The northern pecan has a wide geographic range but what exactly is northern. Is it north of Texas or north of Illinois? It turned out this expanding range of a relatively common hickory in North America has a wide range of adaptibility able to grow in short season areas far greater than I imagined. Here …
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February 6, 2026
Growing apples from seeds is not as out of control or random as you might think. Several from seed rootstocks were employed only there was no alternative. From seed apples were used for cider or jelly. It wasn’t the grafted variety that people were looking for. Often cultures employed the seed grown fruits like …
February 3, 2026
It started as a casual walk around my family’s farm pond. Would it be possible to grow the perennial wetland species rich in sprouts the same way someone would grow asparagus? It was worth a shot. I had to try. Of course this is what agriculture is all about. Lets harness that. Maybe it is …
February 3, 2026
If you desire to experience corn before it was corn, then lets look under the hood of Zea and see what is in store for a grain where no two individuals are alike. This years crop is highlighted via photographic plates and highlights its first use as a grain crop. My version: Betty Crocker Recipe …
February 3, 2026
Every plant discovery is a personal journey. You grow something, wait for the results and hope for a delicious ending. The perennial buffalo gourd was a joy to grow but the ending was not what I expected. It was not possible to eat. Yet here is this powerhouse of a plant able to withstand some …
February 13, 2025
When my sister helped me pick wild strawberries at our family farm over 50 years ago, I realized that not everyone likes to be hunched over swatting horse flies while picking the teeny and delicate little strawberries in the middle of our swampy land. Yet the berries spoke to us in ways that few fruits …
February 13, 2025
I love tea. I do drink coffee but tea is my favorite. Even in college I drank tea with my college roomates. Lets have tea I would say. Of course there were other beverages but sometimes on a Sunday afternoon we would sit in the cafeteria and drink volumes of tea as we made jokes …
February 13, 2025
The whole Viola genus is filled with wonderful fragrance, flowers and food yet rarely used as a source as perennial greens. That was my quest when I first started growing them in quantity. As a perennial vegetable, I was surprised there wasn’t much on their palatability, yields or flavor. Once I began the collecting process …
January 29, 2025
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 …
Continue reading “Atlantic White Cedar: Diversity Discovered”…
January 28, 2025
One of the most unusual fruits that I grow is the sloe plum. It is not rare or some sort of magical fruit hard to cultivate. It is quite prolific in terms of its fruit prodution and colonization of the landscape with its runners. I was perplexed on how to use it. Over time it …