The Chinese Mountain Yam: New Crop-A Better World

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment
Dioscorea alata

This particular crop plant is one of the best tubers I have grown at my farm. The mild flavor and smooth texture along with its easily digestible carbohydrates make it an ideal candidate for a new tuber crop not available in the United States. All of them are imported from China as far as I know. It’s easy to use and has no pest problems of any kind. It requires a series of digging gymnastics to harvest it properly using long trenching spades to extract it from the soil. It is a perennial tuber in Michigan but also suffers in cold winters with freeze damage some years. This has happened only twice in the forty years I have been growing it. It sets no seeds of any kind. It produces aerial bulbils on the vines which are equally delicious and useful. The two crops from the same plant are radically different. One you pick in the fall and the other you dig in the spring. The aerial tubers require a trellis system that will need to hold large amounts of foliage which is quite heavy. Ideally this elongated ground tuber needs a long underground pot system so you can eliminate the deep digging required and an adjustible trellis system to hand harvest the aerial bulbils without a ladder. These methods and use have long been worked out by the Chinese. As far as I know, it is not cultivated in the United States for its tubers but was used for a brief moment in the ornamental landscape market as the Cinnamon vine because of the aromatic flowers.

Dioscorea alata

Like all the crops I have grown, I tried to find as much diversity as I could to test the different selections already in the market. There was only two for the first decade I looked. Eventually people sent me other selections known for bigger aerial tubers or larger in ground tubers. It wasn’t some sort of aha moment. The variations were small and not etched in a cultivar stone to any degree. I purchased a completely different tropical species called ‘Hawaii’. This one had aerial tubers golf ball sized and larger. We put it on a trellis near the back of my nursery the farthest point from my barn. The location was perfect for this species being on the bottom slope of a hill. To my surprise someone came in and stole it after I posted a story about it in a Facebook group. I am not sure the two are related. I found the identification pot tag four years later in my gravel driveway. That particular variety looked very promising in warm climates with a greater possibility of commercial success. Today you do see many other tropical species and selections used in the bedding plant industry.

Here is a brief run down on my experiences. This species is dioecious so all the ‘selections’ are female plants. There are no male plants or true seeds available commercially as far as I know.

California: Selections with nice long smooth carrot like roots.

Pennsylvania: Selections with larger aerial tubers than normal.

Dr. Yao: A patented variety said to produce massive in ground tubers.

Toensmeier: Selection with consistently large aerial tubers. From author, researcher Eric Toensmeier.

Unknown: From cultivated selections that were said to be ‘pretty good’ or from a few seed companies that offered them.

On a small scale: I would grow this plant again and would encourage others to grow it at home. It is easily contained and rarely spreads in undisturbed areas with sod or grass surrounding. Instead of using an eight foot tall trellis and raised bed, I would use the spun polypropelene bags in ground with the handles just above the ground so you could just pop it out when you wanted a tuber. I would then create a circular chicken wire cone around the vine. This keeps the vine contained and bulbils from drifting to other areas of your plantings should it be a flower garden or other landscape situation where you do not want spreading. If some do, they are easy to plucked out the first year. No tile spades are needed for the ground tubers along with Herculean efforts to extract them. I also used 5 gallons buckets with holes in them. That worked well with groundclothe underneath them in the polyhouses.The tubers did not freeze and turn to mush in this process. The aerial tubers can be hand picked and harvested over a month as they develop. They do not all ripen at once which is a bonus as far as using them a little at at time. The aerial tubers grow in size over a long period of time so you need to wait until they are the largest possible to pick.

On a larger scale: I would spend some time developing an in ground method that makes it easy to harvest full tubers without bruises or cuts. There are patented technologies for this crop too. I was wondering if you could use plastic or metal evestroughs. That might be expensive to set up but could last many years once established. One farmer in Germany uses a greenhouse system and an above ground narrow diameter pots made of wood that looked roughly 4 ft. tall. The tubers would then grow unimpeded and develop up to 3 ft. long. Then you just unscrew the plywood and your tuber is right there to pick. The roots develop unimpeded and are long and cyndrical perfect for chipping looking incredibly uniform like a Pringle. The tubers are easy to store and do not degrade easily compared to Jerusalem artichoke. The aerial tuber crop is possible commercially but only by using mechanical shaking having them fall on a tarp and then going from there to a screening system. If you were to hand pick them, it would require a lot of labor. The bulbils ripen over a month period so they all do not ripen at once but they do hang on for a long time making it possible to harvest the whole crop all at once. To me the most delicious part of the Chinese mountian yam is the aerial tubers which I believe has the most commercial potential in terms of fresh mini-tubers.

Dioscorea alata

Because this crop plant has landed in the weedy, invasive runaway ornamental plant section of the USDA along with many state governments, you would guess the world has gone to yams. It hasn’t but the destruction continues of potential valuable germplasm in the name of nativeness. The last time I checked it was discovered in two places in Michigan both of them yards. One in Detroit and the other in Traverse City. So now it is on the watch list here. People are watching. Such a waste of resources. On a personal note, this spreading habit or ‘ecosystem damage’ did not happen at my farm. It did not move and the bulbils did not take over my plant universe even when the plantings were left untended for over a decade. I grew the plants for several decades. How long should I watch? Yet it is persistent and like all perennials, it comes back year after year. That is a good trait to have because the roots size increases dramatically over the years where some can become gigantic. No one knows how this would work in North America. In other countries modified pallets are used to grow above ground giant tubers. Is this practical? I’m not sure. The tubers might turn to mush in Michigan. Should you wait several years before the 50 pound stage or harvest two year roots? I found the two year roots the most practical to grow and use. I also grew the native yams at my farm and a form from Wild Type Nursery. They are poisonous and should not be eaten. They have a very stringy tough woody roots and are high in steroids.

