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Showing posts from 2016

Starting A Suburban Tree Nursery, Part II: Seedlings in the First Year

Back in December, I wrote part one of this series , which was about starting apple trees from seeds I collected over the past year.  The idea was to get a series of tree seedling started every year from various fruit seeds, and over time, begin selling them to people in my local community as each batch of seedlings matured.  Keeping costs low is a large part of making this work, so I planted them in the regular old dirt in a partially-wooded area in my back yard. I haven't wrote about it since then, and I suppose you might be wondering if that's because the seedlings didn't grow and the plan was a failure.  Well, fortunately that's NOT the case, and I did successfully germinate a number of apple seeds into baby apple trees. I took a short video of the seeds sprouting out on the last day of winter, March 19th: Other than removing the mulch I placed in part one, I did nothing else to help these seedlings along.  As much as I wanted to pamper each seedling, I

Growing Sorrel (Rumex acetosa): A Refreshing Perennial Leafy Green

I apologize for not updating the blog more frequently.  I recently re-entered the work force, and it seems like I never have time for doing the things I need to do  The garden, however, is as productive as ever.  When I get around to it, I will make an update on all the new stuff I've planted and all the new tricks I've learned this year.  But for today's post, I want to talk about a plant I've been growing for well over a year now that has rapidly become one of my favorite leafy greens.  That plant is Rumex acetosa , more commonly known as sorrel. Sorrel is a leafy perennial herb belonging to the Polygonacae family, more commonly known as the buckwheat family in the US. Wild sorrel plants are frequently found in moist grassland areas all over the world. Sorrel is also cultivated as leafy vegetable or culinary herb. Pliny the Elder describes sorrel as far back as 77 AD. One of the earliest recorded mentions of sorrel being used as a vegetable comes fr