You and What Sandcherry Empire

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

Have you ever gone for a hike and discovered some interesting fruit along a trail somewhere? Many people have seen or know this fruit along the shores of the Great Lakes. The trails that wind their way through the dunes often have small colonies of this plant along the way to the lake. Most people do not eat the sandcherry and when they do, they find it is rather astringent and difficult to snack on like a normal cherry. There are a few selections of it today found within the landscape trade used as a native groundcover. Fruit production is not considered priority in landscaping. It never is. Over the years my mission was to find other colors of fruit within this species. That has not happened yet, however I did several grow outs of the plant at my farm and found it was easy to cultivate despite it’s naturally short life. One had over thousand plants in a bed. Another was various larger upright shrub forms I found along Lake Superior which had solid fruit set and good quality fruit. The two species pumila and susquehanae are the species in the botanical literature. To me they are very difficult to separate and look identical in many more ways than separate.

When I first ran into the plant in abundance, I began to notice the forms as well as the fruit quality. The fruit flavor improves as the fruit ripens. It has to very very ripe if you want the best flavor. What really surprised me was how fast the plant grew and the heavy production of fruit on one year old seedlings. There was real no need to make selections as the species was so heavy in production. All the fruit was of good quality although quite astringent but less so than their wild cousins. The astringency dimished under cultivation with water and fertilizer. That in itself is a huge relief and really paves the way for cultivation as a species as is.

The plants were short lived overall and done by year three or four. The fruiting canes last a couple of years before needing replacement. It is a one and done type of survival on the dunes. You need fruits and lots of them. Then step aside. Certainly it is possible to find new types or even longer lived plants, but this production has been influenced by conditions set in stone on an ecological stage within an evolutionary play on the shores of giant freshwater oceans. Your’re not going to breed that. But you can harness that power. I am sure the yields are in the tons per acre at the highest point in the life of the sandcherry. And some jam companies in Michigan could use this easy to grow fruit plant. There is no need for some massive breeding program. Instead use the resources for direct to farm production and focus on how to grow a short lived fruit plant in a profitable way that allows for its use with existing mechanical harvesters. In many ways, it mirrors raspberries. All you would need is a few hundred feet of planting and treat it like a vineyard with keeping the canes upright and off the ground. This would even the ripening and make it possible to harvest easily.

I like the sand cherry. A nursery I started at early in my carreer had a huge field of its cousin the Western sand cherry. It suffered from mildew. The plants were almost always defoliated by August yet had a huge crop of fruit. Within that gene pool were yellow, red and orange fruited plants too. And they tended to be longer lived than their lake shore cousins. The owner of the nursery bought several thousand plants. I am not sure why we had them at the nursery however it is used as a rootstock for other commercial fruits. They were produced by huge wholesalers as Hansens bush cherry often. Often this was the soup to nuts plant promoted for almost every cure imaginable. People thought they were kind of cool too. I see them in the conservation lists too now. I know of one plant near a trail near my house. I am not sure if it was planted or always been there or if indeed it is the sandcherry of the dunes along a sandy ridge chillin for the last fifty years.

It will take you and a small empire of sandcherry lovers to establish this Michigan plant for a future fruit grower. No dune required.

There are several forms of the sandcherry. Most are shaped by their surroundings. This particular shrub was found on a large plain of rock and gravel. The water was very shallow in this bay. The area around was completely free of vegetation. Here the sandcherry thrives. Time to stretch out.

The astrigency within this fruit makes it essentially impossible to eat fresh. Like the chokecherry, it could be cultivated for jam or jelly. Because the plants are short lived, it will take a different type of mangement system to grow it commercially. What would be interesting is if it could be crossed with other types of cherries especially the sour cherry. It has a similar relative that is eerily similar to sand cherry. Even the leaves look similar. The fruit is very small, tart and barely edible. I grew it at my farm and it too was short lived. I wonder if the fruit has unique nutritional properties. I wonder if it is more related to the plum and if it could be crossed with a plum like beach plum or Ussuri plum.There are so many possible outcomes for this unique fruit creeping along the dunes of North America ripening in the August sun.

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one is the loneliest number

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

A single species or selection could change the world of agriculture in so many wonderful ways. To make the world more fruitful and abundment, biological enrichment could light the way by harnessing these species of plants we often view as weeds. Aligned with the potential of new crops and healthy foods this is a direct path to better food and improved human health.