On a practical level I would look more closely at large plantings both in terms of growing, harvest and marketing. There is a lot to be worked out far more than just growing. One of my customers from California told me she was concerned about the naturally occurring heavy metals in the imported yams. I sent her a package to eat instead of grow. She said they were much better flavored than the commercial selections sold in her international food stores. Like a lot of tubers the soil makes a difference in flavor and nutrition.

Dioscorea alata

On a side note:

I did discover there are attorneys and lawmakers that will help you and your mountain yam ideas in the regulatory arena. But it is not an easy row to hoe. Who wants to do that? It’s anti-farming. What is the cost in money and time? Can’t I just grow the crop and be done with it like I have for the last forty years? Farmers should always be the first to ask, not the last. Here they are specifically edited out.

To feel the rich soil around my fingers, the fresh cool spring air and rain covering my raincoat in the spring was a great joy while harvesting. Where is my rich black organic coffee? Where is my tile spade? I’m out the door. Time for yams. I need a yam.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

I think this. I desire to raise yams to help me feed the world while bringing perfect health to the world and wealth to the farmer. I’ve got a world to improve. Would you like to help or get in the way?

Dioscorea villosa
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Butternut and Its Kin

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment
Juglans cinerea x ailantifolia x regia

The butternut trees I collected nuts from for my nursery were difficult to find. Every now and then I would spot one from my truck as I drove through a rural area. I would contact the owner and make plans to harvest the nuts. I met a lot of interesting people doing this. Everyone without exception had no idea what the butternut was. I loved to explain it like a long lost treasure rich in history and flavor. Sometimes I do go long. It’s like butter. It was rare in the public domain as well. My guess was there was less than one tree per square mile in my county in southwestern Michigan. The yields fluctuated and it was a crop occurring every 3-4 years. Butternut also exists in hybrid plants with the Japanese walnut. I would find these too but they were often in people’s yards or gardens. They tended to be much higher yielding. One immense tree had over 25 bushels one year. That was a record. I purchased the seeds from this tree over the course of two decades. Called ‘buartnut’, Juglans x bixbyii, they tended to be longer lived trees immune to butternut canker to some degree as well as show hybrid vigor in the progeny. It was the hybrid corn of walnuts for me. It was easy to grow a six foot tree in two years from seed. I ramped up production of the species and hybrids because of the catalog mail order industry at the time. They were selling them and I was one of only a few producers of the trees. Because I had so many of them, I began going through the seedlings and selecting plants based on foliage characteristics. I found several with the typical shiney English walnut leaves. There was an English walnut tree nearby and it would cross pollinate with only a small window of overlapping flowering. It was roughly a one plant per 300 seedlings. I would then plant these out back and wait to see what would happen. I was guessing in many ways. I even remember finding one tree that flowered in 3 years from seed. Here is an image of one with English walnut below.

You can see the blend of the tree within the nut. The actual yield of meat to shell ratio is low. The yield of this tree is also low due to damage done by the stem drilling butternut curculio. Curculio also lowers the vigor to a lesser degree. Overall the growth rate is off the charts in my dry low organic soil. This is very good for the butternut tree which usually does best in loam and higher organic soils. It is also immune to butternut canker. The tree shows interesting bark protusions which look like small burls forming. That could be a plus if the tree has interesting wood characteristics like swirling patterns or curly grain. I kept growing them while chiseling holes in my out planting for them one by one over the course of two decades. Eventually the mail order nurseries no longer needed that tree in its line up and once again I was stuck with a few thousand buartnuts with nowhere to go. This tree along with other potential crosses with black walnut were added to my plantings over time until I had no more room. Ideally I would of needed 40 acres to get a better idea of what I would find. But even a few trees can point you in great directions to follow while taking the road of minimum effort and maximum gain. After 40 years of growing them, a few appear to be fading and others are still growing strong. This is the beginning to create a new seed source by harvesting the nuts from the most vigorous trees to expand the seed strain and then turn the weak trees into lumber to use and evaluate. This in turn creates the ideal tree farm. You produce both seeds and a finished product all in one location. The seeds can be futher distributed and grown with other people throughout the world interested in the butternut tree, its wood and nuts. The wood can be made into furniture or anything requiring a light wood easy to work and finish. Everything about the tree is perfect in its species and hybrids.

Many years ago I met a research scientist had done genetic studies on existing butternut trees in North America. She found some of the most isolated trees in this process going far into Canada as well as south into Kentucky. It turned out butternut has a much more northern distribution than many people realized. She rarely found hybrid trees but when she did she felt they had great value because of their immunity to disease and hybrid vigor. She told me that her colleagues thought it would be better to focus on only ‘pure’ trees. She found that odd. Both are of great value. What is ‘pure’ anything? No one knows and the opinions bring arguments on plants in social media as well as the scientific community. Everyone has a different nature they want to call nature. Good for you I say. In the meantime, I’m making furniture and harvesting nuts. Care to join me? It’s a butternut.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

2011-What are we going to plant today? I can think of something,
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Creating Order in a Random World

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment

The plants I chose to grow at my farm was based on my personal experiences. There were many more or less random events of people contacting me with seeds or accidentally finding plants as I went through my daily life. I would find these ideas as a source of seeds first which would then allow me to see the full range of expressions from that species as I grew the plants. My farm is pretty much nothing but that and little else. There are no grafted trees or varieties. They are all seedlings. For some people all seedlings are too random and not defined. Yet in the natural world, there are no varieties either so why not follow that idea to the end and search for the broadest possible expressions. That was my thought. It too seemed random in the course of clothing my land with trees. Why would I do that?

