Tag Archives: ecology

Wood is Good: American Chestnut

In my senior year in college, I was employed as a gardener for a home that was near a nature reserve in the city. From time to time, I would cross the street with a wheelbarrow full of spoiled apples harvested … Continue reading

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Finding Mulberry: Morus rubra

I like mulberries and everything about them. It doesn’t matter what type they are. I made the selection Lavender Life red mulberry based on heavy fruit yields. It was not based on percentage of how much it may or may … Continue reading

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Parking Lot to Forest: Going From Zero to Hero in Plant Diversity

In terms of establishing new perennial plants in my treeless pasture, my farm was a good testing ground for all these different methods I kept reading about from other growers in gardening and permaculture. I applied these ideas to my … Continue reading

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Nana Beach Plum: It Lives in a Farmerless Field

Any species of fruit as it is found in ‘nature’ can be cultivated. Two years ago, I grew a wild tomato from the Everglades that produced a tomato the size of a pea. It tasted like a tomato but was … Continue reading

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Flexibility and Stability: Integrating Opposite Values With the Wild Apple

When you grow an apple from seed (which I highly recommend) you will see the extremities of what is possible in terms of what the apple will look and taste like. If a crabapple tree is nearby, then there is … Continue reading

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One is a Lonely Number: it just is no good anymore and other fixer uppers in the plant world

Just one single species of plant can positively change the world in so many wonderful productive agricultural ways. To make the world more fruitful and abundant, crop enrichment could light the way by harnessing new species of plants outside of what … Continue reading

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The Jerusalem Artichoke Goes the Distance

It’s a root. It’s a tuber. It’s Super Sunflower. One of the great joys of growing plants is when you find a unique plant with characteristics in what would be considered impossible odds from a sea of uniformity. Because it’s … Continue reading

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Taco Bebbs Oak: Increasing Diversity

Bebbs Oak  Quercus x bebbiana  Quercus macrocarpa x alba Bur-White Hybrid Oak When I first started my oak collection, I found myself wheeling and dealing in acorns. It was like poker but with acorns. Everyone wins. Diversity increases. “Hit me.” … Continue reading

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The Inbetweeners

Hybrid American Chestnuts: Castanea dentata x mollissima When I first started my nursery, I was always trying to find new seed sources to grow trees. A lot of my early sources were people known to me by reading Organic Gardening … Continue reading

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Returning to the Wild is Not That Wild

The above image is my ongoing wild potato release program for the feral potato. I’m trying to create a mini-potato oasis in the middle of a field. Eventually you have to let them go back to the wild. As you … Continue reading

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