Growing citrus is a real possibility in Michigan with this species. It is one species of citrus that represents a series of selections with great potential for citrus. Everywhere else, it is a weed. The mesh protects some of the foliage of the tree which is favored by whitetailed deer in the winter as they gingerly nibble around the thorns.

Biodiversity is used and thought of in crop plants as ecological allys in the use for agriculture for both environmental and human health. You can find adapted plant species for regions not commonly known or grown. Such is the case for the hardy citrus species called trifoliate orange. It has been used as understock for citrus and an ornamental plant for over hundred years. No one has looked at it in any serious way other than a novelty fruit plant with insane thorns. There is some renewed interest in it again as a fruit producer and the quality of the fruit it can produce which is packed full of seeds. In Michigan, it was not a particularlly easy plant to establish, however once set the plants took off after the fitth year. I still wait for the fruit wondering what to expect. Today the hardy oranges are left alone on a hillside and struggling in a mix of goldenrod and an active groundhog colony. It is alone and far from any known citrus. That could change if fruit production makes it possible to grow like an orange, lemon or lime. I think it has real possibilities because of the tough citrus world of disease and insects in Florida and elsewhere. It is one of the reasons you can’t ship citrus willy nilly anywhere you want. The last time I checked there were over a dozen states prohibiting citrus plants being shipped from outside of its state. Quarantine land. Likely we will see more of this as certain historical ranges change of crop plants and disease and insects make it unfavorable to grow the crop anymore.

The autumnberry is a recapitulation of the now forgotten autumn olive for human use. This one species alone is a power house. This was a chance seedling with darker fruit with good yields found many years ago found at my families farm. It too is not possible to grow or ship to dozens of states. Their conservation districts planted millions of them of which we are now surprised they are so invasive.

To mention you are breeding and selecting autumn olive is controversial. It is one of those taboo subjects and can only be done in certain circles. It’s high anthocyanin compounds along with its rich vitamins and minerals have huge potential as a perennial crop plant. People are now harvesting it and enjoying the fruit that once was considered ‘wildlife food.’ Other related species also contain posssiblities but this one is at our door step and highly flavorable and healthy. For me finding deep red selections and heavier fruiting is lovely and shows the potential going past the 100 times the tomato mark. It is all in the gene pool which is deep and filled with great treasures. My pool was found at my families abandoned Christmas tree farm wedged between the scotch pine and white spruce. These were loners in a population hidden from view. It is alone and isolated filled with promise for a fruit energy juice that will help us fight cancer and improve our soils. The birds and mammals know this already which is why you see it everywhere. They recognize its benefits. Now it is our turn. Like the trifoliate orange it is considered a weed and an invasive species in many states. Once harvesting is figured out by machines, I could see this used as a fantastic juice plant. But first collectively we will have to overcome our phytoxenophobia.

Poncirus Trifoliata. Japanese Bitter Orange. Hardy Orange. Trifoliate Orange. Citrus Tree. Chinese Bitter Orange. Citrus Trifoliata Fruit Tree. Along the east coast there are many of these ornamental types selected based on the zig-zag branching patterns so common with Flying Dragon. Once in a while larger fruited ones will come along. Others have gone down this path before growing the species as a impenetrable hedge. Apparently even wild boars cannot get through.
Heavier productng selections like this Autumn olive could make this fruit crop very profitable to grow along with Aronia, Seaberry and Honeyberry. These types of fruits which are super dense in nutrition could be harnessed as a form of chemotherapy for individuals suffering from disease and as a means to prevent sickness. The selection above was found along a roadside. I collected it prior to the road crews destroying the planting entirely. There are other varieties available by other nurseries now which also have huge yields at least double the average seedling type. I call it the clustering types.
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One Small Potato in a Seemingly Infinite Field

Posted on June 27, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

Let’s suppose you wake up one morning and announce to the world you are going to create a new potato far greater than anything that has existed before. You do a sort of Stuart Smalley daily affirmation, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and dog gone it, people like me” and head out the door to potato land. The first thing you might notice is the huge variety of potatoes already. It’s a crowded field. If you take a look at real life potato research and variety development you soon realize that breeding potatoes is very specific in terms of its goals and outcome. It is estimated that at least 80,000 controlled crosses are needed to find the perfect seedling potato. There is just no way for the average grower to match those numbers. People may like you but you might not be potato smart enough dog gone it. But in the eyes of Stuart Smalley, “we are worthy human beings”. So lets begin.