The trees on the right of this polyhouse are mature hybrids of chestnut and bur oak. Quercus prinus x macrocarpa.The trees on the left are English and white oak hybrids. Quercus robur x alba. The English crosses were found as street trees in front of a school when I took a short cut from the hardware store to a place I was working at the time. Random discovery. The chestnut oak hybrids were purchased as acorns from an electrician who loved oak trees and collected acorns in a public park with his son. Random phone call. As the trees grew, I thinned them, cut down the weak trees and removed the lower limbs. The photograph above captures a blimp that happened to fly by at the time. A light orb was created by my lens creating this image. The blimp was random. The light was random. The clouds are amphorous and random. The trees I planted were kind of random discoveries of oak seed sources. I didn’t know what would happen when I planted them. They existed only because of my desire to grow trees and capture diversity of the oak genus in some way. The greenhouse I put up came with instructions so that is not random. All of of this allowed me to grow plants that I felt were not adequately used today. A lot of order was created by my random acts of planting. That worked out far greater than I expected. It is especially poignant in that I used primarily exotic plants from around the world and mixed them with many North American species.

Quercus robur x alba Bimundorii, Michigan, Bimundors oak English x White oak- Two plants grown close together and pruned.
Quercus prinus x macrocarpa & alba Pennsylvania. Chestnut Oak hybrids

Today when I look at the all space filling plant communities at my farm I see nothing but order. It is not random. Upon closer inspection you begin to experience the full range of ecological integration of plants in a universal scale. Here there are connections to be made, selections to be done while previous incarnations may decline and disappear while new plants colonize and improve the soil and community as a whole. The blimp fly by is a look see of a new animal or insect. It might be a woodcock, bobcat or white Admiral butterfly all of which periodically visited my farm. The clouds are all space filling and change over time depending on the conditions of the plants. The orb are the ideas in this picture. The human part is the polyhouse as knowledge has wedged itself between the oaks that I love to grow. I might be the pawn in the game of life but I am the novelty in the equation able to preserve, regenerate and evolve the plant assemblages in front of me. Order comes without effort all from my random acts.

My mom took this picture in the 1990’s as we walked around the farm. The nursery is behind me.

The Ullong-do Cherry, Prunus takesimensis: Found on a remote island South Korea. Harvested for its sweet cherry like fruits.

Ullong-do Cherry

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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The Vigorous Life of Pruning

Posted on August 11, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment

In the winter, I do a lot of pruning. There are no yellow jackets to avoid. The plants are dormant which is ideal and it is much easier to maneuver and identify shrubs and trees that seed in under my planted trees. I keep them and limb them upwards. It is surprising that a number of apples fruit fairly well in the shade of the pecans. Here I am leaning on a row of American persimmon trees with my Silky pole pruner next to two rows of northern pecans on the right. Both require removal of the lower limbs as they fade due to lack of light enhanced by the density of the planting I did. At the time, I thought both of those species were not going to be that successful in southwestern Michigan because it is too cloudy and cool here to fruit and mature properly. I was wrong. As a result, I began pruning them to allow greater light to penetrate the floor and allow the crowns to gain greater volume and height. That was a good idea because now I have apples, pears and young seedlings of pecans and persimmons under the canopy replenishing itself into the distant future. A nearby white pine has also seeded well and I have used the seedlings as a visual road block at my home. This type of planting creates the ideal seed bed as grass has faded. This was a thick grass field here dominated by quack grass which is now gone entirely due to the increased shading over time. The sod is now a thing of the past. Besides the highly benefical amur honeysuckle and autumn olive plants, the seed bed also is transforming the understory benefiting the trees and future of my mini-forest. When I cut these to the ground, they add organic matter to the soil. You do not need herbicide or burning. Those only create problems. I have spotted some medlars, American holly and American cranberry-bush here. While I create mulch and fertilizer for the trees, the soil can only improve. The branches you see on the ground above take 4 years to break down. Several species of borers live in them spewing out sawdust. They are the mini-chippers doing what would take me many long hours behind a flail mower or wood chipper. Here you want the various stages of decay feeding the fungus in the soil along with all the micro-fauna. I like taking a peak into the this microuniverse from time to time. There is a lot of things going on so its fun to look under a larger piece of wood. Sometimes you’ll find the larvae of fireflies which also have bio-luminensce. They hide embedded under the bark and you can sometimes find them even in the dead of winter if you look hard enough.

Pawpaw colonies have a life of their own forever expanding and taking over vast areas. This tendency creates a great density of shade within the planting. There is hardly any recruitment of any type of seedling tree or shrub. A few multiflora roses struggle to gain a toe hold. The wild black raspberries fade and the thick colonies of golden rod disappeared entirely. The quackgrass died years ago after the canopy closed. The pawpaw marches on shading and creating the perfect habitat for itself free of pretty much any competition. I did plant several Chinese ash species here and they have done very well and are completely immune to the ash borer. You will see possums in here along with red squirrels eating the ash seeds as they mature. This particular planting had trees spaced at 20 ft. apart in three long rows done in 1988. This was the year of severe drought where every county in Michigan was considered a disaster area. The trees survived and flourished once I stopped using Round-Up to kill the grasses around them and then mulched them with rotted wood chips. Pruning in this planting involves thinning to allow greater lateral branching while at the same time not removing everything. Pawpaw trees live for 30 years or so before the main trunk dies. It is replaced by the ‘suckers’ or new trees as they stoloniferously spread across the landscape. This creates the effect of side branching on the trees which then increases fruiting. You can find that the colony does this for you as well. You can push a tree over as it snaps near its rotted base. This type of thinning is done every three years or so. In one pawpaw and black walnut planting I am trying an understory or black and green gooseberry. It appears the shrubs can tolerate the shade but few fruit seem to form but the bushes look very healthy. This would be a level three crop in the shade of two other food plants. I am wondering if I could grow other vegetatables or medicinal plants like ginseng in here too. It is like a super highway in the pawpaw grove and people notice when I take them there it has a comforting effect.

