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Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …
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Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …
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Category: New Plant Discoveries
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. …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
Bird Cherry Meets Dingle Dangle Meets Wild Magnolia
Every plant has its limitations. As gardeners we soon discover how that translates in our own experience with certain plants and how something will grow or not grow in our own landscapes. Here are a few of my personal discoveries of which each is related in some way. Each species has a place on my …
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Category: New Plant Discoveries
The Species Apple
Apples have a rich history of cultivation and use. This has led to a huge repository of selections estimated to exceed 10,000 varieties. I began a collection of apples starting in the early 80’s with the focus on species apples. The species apples are more like wild crabapples and have little history of cultivation or …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
From Snow Fountain to Snow Mountain
All plants have an extremely large potential for change far greater than our imagination of what we think is possible. Modern plant breeding goals are almost always incredibly tiny and parceled out in super small characteristic level based doses. There is never going from point A to point B and wrapping it up. There is …