My solution was simple. I read nothing. I know nothing. I am nothing. I want pure subjective experience not objective knowledge of the potato, Solanum tuberosus. When I start, I am not really looking for a specific outcome. I want to look at all the wonderful treasures of diversity when I get there. So whether it is teeny or a pound each, dark purple or white, it does not matter much. I am not going to pick the brightest or biggest jewel and run off with my find. I am trying to create a population not a variety. If one comes along, that is fine but it is less important to me. Last year, I relinquished and released one I named Tranquility. It takes a population that expands and flourish over time free of disease, insects and virus in a less than perfect potato world where spray is not used to buffer the countless things that also love the potato plant. Only a population can do that. In this way, generations get stronger over time by creating progeny that expand the potato’s adaptation to your environment. For me the population is the individual. It is potato consciousness reflecting the full range of the potato.

Just prior to the pandemic, I was trying to find a greenhouse in my area that would grow upwards to 50,000 seedling plants in blow molded trays just like marigolds. The idea was I could make available in bulk the seedling potatoes I developed as Perennial Perpetual Diversity Potato. You grow and sell it from true seed in a similar way slips of sweet potatoes are sold. It was my go big or go home moment. To do this I contacted several greenhouse operators. I did find one smaller producer that would grow them given enough lead time. Because of the premium greenhouse space for other crops like pansy’s and petunias it was difficult to get my foot in the door. The potato seed would be best pelletized because it is so small. Most greenhouse companies in my area near Kalamazoo, Michigan are massive bedding plant operations and locked into one or two seed companies. They view my seed as potentially hazardous in that it has never been tested or used to any degree. It would be better to have another seed company set it up as pelletized and screened for virus.

Park Seed company offered Clancy and won an All American Vegetable in 2019. They also offered Zolushka, a true seed potato, that produced massive tubers in my plantings one year. A company called Cultivariable has some of the most diverse seed and tuber offerings I have ever seen. I think he grew out the whole USDA potato seed repository! I grew the indigenous North American species called Four Corners potato. It was not adapted in Michigan. This was a common occurrence to me. The numerous related species potatoes did not survive long.

When potatoes fly is the only way to see the root strength and structure found within the soil.

Healthy foliage is a must under heat, drought, virus and insect resistance. This is Purple Ease potato this spring.
Fertile flowers help in producing fruit.
Fruits of the potato
A bouquet of flowers from the Feral variety. It appears not to set fruit or at least not consistently. The image at the top of the blog is Feral.
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A Canvas and Some Paint

Posted on June 25, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

It is very interesting to learn about relationships people have with plants and animals. When people visit my farm, they always have some thoughts on what they do and why and while offering me advice. No one was really strict or hard core on their plans. They were open to new ideas. It was their recreation or as I like to say re-creation. If you look at the surrounding land next to my farm, it has changed over time based on who owned the land as well as what they wanted to do. I have one neighbor that is a commercial grape grower. Two neighbors have created huge yards of several acres of grass. One of the grassy neighbors built a stream and waterfall in his yard. One neighbor has a scrap yard filled with metal, old boats and abandoned cars. Another has a small lawn and has done essentially nothing other than plant some of the conservation district plants over fifty years ago. One neighbor has created a gun range amidst an ever expanding sassafras colony. I would say the landscape that has changed the least is the grape vineyard with the exception of seedless grapes.

I am a bit surprised when I look out past my fence line because my farm is so radically different in vegetation than the surrounding homes and farms. Initially it was wide open grass and pasture. My farm was managed as a hayfield prior to me purchasing it and planting trees. Even today, it is a good canvas for my plantings as I add to it as well as a means to experiment and harvest many types of fruits, nuts and seeds. It is unique in that aspect. I do as little as possible and to gain the greatest amount in terms of yields of fruit and knowledge of future crops for use on a broader scale. Its one solution of many that could be applied to help future generations in the rough and tumble world of climate change by making resilient crops and orchards. This is me tooting my horn!

Ealy 1990’s nursery and field with tree tubes.