The tree on the left on this image with the pruners leaned up is one of the original trees planted in 1988. It is still very healthy. In the upper right is a colony of raspberries. Those are slowly fading out. When I have dug into the soil here, I noticed the root systems are dense and over lap like a giant matrix of stolons which explains why on the hillside there is no erosion. This is the stoloniferous roots of great magnitude produced by the pawpaw. If you have a grafted variety, this is not possible to recreate. So seedling orchards could easily play a role in fruit production on a commercial level in places where orchards are not practical. This system is self sustainable with a little pruning and some tender loving care of a happy farmer. It’s a vigorous life.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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Turning The Parking Lot Soil Into a Forest

Posted on August 2, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment
BEFORE
AFTER

Having an open field is a rare event at my farm so I had to come up with a cost effective means of covering the soil after the polyhouse removals. In total five houses are being taken down and used by other farmers in my area working in fruit production of some type. I like that there are going to be put to good use. Covered in plastic and two types of polypropylene ground cloth for more than two decades, the original native soil underneath was locked in place. Removal makes it possible to replenish the soil once again. What should I do? Prior to the polyhouses, the vegetation was mostly quackgrass and orchard grass. Over time the orchard grass became the dominant species under the walnuts I planted so it was natural to try that again. Orchard grass is a thick bunch grass and very succulent at its base. When you hit it with a weed whacker prepare to be bathed in rich green protoplasm. It tolerates mowing and the grass florishes despite truck traffic and the massive crops of black walnuts. From the company Green Cover, I purchased the variety Devour which is more drought tolerant and disease free. It comes up very fine at first and is difficult to spot. I planted it late spring and kept watering it via the old irrigation system. It took roughly two weeks to pop. I added German Foxtail millet also from Green Cover and then ran to my old seed drawer and threw out via hand Dietrichs Broccoli raab from Experimental Farm Network. It’s a biennial and God willing the deer will not hammer it to death next year. I should get some yields of green goodness to eat and seed later on. I threw out a couple of batches of strawberry, sorrels, Chenopodium, Mountain mint and then snuck in some teosinte of a more primitive nature. Not everything came up but some may pop next year after winter dormancy. On the left there is a small stand of Johnson grass with the giant heads. This species at my farm comes and goes depending on the damage I do over tilling. Once I stop, it too retreats and disappears. It is interesting to me that some of the best soil builders and ground cover seeds are found in the Green Cover catalog. This particular area of farming has really improved over the last decade making selections far more likely to be employed on larger scales. For woody agriculture to survive, you need good ground covers going deep into the soils below. It doesn’t matter if it’s native or not. You need a good cover and the diversity will show over time. Ideally it would something you would harvest as well to use and make available to other farmers making yourself a mini-seed company. How I got blue eyed grass in my orchard grass planting is confusing to me. I am not sure how this happened but apparently the two go hand in hand as it expanded down the hillside. No matter how I tried to propagate it, it failed in the greenhouse. I threw it out not too far from where this Farmall sits. It arrived home! Today the population ebbs and flows within the thick bunch grasses and everything else.

I have three other locations where the soil has been under poly all these years. It is interesting in that even though there are nearby trees very few feeder roots from these trees are found under the ground cloth when I yanked it up. With the exception of a few American persimmon, there appeared to be nothing. I think this environment was not conducive to root growth only because of the system I set up to propagate plants was on top of the ground cloth. It must of thrown off the oxygen levels in the soil quite a bit. All rain was deflected to the sides so it is possible the roots are thicker there yet we watered 2-3 times a week in the houses. Now that is all over, I think the soil must feel relieved. One house footprint surrounded by mature hybrid oaks will contain mostly woodland plants dominated by ginseng, ginger and goldenseal. Another surrounded by Ecos hybrid timber pears, persimmons and pecan will contain a row of edible large fruited Kousa dogwood right in the middle selected just for its fruit production to eat where there is enough light. It is probably one of the most shade tolerant dogwoods and has a really delicious tropical taste to it.

Cornus kousa : Kousa dogwood fruit turns to a dark red color for best flavor. Seed sources include Satoma and Milky Way as well as seed from a specific variety said to produce ‘golf ball’ sized fruit. Every now and then a Kousa dogwood willl produce seedless fruits too. Shade tolerant and immune to mildew this fruit has great possibilities.

Another one will contain a trellis system for beans and other vine crops along with Cornelian cherry and Lemony quince seedlings. Each of the polyhouse removals created an opportunity to harvest the wood of weak and dying trees nearby, plant new types of crops as well as evaluate the future fruiting plants in greater abundance. To me this is the greatest joy in my farming quest. Everything can be done in a direct way with minimal cost of time and money. There was one exception. The abandoned pots filled with soil and plastic tags since 2021 are giving me a new appreciation of clean up at the nursery. As the hoops disappear into the distance, it’s a relief for me too.

Dietrich’s Brocolli raab was hand scattered a little too thick here. It is a lightly shaded area under the black walnuts. This particular seed was stored for more than a decade in an unrefrigerated seed storage bin in a glassine bag. There are several other Brassica species and hybrid selections used for cover crops and new ones worth experimenting with for their food value. It adds another value to the cover crop. One you can harvest and eat. Butter and salt please or whiz it up for your green drink.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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The Southern Magnolia Visits My Northern Garden

Posted on May 21, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment

Many species of woody plants survive only because people move them out to new locations where they would never be found ala naturelle. They may provide a source of seeds which can be used to create additional selections. Like the northern short season pecans at my farm, they can create whole populations instantaneously.  Humans are natural vectors and bring huge benefits in the movement of plants.  Moving and cultivating plants helps the environment prevent ‘vegetative’ stagnation through their symmetry breaking actions. The people who interact with the environment daily, like farming, benefit immensely from this activity. The origin story of alfalfa, the Grimm alfalfa was done by this method. Today it is the third largest crop in the United States.  Normally there is no commercial value. Instead it is someone in love with the plant and wants to bestow to the land a plant never seen before. Over time the person who did the planting may have long ago moved away and the source remains a mystery. No one sees it for years until by sheer luck with someone with horticultural experience finds it. Such is the case for Southern Magnolia. For me, this was the one that got away. Here is how that went down on my terra firma.

