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Category: New Plant Discoveries
The Mongolian Oak Rises Into the Canopy
I’m not sure where I received the acorns of this species. In the beginning, I was part of a network of what I loosely defined as oak obsessed individuals with a love for all things Quercus. Yes. Whacky edible acorn people were part of this group. Everyone contributed. I do remember getting two attempts of …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
The Flavor Farm Finds the Lemon
Once I hired a someone for my shipping and packing crew who always came to the farm in the morning with the same breakfast. He would first open a package of Ding Dongs on the packing table in front of him and then follow it by cracking open a Diet Pepsi. This combination was …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
The Perennial Bean
I love beans. It is my favorite protein source. I am particularly fond of red lentils as they are very digestible and quick to cook. When someone brought up lentils in one of my agricultural classes in the late 1970’s the professor joked, “What are those? Beans grown during lent?” He then followed up with …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
For the Love of Apricots
For me it is impossible not to check out the apricots in the produce section of my local grocery store. I know they are from California. I know that the flavor is iffy and not tree ripened. I still have to try. Several times I have ordered the organic Frog Hollow Farm apricots from …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
A Potato Escapes Cultivation and Becomes Feral
In the process of trying to define a wild potato, I began to wonder how botany would characterize a well-known crop plant found as a wild plant growing outside of cultivation. Botany is good at defining plants in very subjective terms. Consider the following terms I found from a few of my reference books. Escaped, …
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Category: New Plant Discoveries
The American Holly: Ecological Dynamism
One of the great aspects of having a nursery for a long time was participating in seed exchanges. Without seed exchanges, you really are left in a botanically isolated world. There are many people throughout the world that not only want to share their plant diversity with you but also want you to succeed with …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
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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Category: New Plant Discoveries
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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Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …
Category: New Plant Discoveries
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 …