Land use revolves around what the owner wants or doesn’t want. I have no idea why someone needs a massive lawn but it does not matter. The owners like it. Recently one of my neighbors has begun to mow in a huge sweeping robust fashion. He has dropped the deck of his mower as low as it goes scalping the soil as he goes into his mow state of mind. I know at one point he had a burn mentality which put him in the hospital due to smoke inhalation of which he stills suffers from today. It brought in the local fire department and destroyed over fifty persimmon trees on my farm along the border. It killed most of the trees and melted the tree tubes into a pile of goo. He had this idea of creating biodiversity in its wake. Instead it brought him sickness. As you can imagine, biodiversity did not arrive. I keep thinking that this canvas he creates by mega mowing is magnificently clean and wonder what he plans to ‘paint’ to put on his canvas. It will likely remain blank but a future owner would likely see some possibilities and add to it. Or maybe when he eventually stops, a huge array of plants will now have the chance to seed in and grow like crazy. Nature will go now, now, now with huge brushstrokes using all available seed resources within the soil and the plants surrounding his yard.

Many times the existing landscape contains some great jewels that you might not be aware of. Such is the case of the wild black cherries, Prunus serotina. It is the paint that drops from the sky as birds often carry the pits in their beaks as they strip off the fruit. It is one of the most common understory plants at my farm. Early in 1980 in my pasture were four nicely established black cherry trees. I limbed them upwards as they grew. They were in the middle of the field on the hills isolated from one another. As time went on I could no longer climb or prune them. I put owl and kestrel boxes in them for some time too. After talking with another tree friend down the road, he commented that many of the black cherries in the area had fantastic strong upright growth with excellent branching. He too was using pole pruners and eliminating the often found narrow crotch angles so common with this species. He had found some of them had strong apical dominance and were easy to guide upwards. He kept those and removed other trees competing with his new idea of cherry woodlot. None of the trees he planted. Some were growing in an abandoned vineyard. This inspired me. As a result, I began to take notice of one tree in particular and found the fruit to be delicious and possible to eat fresh off the tree without wincing. It had none of the astringency in the fruit so common with wild black cherry. Eventually I made a delicious jam from it. It was like a black cherry concentrate. Because of my voracious pruning, it became difficult to pick the fruit so now I have a way to shake certain branches to drop the fruit when it is ripe. As time went on, I kept other black cherries that showed this strong growth habit. One is a new selection which I haven’t named yet or made available. It was found as a seedling near a planting of pears I had. It was so fast growing that it was almost like it appeared out of nowhere to me. I could not cut that down. The pears can tolerate its shade easily. I have found other individuals I have kept. Once I grew the South American subspecies “Capuli” . Winter froze them to the ground every year. They have large fruit and are harvested for preserves.

“Sweetaa” Wild Black Cherry
“Sweetaa” Wild Black Cherry

We cannot paint like nature can but you and I can add to the portrait of this wonderfully diverse world we live in and share our contribution to others to also become good artists. Tooting that horn again. Toot toot my friends.

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One With the Other

Posted on June 22, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

It happens effortlessly all the time in an infinite number of ways. Nature integrates all living things. Every gardener knows this too. Like the above image of my Norway spruce and pawpaw planting there is no unwritten rule of good versus bad. It is good and better always.

The previous owner of my home densely planted 50 seedling Norway spruce trees near the edge of the woods. Due to the density and the ever encroaching forest it is less than half of what it was due to shade intolerance. For a while, I would prune the lower limbs trying to get as many as possible into the canopy. I planted pawpaw trees on the edge along with mayapple. That was over 25 years ago and now the trees are really moving out into the forest as a colony. The Norway spruce thrives on the edge in the light providing cones for the red squirrels, cover for the deer and protection for the mourning doves. It has woven itself into the tapestry of the forest along with the sassafras who found a few openings in the canopy created by the decaying and dead spruce. A few ferns have seeded in and I added a couple too. It’s a makeover of what was once my garden enriched with horse manure. Today my garden still exists here as a mosaic of potatoes, sunchokes, lilies, yucca, sedge, buffalo grass, Miscanthus, Wild oats, cup plant, mockorange and honeysuckle encased in a bit of green bishops weed each filling in an area that was once highly tilled and amended. It is too shady now for a real garden. No peppers or tomatoes are possible.

I like the Norway spruce tree with its sweeping branches and long cones. Once when I was pruning an apple orchard, I noticed some extremely large spruce trees in the far distance on a hill. After I was done with the job, I drove over to them realizing it was a cemetery. They were huge Norway monoliths towering over the tombstones embracing all who resided there. Surrounded by open fields, these trees had a view of the world on this hilltop of both human and natural events. If trees could talk there would be much to discuss. Their form, persistence and grace tell a story on their own. No need to ask. Just witness as it is. One cannot do without the other. We need it all.

Sassafras finds the light just a smidge to the right.