The image above represents an individual plant in my little plantings of the coldest hardy Magnolia grandiflora I could find. I grew all of them from seed from the most extreme outliers of cold hardy individual plants that came to existence mostly through human intervention.  I planted the seedlings outside as one- and two-year plants in these small plastic collars to protect against the elements. I mulched around each tree. I treated those trees like they were given to me directly from heaven.  At some point I had over 40 plants outside growing in various stages. They were planted on a north facing slope somewhat protected by the oaks, pears and hickories I planted a decade earlier. The goal was to obtain a fully hardy evergreen tree to 80 feet tall. Why not? The species grows like this already. It was not like I was going to have to reinvent the wheel. Nature had already created it. The difference was I was growing seedlings and wanted to recreate that in the state of Michigan. As time went on, my little trees failed one after another until finally only one was left after a decade of trying. This one tree was impressive and grew to 3 ft. tall. But it too suffered huge damage in many winters.   The seed sources go by names like “Minus 22F” and “Indiana-Wants-Me” and others.  It turned out I was not alone. People were into finding this southern species because it is such a classic tree in North America.  Everyone is on board.  Even today you see these new cold hardy varieties meant to fight off the winter winds. The bottom line is this: no one I know grows them in cold areas like Michigan. It’s more like the Tennessee of winters. This is not the same. Go outside in your pajamas when it’s windy in January. There’s a difference. You might be able to get the mail but you’re not shoveling snow. The plants know this. People not so much so it’s a sort of genetic roulette.  

I believe I approached my plant project with too much project like mentality. It was a long process. The seeds were very difficult to find let in good condition from collectors. Magnolia seeds once dried are not possible to resuscitate by adding water. The embryo degrades quickly when dried. They were erratic to germinate compared to other Magnolia seeds. If the fleshy seed cover is not removed soon after ripening, then the seed rots easily. You must do several cleanings to get them spotless.  The seeds require a moist 90 day refrigeration between 34F and 38F temperature regime. The first-year seedlings are small so I kept them in my polyhouses for two years before moving them out to the great outdoors. The polyhouses did create a Zone 7 Tennessee winter with minimal fluctuations and no wind. Any broadleaf evergreen benefits from this cozy treatment.

 I began wondering if it was the consciousness of the individual who loved the tree that created its hardiness. The grower creates a bond of friendship and to a certain extent it is an expression of happiness to see each other every day. The tree then responds to its caretaker no matter where that person lives. Maybe someone lived in the southern U.S. where the tree grew in great abundance, and they brought it with them. I think there is some truth to this which then entertains the idea of plant and human connections.

Recently I was contacted with a lead on a giant Southern Magnolia tree rich in cones not too far from me. We are currently making plans to obtain cones and cuttings.  The collector also grows plants and he remembers the loss as the one that failed. He cannot forget it. For both of us, it is the memory of a beautiful plant that has a great potential in a northern world that increases the motivation of finding a means to make this a reality. Finding a novel seed source is the start.

ON SEED SOURCES:

It is generally thought that a plant growing in an area for a long period of time is adapted to the climate and conditions around which it resides. What is missing in this understanding of adaptability is what I call the ‘loner’ plants. ‘Loners’ are individuals that defy the odds of survival somehow and don’t fit into the nice smooth lines of the range maps in the botanical literature. This is because the smooth lines are actually dotted, and the range is porous like a membrane which is always expanding. The dots can extend in all directions sometimes hundreds of miles from what is thought of as the normal population. Bur oak is a good example. It is found far out west to the point people often view it as human induced populations.  There are palm trees in the United States like this because coyotes and migrating birds consume the fruit and can travel long distances creating disjointed populations. At my farm I have several Georgia seed source baldcypress and Alabama hybrid oaks completely adapted to Michigan with zero winter damage. Here I took the ‘quasi-loner’ plants from a population that had problems surviving and selected the most vigorous and hardy plants from the population.  Every once in a great while, there are ‘loner’ plants that are super isolated. These may or may not offer a population of adapted plants. They might be that unique that the population of seedlings they produce is not adapted in the surrounding environment. There is no way to tell unless you actually grow the plants and test them.   ‘Loners’ can create new populations, and these can then expand the plant into new horticultural and agricultural possibilities. It appears with the southern magnolia; hardiness is not just a one plant solution. To create a solution, find several hardy plants and grow them in windy unprotected and Zone 5 locations.  Now you have a place to start should you collect other ‘loners’ turning them into a community of likely individuals to create the population you are looking for using all seed as they mix together.

That’s right. Your loners are no longer lonely.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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The American Chestnut Revisited

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment
Timburr American Hybrid Chestnut

Thanks to a previous generation of growers who appreciated and loved the chestnut tree for its nuts and wood quality, I was able to grow the hybrid populations on my farm. From these seedling American hybrid nuts, I was able to create a small orchard on a 20 by 20 foot spacing specifically for seed production for my nursery. At the time, there was only a couple of places to obtain the nuts to grow and then sell the plants via mail order. Every now and then I sold them to other retailers to sell too. The highest part of my production got to a couple of hundred of pounds every year. The populations were small and experimental. As I got to know many of the individuals producing the seed, I found out their crop was an adjunct to their life which helped pay the taxes and maintain their hobby ‘art’ farm. This summer I am continuing the tradition with my ‘art’ furniture project using all hybrid American chestnut wood. Every time I look at the drying wood and coppice I have stored, I remember who I purchased the seed from and how the trees looked prior to going plank after the milling. Here was my life captured by a chestnut tree in wood. The rings spoke to me in some cosmic way. The last time I offered the wood to a local turners association they were very happy to have it. The one caveat was it had to be looked at by an expert under magnification to prove it was actually chestnut wood and not Aesculus or Quercus. Once he gave the thumbs up, then it went up for auction.

