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Category: Featured
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 …
Category: Featured
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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Category: Featured
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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Category: Featured
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 …
Category: Featured
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 …
Category: Featured
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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Category: Featured
Strength in Numbers: The Edible Forest Revisited
It is not a surprise that people have strong opinions about how plants grow and what plant belongs where. Everyone wants to rule the plant world. Plants are giving and flexible. It is good to be a ruler of your plant kingdom however you individually define it. Gardening is such a joy to do. You …
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Category: Featured
Snow Fountain Becomes Snow Mountain
It began very innocently. Watch the bumblebees with my daughters and see if you could “pet” or touch the bees as they were pollinating the flowers on our weeping cherry in our front yard. This involved just lightly touching the bees back so they wouldn’t fly off on the flower they were pollinating. Simple and …
Category: Featured
Soilicious for Establishing Trees in Open Fields
My two year old peach and apple trees grown from seeds. Soilicious made it not only possible but highly probable that the trees were going to live through that critical first year without water or tending in any way. Forty years ago it was difficult for me to establish trees in my open pasture. Now …
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Category: Featured
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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