of France. Soon I was intrigued at the possibility of growing and using …
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