American hybrid chestnut wood bowl with zebra wood edges.
Viva American Hybrid Chestnut

My plantings were done with the intention of never having to harvest the trees for lumber. Yet here I was 30 years later with a shiney brand new chainsaw ready to go. Lost but not forgotten was the new progeny that seeded in surrounding the dead trees. Selected for fast growth and blight resistance, I soon began directionally training these new trees while keeping as many as possible while adding new species outside of the genus Castanea. It is one way to add diversity while maintaining the new and emerging chestnut forest. Out of all the tree crops I grow, the chestnut sections were very accomodating to new species of woody plants including their own progeny. It was a simple thing to create and involved a certain cut this and save that philosophy to keep everything healthy. Many of the nuts planted were done so by squirrels and white tailed deer who press the seeds into the dead leaves and grass. Chestnut leaves do not degrade quickly and add a thick mulch under the trees.

There was a simple way to follow this selection and my growing ideals using the path of least resistence.

Things that slowed progress.

  • Never read about breeding chestnuts or breeding of any plant. It has no real value. You can do much better on your own. I have rocks to pick in my field. Much more joy in picking boulders dropped from the last glacier that came by.
  • Put no energy into researching other chestnut selections. It’s fruitless in terms of actual useable knowledge. The trees may be pertinent to an orchard system to some degree but not when you combine timber growth and nut production. This is a kind of a inbetween area where you favor a tree based on other characteristics not common in orchard plants.
  • Avoid all modern institutional and non-profit organizations who are out to improve the chestnut. The definition of ‘improve’ is a subjective term. The improvements never quite come to fruition and require huge resources to continue. They inevitably become mired in yesterdays science while they pat themselves on the back. Back to picking rocks from the glacial till.
Art from Ken: Glacial till on American hybrid chestnut wood. Or “Rocks I Found in the Field While Digging Holes When Planting Trees”
Ken’s Select American Hybrid Chestnut Seed Selection

Things that speed progress.

  • Find small samples of chestnuts from trees that look spectacular as yard trees or from older homes. Contact the owners. I used to knock on doors like I’m selling vacuum cleaners. Yes. I did try that once. Mention you need the nuts for your experiment. People love to tell you about their home and yard usually. If it’s a tad overgrown, ask them if you can help them clean up around it using a few hand tools you just happen to have in your car or truck.
  • Try to find other producers who have chestnuts that are quasi-selected for blight and fast growth. These seedling trees can create your new populations quickly. Even the Chinese chestnut has timber like trees within the progeny. Its fine to use orchard trees too. Whatever you find that you feel is good is a seed source. This is ‘breeding’. If you have the room for it, create a population of the diversity you find wherever that is. Don’t worry about the outcome. You are not creating a race horse. Let the trees guide you.
  • If you happen to find a ‘pure’ American chestnut or any chestnut that grows vigorously with minimal damage to the trunk from chestnut blight, treat it as pure. ‘Pure’ is a concept. You certainly can argue it in the court of genetics if you want and have it tested if that makes you feel better or less guilty in some way. In the end, this is not going to help you or anyone else. You’re cultivating a plant free of strict protocols of any sort. Use it. Try growing it but don’t commit large volumes of space to one seed source. ‘Pure’ doesn’t mean better and certainly doesn’t mean impervious to all negative environmental influences. It means you found something desirable and useful for your chestnut forest. You’re fortunate.

The American chestnut is a rare tree in Michigan. It doesn’t have to be.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

It started in a field.
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The Alpine Strawberry Moves to Flat-Landia

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment
“Red Wonder” Alpine strawberry captures the flavor of the wild strawberry as a non-running clumpy perennial.

One of the most common and widely available perennial edible groundcover plants is the Alpine strawberry, Fragaria vesca. I grew as many as I could find in the seed trade. Unlike regular strawberries, Alpine strawberry varieties are grown from seeds. Much of the varietal selection comes from people who like the dainty and small low yielding plant as part of an edible landscape. At the time, we had roughly a dozen types growing at the farm. Many we produced in paper pots in the polyhouses. This allowed for an even germination of the teeny seeds. You would press then into the surface of the premoistened soil. You had to make sure not to hand water them otherwise the seeds would float away down the cracks of the pots. It was a delicate operation so we would use super fine misters. I discovered it was true that light activates the cotyledons within the seed which then causes the seeds to sprout. The cotyledons turn green prior to sprouting and growing ‘true’ leaves. Birch seeds are like this as well.

Some varieties appeared to be very similar and there was also a few yellow selections. They rarely spread and self seed. They tend to be short lived perennials growing for 3-5 years before fading entirely. The Alpine strawberry is found in the earliest permaculture designs which used them extensively as a border plant. When I started growing them only one company offered Alexandria and this was the ‘alpine industry’ standard. “Ruegen” was another one in the same class. As time went on I found a lot of other selections and began producing them as plants and seeds while creating a few seed producing beds of them. When we did this at the time, I wondered if the plant could be improved on in terms of yields. This was not entirely successful. It is one of those fruits that has a mystique around it as a wild crop in some parts of the world where they are collected like when one goes for a hike in the alps. I am hearing ‘the hills are alive with the sound of music’ for some reason. If you could change the lyrics to ‘the hills are alive to the fruits of strawberry’ might be better.

“Yellow Wonder” Alpine Strawberry

I had a customer who grew the “Yellow Wonder” and pumped it up with huge amounts of fertilizer and compost. The flavor went from subtle to non-existent. Into the unmanifest, the watery flavor of pineapple and sweet cherry disappeared entirely. I tried to explain to him his great love of the plant mellowed the flavor to zero point zero. I was unsuccessful. This really highlights the issue of strawberries in general where irrigation and fertilizer reduces flavor. This happened to potatoes recently when a drought hit the major potato growing regions in the U.S. and people woke up to a smaller but more delicious potato. Who knew they were connected? They were also more nutritious to a small degree. Almost every home gardener understands this. Just because something is small and uncommercial doesn’t mean it was a failure. It is the opposite.