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The Wild Andean Pumpkin

Posted on June 21, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

I have always enjoyed finding and growing the ancestors of crop plants. Unlike what would be called scientific breeding or selection I have a different motive. I want to see the plant that began it all. I want to time travel back to the origin of the cultivated plant and take a look around and see what’s doing. I want to leave with knowledge of the plant and what it was that civilization needed from this plant at the time and the culture that initially found it growing in its wild habitat. Then I want to share that experience with the rest of the world in forms of knowledge and seeds. It’s the straight arrow of experience plus knowledge equals enlightenment.

I found a seed source through a now out of business seed company that had managed to find the wild pumpkin in Peru. This is a certain subspecies that is considered not edible and poisonous to consume. I was doing a small planting in an area that was recently cleaned of nursery stock and was awaiting a new polyhouse. In this area I was attempting to grow both wild forms of watermelon and pumpkin in this wide open sandy area wedged into between the northern pecans, wild pears and persimmons. It was a good location with sandy low organic well drained soil. The pumpkin vines grew luxuriantly and tapped into the soil at each node growing up to 100 foot long. There were no insects, no deer damage and great competitive leaf canopy unphased by drought and weeds. As the vines grew, I was excited to harvest the little green balls and see what the flavor was like. As I cut open the fruit, I realized this might not be the same as the pumpkin I know. It wasn’t. The bitter alkaloids flooded my mouth numbing my tongue for a good three minutes. Water only seemed to make it worse. Yet, there was this aroma in the background that was very pumpkin like. You could smell it, but not taste it. One fruit had a tiny orange sliver of a speck on it. “There you are my little pumpkin”, I thought. The orange speck said it all. The orange portion made up less than one percent of the fruit, yet this one percent was the future pumpkin. How did someone even know this? My guess is pumpkin consciousness. Someone had knowledge of this plant at its very source and as unusual as this sounds, the pumpkin told him or her in some way either through cognition or a ‘medicine man’ as a intermediary where to look and made changes to help the farmer, the curator of its knowledge. Life is mutual. Otherwise the pumpkin from the wild form would have never arisen. You have to know a direction to follow otherwise it would take too long to develop and actually use and eat. Whole civilizations would crash and burn if they were forced to eat this fruit I just tasted.

One year on the way home from my farm, I noticed a great deal of smashed pumpkins on one particular country road from Halloween night. Pieces of pumpkin littered the road as cars crushed the remaining pieces into an orange paste. The following year in the same area I began to notice a few ‘wild pumpkins’ making their way to the gravel shoulder of the road. It had turned out that these teenage planted pumpkins were making a go of establishing under the sugar maples and black walnuts along the road. One vine in particular was working its way into the road and was loving the open pavement. It appeared for a brief moment that teenage pumpkins were being purposedly being avoided by traffic too. I know. The vine inched out more and more everyday. I swerved around them. Don’t hit the pumpkin vines. Like a late night possum, teenage pumpkins are worthy of living a life uninterrupted. Everything was looking spectacular until the county road crew and their mowers showed up. At that point I had visions what the end of the world would look like when the streets were filled with pumpkins rich in fruit. Imagine a pumpkin laced roadside rich in nutrition. Now I was onto something. My dreams were the same as the pumpkins. Pumpkin consciousness was here to stay as long as I kept the thought alive in my mind.

Today this is my new life with the pumpkin. My hats off to the angst ridden teenagers and the wild Peruvian pumpkins. Eventually they will meet and find a solution for all of humanity. It can happen. I saw it. It is true.

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The Edible Lily

Posted on June 20, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

I have always found it fascinating to read about the use of wildflowers as food plants. In particular, I wondered how anyone could make a go of harvesting lily bulbs to any degree for food. You hear stories of many cultures eating the lily bulb and you will read the rich ethnobotanical literature about the Lilium genus. When you test that knowledge and grow the bulbs from seed and wait a decade you soon realize the food potential is very low. If you were to harvest them for a meal, there would be nothing left. On the other hand, you see lily producers from Holland crank out mega-tons of lilies for the flower market. So you know it can be cultivated in mass.

The raw bulbs taste good and have a nice crispy texture but I am hampered by yields and knowledge of cultivation for food as well as its culinary details. I was trying to figure this out and only recently discovered a few secrets. The developing colonies take centuries to form. This is not like Jerusalem artichokes, groundnuts or potatoes. They are not like any other bulb plant that is consumed in that the colonies are very slow to establish. One twenty year patch that I have is roughly four foot across which was seed grown and started from five bulbs. You must treat the colonies as a super long term tree crop with maturation rates measured in decades at least. The bulbs of the two North American species are small and grow along a small rhizome which looks like a string. I hope to dig up a few this year and get some images of this growth habit. It is a different form of colonization of each Lilium species. What is interesting is that some of the bulbs lie dormant and wait their time to flower once free of the rhizome. What would be the impetus to flower and spread outside of seed production? Here is a personal example.

