Nursery Confidential: You Might Be Surprised

You might be surprised at the shenanigans of the nursery industry. I wince when I think my own problems I encountered let alone scaled up versions of the same or different issues running a small business. Most are just odd things that occur but they all taught me valuable  lessons. When I closed my nursery, …

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Dreams, Pillows and Curiosity

The Milkweed Forest On one of my family’s Christmas tree farms a great expanse of milkweed existed. This was due to an over application of Simazine herbicide which sterilized the soil for several years.  This not only wiped out all existing vegetation, it prevented everything else from germinating.  Apparently milkweed was immune to this.  The …

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Dude, what happened to your corn?

It all started with jury duty. In this case, it was purgatory with magazines. The waiting room was stacked with magazines as it was the era before cell phones.  A Smithsonian article on corn and its possible origins caught my attention. I dove in. Apparently a scientist discovered a species of grass unrelated to corn …

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The Thicket Bean Makes a Return to Michigan

Last seen on Belle Isle, Michigan in 1896, the thicket bean established itself in the thickets of this island in the middle of the Detroit River. It was never seen again. “If native, this was surely at the northern edge of the range for this species” wrote Edward G. Voss in Michigan Flora Part 2 …

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The Last Great Hur-rye

Not too far from this wonderful slippery elm tree on my family’s farm was a great field of rye my father and I created. Like this tree, the rye field idea was latent and was not discovered until later in life. Who knew it was there all along? The field was the last thing we …

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The Wild Goose Plum-From One Seed to Another

Wild plums are found everywhere in North America. Many of them look alike. Some are small shrubs like the beach plum. Others are tall trees to thirty feet like the Chickasaw plum. They thrive in the mountains. Some live in wetlands.  Others are found in the desert. I think I have grown them all. But …

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The “Madeline” Blueberry-The Wild is Brought Back

Finding blueberries is pretty easy in Michigan. Where I live in southwestern Michigan there are many farms dedicated to growing them. With one farm exception that uses massive irrigation on sandy soil with lots of mulch, they are grown in wetlands or were wetlands prior to their farming. As the image above of my family …

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How Does It Grow?

        It is a not the healthiest world we live in right now. Not everyone is accepting of others but sometimes in the midst of it all, there are break throughs of understanding and compassion. The same is true of our relationship with plants. In some ways, on some deep emotional level …

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The Value of Plants

The value of plants and their potential uses are infinite. The direction you take might be a good idea even if not useful to modern day agribusiness.

Time to Prune: Stem Density and the Life of the Pawpaw Colony

Pawpaws are easy to grow but what happens in the course of thirty years could create a challenge. What is going on in that pawpaw grove?