“I Wonder” Italian Alpine strawberry. Wild.
In the Wild Alpine strawberry. There were rocks and moss and birds and things. You see…..

Enjoy.

Kenneth Asmus

The beginning of the seedy crops at the Oikos Tree Crops farm.

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Plants That Saw the Light of Day (Part 3)

Posted on March 29, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment

If you love plants, it is only natural to want to try to grow something that is entirely based on a feeling. There is no objective knowledge or science involved. It is a form of appreciation of the natural world and a small way to capture that in a plant.  It starts with one plant based on intuition fueled by curiosity.

China-fir Cunninghamia lanceolata

It wasn’t for lack of trying. These seeds were given to me several times from various collections throughout the world. Many individual trees are found within the southern United States. I kept growing them only to watch them perish during the winter at my farm. Since it is a Seqouia type of timber tree with mature heights up to 160 ft. I was keen on establishing it at my farm specifically for the production of seeds. The main issue was hardiness. It is not a Zone 5 tree. If you look at its wide range of its homeland there appeared there were some seed zones that may squeak through the Michigan winters. Squeak is the operative word here. My selection process was done via using seedlings grown in paper pots in unheated polyhouses. This moves it up to a quasi-Zone 7 unless the temperature drops below minus 20F. Then all bets are off. I sold some of the stock but thousands of seedlings perished even in that cozy environment. Eventually I made several out plantings with the remainder of the plants. Those too all perished except two trees. Two is enough. These two trees are now set to be rooted to figure out a way past the location they are at now. Because of its wood quality and extreme rot resistance impervious to all known fungi it has possibilities in terms of wood production. It also has great potential to grow in locations where other evergreens would not survive drought conditions and soil that baked like cement. The large ultimate size to me indicates a means for a non-plantation pine rich in diversity below. It could be used in places where it is impossible to grow almost all evergreen timber trees. Its drought tolerance and ability to grow fast and straight are legendary. It’s wind and storm tolerance are off the charts. Where can I sign up? It appears like many good tree crops idea, you need greater representations of this species especially my Zone 5ish trees. This selection model of live and let die is not ideal to find a solution, but it is probably one of the only ways to do this economically time wise.

The China-fir is completely impervious to browse with its cactus like needles.
Purple Mayday Tree Prunus padus purpurea

The Mayday Tree: European Bird Cherry- Prunus padus and purpurea

I was keen on establishing this fast growing cherry used for wood and fruit production. It is identical to chokecherry, Prunus virginiana but often has a larger single trunk tree to 40 ft. or more. I took them from a population of plants that appeared to be the best of the lot. They were very vigorous and healthy with large leaves. I planted them out in the open on a slope of a hillside at my farm where they grew like no tommorrow isolated from all other trees.The late Clayton Berg of Montana provided me with the nursery stock in the beginning. He had purple leaf trees within his plantings and some of the seedlings also showed the purple leaves. The selections I made within them included very dark purple almost black foliage. These too went out in another area of my farm. About a decade or two into it, a disease called black knot blew in and engulfed the trees destroying everything including the fruit production. The large green leaf types had very heavy loads of fruit. The purple ones not so much. Both produced very astringent and bitter fruits in the fresh state. It happened so quickly there was no chance to make selections or find immune plants. They do hybridize with the chokecherry. It is such a powerful disease which can blow in from spores miles away, there is no hope of isolation. Even today I see the seedlings barely a foot tall with the disease. This presence of the disease had its benefits too. It is not a silver lining philosophy either. It is a spur to evolution and the changes needed to find immunity of the other Prunus and the high resistance needed to the other chokecherries I have. The black knot is not to blame for the end of my Prunus padus experiment. It signals the beginning of new life free of disease. It’s a way to find a healthier tree, stronger and capable of greater physiological adaptibility and likely healthier fruit. The disease signals the movement in the right direction for the plant. From a cultivation standpoint, it is not something you desire and falls into the category of ‘things to avoid like the plague’. Because after all it is dis-ease to the cultivator.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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Plants That Saw The Light of Day (Part 2)

Posted on March 27, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment

Every plant that I grew whether it was in great profusion or just a few for experimental purposes had possibilities. If it died unexpectedly or had some horticultural issues of some sort, then I want to know what happened and why. That is why I kept replicating these more or less ‘failed’ plants over and over. I wanted to know the limits. It is a way to awaken a plants potential and find that open window of possibilties.

Asparagus acutifolius (Not an image taken at my farm)

Mediterranean Asparagus: Asparagus acutifolius

Every now and then I would discover new species within a genus of a well know crop plant. Everyone knows the asparagus but few people realize worldwide there are several species used for medicine and food outside of Asparagus officinalis. My discovery process is normally based on finding information and seeds of it most of which was done prior to the internet. Many times people would contact me. All asparagus is clonally propagated and like everything done like that the view is extremely narrow in terms of selection and use. The Euell Gibbons book, “Stalking the Wild Asparagus” highlights a foraging philosophy that is alive today. Wherever asparagus is found, it is recognized and used. Here the view is wide and filled with flavors far outside of what is consumed today. This creates a certain mystique about many of them. The Meditteranean species was not entirely winter hardy at my farm in Michigan. Before I lost all of them, there were a few individuals that did survive which to me is a glimmer of hope. So it could be possible with a bigger population to find others and select it. It is the most drought tolerant asparagus species ever. The flavor is very pungent but is relished by consumers. Since my experiment, I found other species which I am growing which are hardier and have a similar flavor profile. It might be possible they are not edible in the fresh state as well but either through hybridization and selection you could find a delicious version. I have seen these species in other arboretums and wonder why they ended up as ornamentals instead of food or medicine. The density and yields of the stems-sprouts far outproduces commercial asparagus. But the big question is flavor. How would this taste and what is it like to use as a source of nutrition and vitamins? It might just flat out taste horrible. Does that make it medicine then?