Lilum canadense Canada Lily
Michigan Lily Lilium michiganense

I got a call when I was in sophomore in college from my father one December day that he needed me home to help on the farm. It was Christmas tree season and sales were off the chart on our new 400 acre wholesale tree farm. Unfortunately, I was completely hung up on exams. I never really thought much about it until I had heard from my brother who said that some problems that winter were way more difficult to solve than giving out a few candy canes here and there. To begin with it had been a wet winter and the farm itself was more or less a wetland lined with drainage ditches. In the process of harvest a giant cluster of machinery of pretty much everything my dad and his partner owned ended up going subsoil way past the axles in the middle of a field. This involved a flatbed truck, two tractors, bulldozer, tree bailing machine and I think a wagon. The memory of it alone was so brutal to my dad refused to even drive by that area where it occurred years later. Finally out of curiosity in the summer, I scouted around for the location and saw it from a distance punctuated by loads of beautiful orange lilies. As if it was a location of great purity, the lilies sprang from the soil like nothing I have ever seen before or after. When I got into one of the ruts, my eye sight was level with the field soil. It was like standing in a forest of lilies. They really did go subsoiling. It was deep. Seriously, I’m surprised they didn’t find a mastodon. I’ve seen this type of plant action once before when toadflax covered an area damaged by diesel and oil off of I-94 when a truck skidded off an exit into a nearby embankment. Toadflax is a rare plant in that it can flourish in these toxic ridden soils where nothing else can. It has a superpower. You will see toadflax grow along railroad tracks too with the combination of creosote and herbicide it seems impervious to every man made petrochemical. I tried to grow toadflax at my house and each time, it was not successful. At our farm the lilies were spread out over the fifty foot area rich in muck and sand caused by the attempts to extract the equipment. This location may have had a few lilies before but I never noticed them. From reading about lilies, you will find that bears and other ground rooting animals eat the tubers. I am sure wild hogs love them too. Either way it is this love of lilies that helps bring them into production more. You have to do a bit of subsoiling. I have an area I planted them that was set up as a hugelkulture. They thrived for quite some time. Now they are on the decline. I need to get in there and loosen those strings of tubers. It is this process that can speed the spread of the plant. I threw some out under a walnut planting and there they really have taken off. But the colonies are clustered together tightly because I have no bear or wild hog to kick start the spread. I do collect the seeds so I will likely self seed them in certain locations free of dense sod and other vegetation that may impede the grass like foliage when they first sprout. I will try different locations under shrubs or trees including some dead wood where the vegetation is not thick. I do have groundhogs, skunks and racoons but they do not appear to have the lily as part of their diet.

I think I have an idea. Perhaps I could go there in December and bring with me a flotilla of equipment, get stuck and go subsoiling. I know that works.

Michigan Lily
Cultivated White Lily
Lilium species grown from seed
Lilium species grown from seed.
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The Earth Pea

Posted on June 18, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

One of the most interesting perennial crops I grow is the earth pea, Lathyrus tuberosus. It reminds me in many ways of the highway pea that is so common along roadways used as a soil stabilizer and nitrogen fixer. As a cultivated perennial vegetable, the earth pea was low yielding but had delicious crispy pea tasting tubers. Definitely worth growing for the flavor. It was not a colonizer like the highway pea and needed a bit of care to establish. Once established it came back every year despite temperatures below minus 20F and me tilling it under several times in an area that I was planting new things in. It never took over an area unfortunately as I wished it would. Today it resides on a trellis as I continue to plant its seeds again and try to establish it by planting a few seeds every year.

The earth pea is a nitrogen fixer and this is an advantage if you wanted to combine it with other woody plants in a landscape. On its own it could likely be developed as an agricultural crop in the same way radishes are grown and used. It doesn’t necessarily need a trellis and it will sprawl along the ground and branch outwards like the highway pea. I grew several North American pea species including the prairie and beach peas from the Great Lakes region and Washington state. These species usually produce poisonous seeds each to a different degree and long thin rhizome roots. They were short lived in my location likely because of their specific soil conditions which were not met at my farm. The perennial beach peas on the Great Lakes are edible and can be snacked on. But there is some concern eating a lot of them could be a problem. Beach peas do have a good flavor. There is a larvae of a moth that drills into them turning the peas into frass. This is a common occurrence if you decide to collect or eat the peas. The earth pea does not have much of a pea seed crop and it could be possible the seeds are not safe to eat anyway. When in doubt, leave it out is a good philosophy for some types of wild foods.

The heat tends to diminish the earth pea’s growth and by August and September it pretty much goes dormant here in southwestern Michigan. This is probably related to its alpine genetics and adaptation to cooler locations. It produces a few seed pods every year with very small peas about the size of a BB. I can easily see the earth pea being used in orchards and permaculture plantings. The tuberous pea is long lived, delicious raw and easily digestible. There is a question still that some want to know more on the compounds within the tubers to be sure the selection process makes it safe to eat in large quantities. There is no evidence of toxins found in its chemistry but it should be looked at if you plan to feed it to everybody and not just anecdotal evidence. Another aspect that is being considered is increasing its yields. There is at least one company breeding it hoping to release a new patented selection of it. I purchased my seeds from J.L.Hudson, Seedsman. This particular species is not easy to get seeds like normal peas. There is some genetic variation in the progeny. Ideally you would like a thousand seedlings to see its range of diversity. A thousand plants paints a picture with lots of details. However, my guess is even a few seedlings are uniform enough to cultivate without selection. It would be ideal if you could buy a fifty pound sack of seeds and field plant them just like…….PEAS! Yes. Hard to believe I know. The image of my tubers above show the largest ones I have found. In the meantime, I will snack from time to time on my crispy tuberous peas and wonder if I am the only one tasting this delicacy and how I can share this crop. One seed at a time would be ideal.

Safety First On Wild Foods and Plants That Look Similar

Many years ago a neighbor farmer of mine who raised beef cattle and was a strong vegetarian and Seventh Day Adventist told me a story of his family reunion and the highway peas. He and his ‘Uncle Bob’ were checking out his garden and near the fence line he had a nice planting of highway pea. His uncle started snacking on them in great abundance. He consumed a few but told Bob that it was probably not a good idea to eat them at all as he had heard they were poisonous. In the meantime, his uncle ignored his warning and told him how could anything taste so good be bad and likely many animals consume them too with no apparent effect. This of course was a huge problem filled with deep potholes of ignorance. After calling the ambulance and having his stomach pumped he did bounce back from his poisoning. It was fortunate he didn’t decide to tough it out and got treatment. I used to jog by his garden and perennial hedgerow of peas and every time I thought of their beauty and fragrance. I was never tempted to snack on a few. I am sure on future family reunions someone brought up the “Uncle Bob Moment” of the past. Maybe someone with a sense of humor layered a whole bunch of shucked peas on top of the salad as a reminder. Well I guess that is just me thinking aloud.

Great Lakes Beach Sand

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Great Lakes Beach Pea
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The Shape of Oaks To Come

Posted on June 17, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment
“Plentifull” Oak An extremely productive oak tree with large acorns which drop free of the cap. This seedling was found in one of my seed beds with clean foliage and vigorous growth.

I’ve always like the description of the oak genus as young as evolving. When horticulturists make selections from oak trees they are strictly ornamental in nature and usually columnar in shape. It is old and devolving in terms of our use of the oak tree as a crop tree. No one is considering creating an orchard of oaks for acorn production. I am sure there are a few brave individuals out there doing that. Meanwhile, the use of the acorn has taken on a new life as people begin to discover its use from wild trees. This has proven to be beneficial in terms of acorn awareness for human food. The selections I have ‘bred’ and selected over the last forty years are very good in terms of yields and improvements for the edible acorn. Yet on applying them on a broad scale in some way has not come to fruition. Why is that? The whole thing really revolves around experimentation and not implementation. I mean what are you going to do with an acorn? This is a bigger question than you might think. The acorn is widely available as wild trees and there is a whole market available in terms of woody plant seeds. But there is no market for orchard grown acorns because there are no orchards. I had developed very good cultivars for orchard production. What was needed next was specific processing techniques for larger volumes of acorns from specific varieties. As time went on I began to see a light into this production scenario. To explain it to others was equally frustrating. There was the native only philosophy and then there were the feed and hunt the deer philosophy and finally the feed the hog philosophy. Each of these ideas on their own are weak and to me are a waste of time. I am focused on feed the human philosophy with acorns as a source of healthy food directly to Homo sapiens. Yes. Acorn pancakes. To me this is the future of the acorn with no intermediate steps.