Not a picture I took at my farm. They never got that far.

Seaberry: Hippophae rhamnoides

The seaberry represents some of the best ultra-hardy fruit plants of the northern plains of China and Russia. People have grown it in several countries and improved its yields, flavor and fruit size to the point it is now in the cultivar world of wonderment. However, no matter how I was able to produce it, it mysteriously disappeared every summer. I used the clonal selections, seeds from the clonal selections, seeds from wild unselected plants and Ebay seeds. I purchased seeds from the seed companies here in the U.S. All paths lead to failure. Eventually I gave up. For a while I sold plants grown at Burnt Ridge Nursery. After some research, it turned out that seaberry is latitude sensitive meaning the farther south you go, the ability to grow it decreases dramatically. Because of its health properties and possibilities for these ‘Adaptogen’ drinks you see on the market, the cultivation is highly sought after even more than Aronia. (My sidenote takeaway: Aronia has a bad name for marketing.) Here location plays a role in its success and eventual use. I am wondering if some of the most northern areas could attempt larger grow outs to see its possibilities. It does look inviting with its rich fruit and nitrogen fixing capabilities. For now I keep a small packet of seeds in my seed drawer waiting for the perfect spring weather. If you decide to grow it, you are in luck. The seeds do not require dormancy and can be planted just like beans. They usually grow quite vigorously that first year. Male and female flowers are on separate plants on this species. It is a good one to experiment with because of its widely available inexpensive seeds, ease of growing and selecting clones of it. Ideally you would want three hundred plants of it but even a little is good. If I were to do it again, I would start with ‘plants that do not die’ first and go from there.

Seaberry Fruits-Different common names used but this one is the best by far.
Lonicera caerula or villosa or both: Flowers at my farm.

The Blue Honeysuckle Called Honeyberry

This took a robust plant breeding industry to bring this into production using several seed sources and a penchant for winnowing out the best. I was happy with the name they chose to market it because Mountain Fly Honeysuckle is not useable. There are many varieties of it now with huge fruits and potential for commercial production. Since its a circumpolar plant native to several continents, it has a broad array of seed sources. When I first grew the plants, I used commercially purchased seed from Russia and finally plants from northern Wisconsin. Each of these seed sources were slightly different. They were all very weak growing and not adaptable to my Zone 5-6 farm. It was too warm. I first purchased a couple of varieties from Russia from Hidden Springs Nursery in Tennessee and then slowly grew other seed sources. I had the vision since it was a honeysuckle, Lonicera, I would be swimming in berries, seeds and plants. Nothing could be further from the truth. It just was not adapted to my latitude. Since I have recently seen them at my local Lowes, I realize someone else is swimming in them. Just before I gave up producing them, I had heard the Japanese had selections of them that were robust and super productive in warmer and longer growing season climates. Followed by the Holland breeders, huge small plum sized fruits were dropped into the mix. Everyone was diving into this huge pool of genetic diversity. I still walk by my row of 50 plants of Russian heritage seedlings and a few of my Wisconsin plants all of which are the same planting height from 25 years ago. Every now and then one flowers and produces a fruit. That’s enough for now they tell me.

Blue honeysuckle fruit image that I think I got from a customer of mine or Pond 5.
Michigan Heartnuts

Heartnuts Juglans ailantifolia var. cordiformis

There is nothing not to love about the heartnut and its cultivation. It has large clean leaves and immunity to all the diseases that inflicts black walnut. It has a very vigorous growth and great winter hardiness to at least -25F. I have seen three old trees with nuts on them. There are some seedlings that grow like a forest giant straight as an arrow and other trees with look like giant mushrooms. Even the hybrids of it with butternut are magnificent in form and vigor. Yet here again, few people cultivate it to any degree and rarely gets mentioned as a tree crop in agroforestry circles. It tends to miss frosts that nail the English walnut because it leafs later than most. The shells can be thick but there no internal sutures to impede the nut from dropping out in wholes and halves. People have made selections of it too with thinner shells and high yields. I have several nice selections I made that were insanely productive. It appeared to come true from seed at least the ones I purchased seeds from. One of my farming friends had a small plantation of seedlings and their hybrids. Before he left his farm, it was an amazing experience for me to visit. I just loved seeing that variation in action. What I did not know was that his love of cleanliness in his orchard and his spray regime eliminated the one pest I was experiencing like no tommorrow. It was the butternut curculio. That little bugger was pernicious, egregious and outrageous. A little Jackie Chiles energy. This particular larvae drills into the stems of the plant eliminating the female flowers. Every stem can have several drill holes. This completely eliminates the crop. My farming friend with his love of Malathion 3-4 times a year eliminated that little bugger along with the husk maggots which is another common insect associated with black walnuts. To create a tree crop, you need to flush out the details of growing these plants in numbers to really make it past certain disease and insect barriers. This one had a simple solution. You need to put the balm on. No one knows exactly what the yields are yet, but it is likely Grimo Nut Nursery and a few others have tweaked the ideal that others may follow in their footsteps. The crops became less and less at my farm until today there are none. But the trees look spectacular still and healthy minus the bb shot holes in the stems. For now, I am working on an organic solution that is simpler and more cost effective. I started last year doing the same with English walnut which also suffers from the same fate. There is a Rosemary extract that is considered effective against boring insects and may prove useful in prevention of this type of insect that drills into the soft succulent heartnut stems as they grow in early spring. In the meantime, the heartnut does open up your heart to all things walnut. The nuts are delicious like a buttery cashew. What is not to love?

Heartnuts from the Gellatly Plantation in British Columbia

Enjoy.

Kenneth Asmus

Farmer Friend Heartnuts Michigan
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