For many years, I grafted some of my selections and was excited to offer them in my nursery. They were expensive and difficult to produce so I contacted another nursery on the west coast who had the resources and expertise to do the grafted oak trees. My rate of success was low rarely exceeding 30 percent takes. It turned out that all Quercus scions or trees are prohibited to export out of Michigan to the west coast due to oak wilt disease. I had the thought that I could have my nursery and land inspected for the disease. I asked the state and they told me I would need to have the whole county inspected. It was very expensive and time consuming and no guarantee that it would be allowed by other state officials in other states. One told me that oak firewood is likely the main vector from mature trees not little twigs like my scionwood but because it is live wood it too is banned. Between the condescending attitude of the other nursery owner and the state officials I bailed. I have hopes, I have dreams.

For me this image of my empty wheelbarrow reminds me of hauling the sawdust up to the top of the hill and spreading it under this wonderful English and white oak tree. It brings back memories of hard work along with how much there was to gain and learn from the world of oak trees. This image tells a story of an oak as a crop tree. The wheelbarrow is empty. The tree is full. I am going to harvest the acorns now and place them in my empty bucket. The harvest can only bring benefits of which go directly to you and hopefully future generations yet to come.

Plentifull Oak acorns developing.

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The Brassica Forest Comes Alive

Posted on June 16, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment
Tree collards are naturally a perennial brassica. Its perennial nature can be harnessed as both a seed and foliage crop even in cold climates.
Tree collards for seed production were always low yielding seed producers until recently. It takes a bit of cultivation to find the right plants from the right selection to produce seeds. In this case, it was the last seed I had of the ‘MIchigan’ collard. This seed production will aid in producing a full zone 4-5 tree collard that is both winter hardy and tastes delicious as a perennial plant.

About a decade ago, I began growing tree collards from cuttings and seeds from The Tree Collard Project in California. I also purchased seeds of other types of brassica from Chris Homanics, Joseph Lofthouse and Southern Seed as well as J.L. Hudson, Seedsman. I found one company to ship me tree collard cuttings to and rooted those in my garden at home. These seed sources allowed me to peek into the window of what is called land races or grex. I was not aware of this type of breeding at all. It was very similar to my means of selecting woody plants and creating populations. The tree collard group has an interesting history only because it is normally clonally propagated and came from the slave ships from Africa. As time went on, the plants continued to flourish in the African American communities and spread from there. I had very little knowledge of collard but I had a great way to test for hardiness. I would grow the plants in pots in one of my polyhouses and then leave the end open for wind to penetrate it. This would reduce populations of many tender plants very quickly. Michigan is a good testing ground. I would still water the plants in December and again as early as possible in March. I did not sell collard plants for very long but eventually after a particularly brutal winter, sorted out the remaining plants after three years. There were not many left. One plant from the Tree Collard Project looked spectacular. I decided to keep one individual that had grown two leads over six feet long and was not bothered by the minus 27F that winter. As I cut it up using my hand pruners, I was surprised how hard the stems were. I put the cuttings into a large 30 gallon grow bag and moved it to a permanent polyhouse. When it would flower, I would move it outside in the open to get the pollination it needed. This was ideal and the plant did produce some seeds but not many. I took a few other plants and moved them outdoors under a chicken wire mesh to protect against deer and groundhogs from foraging. Those plants also produced some seeds, but they too were low producing. It appeared the perennial nature of the plant that I was selecting for was reducing the seed yield. I know that is some instances after flowering with kale, the plants will die. They are biennial in nature. This is an issue of selecting the right balance of vigorous growth as well as heavy seed production. Seed production for most vegetable crops is a must for diversity sake. But for the tree collard, it is not necessary as it can be easily rooted by sticking the plant in a jar of water or even directly into the soil. So why is this important?

Now instead of one in five hundred, you may find all of the seeds produce winter hardy plants. Certainly there would be variations of flavor and texture but now you have a robust population to choose from. Whether the seeds are used for sprouting, an oil crop, or an organic form of a ‘green’ drink , the perennial genetic diversity is off the charts in terms of its nutritional composition. It is not a cultivar. Praise the brassicas for that. You can harness the full range of benefits. This is the age of the tree collard. A brassica forest is now a reality. Only new seed can create that and nothing else.

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