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What Happened to the Dow Dominion? A Series of Updates After a Six Year Hiatus

My last post was almost six years ago. Back then, I was talking about starting a tree nursery, and I had the mindset of something along the lines of "As long as you try, you will succeed no matter what happens." Obviously, things have changed as time passed, as has my mindset and my goals with gardening and life itself, to some extent. But after six years of not writing my thoughts and observations, I thought it may be a bit jarring for anyone scrolling down the blog feed who happens to notice the dramatic change in methods and thought processes from the prior writing. So I decided to create a series of update posts to get readers up to speed on what's going on in my life, and how gardening, science, health, and nature all fit into it.   Starting From When We Last Heard From Our Protagonist...  As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, back in September of 2016, I was intending to start a small apple/pear tree nursery using seeds I collected over the course of the year.
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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
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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
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Starting A Suburban Tree Nursery, Part I: Planting the Seeds

This site has a lot of potential for an apple orchard In a post I wrote a few months back, I talked about starting a tree nursery in my suburban neighborhood.  Well, that idea has started to come to fruition.   And, as promised, I am going to show you the entire process for as long as I can keep it going.  In today's post, I will outline all of the steps I took to hopefully start the trees from the ground up--more specifically, how I grew them from seeds. I must first give credit to the author of little house on the urban prairie , a blog that I started following after hearing Mark Shepard mention him/her on the permaculture podcast.  It was his/her post titled " Chestnuts and Hazels for the Future " that I learned of this method of starting trees from seed.  The author wrote the post in 2010, and he/she started hazelnuts and chestnuts using this method.  According to post dated in September 2014, those trees can now be purchased for $10 a piece.  If you're int
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Fall Has Arrived! Time to Review the Last Few Months of the Dow Dominion Garden

The last post I wrote about the garden was back in late June, and a lot of stuff has changed since that point.  I thought I'd show my readers what has happened in the time between then and now. Although I am attempting to convert a large portion of my garden to a system of edible perennial plants, there will always be a spot for in the yard for growing classic annual favorites, like tomatoes.  Today, I'd like to offer a glimpse at what both annual and perennial plants produced for my family to eat over the summer season. Annuals Tomatoes - My tomatoes were glorious this year!  So many delicious tomatoes were eaten by the entire Dow family this summer.  The "Brandy Boy" variety started to ripen in early July, with the rest of the varieties blushing shortly thereafter.  With the exception of "Rio Grande," they have been putting out delicious tomatoes for us to eat ever since.  Production has slowed to a crawl, however, over the past month, as early b
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The Dow Dominion Will Now Be the Home of a New Tree Nursery

After several months of contemplation and research, I have finally decided to start a tree nursery on my property. A tree nursery?  "How am I going to do that on less than a third of an acre in suburbia?" is probably what you're thinking right about now. I know, I know.  I asked myself the same thing over and over, too. I've also heard it a thousand times from various internet gurus as well. There's no way I can grow trees with this little space. Perhaps they have a point.  Or perhaps they are just too discouraged to try, given that almost nobody thinks it can be done.  There are, however, a few individuals who are doing the exact same thing I want to do, despite conventional wisdom that claims it isn't possible.
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Garden Progress, May/June 2015 - Improvement and Refinement

I've enjoyed the amount of time I've had to relax and watch the various bugs fly around and march along in my backyard garden . They seem particularly unconcerned about my presence there, and I get a sense of accomplishment knowing that, by growing edible plants, I'm helping them in their daily activities as well.   It's especially noticeable this year, as I've made a variety of improvements to my garden and added a generous amount of new plants and varieties to my collection.  It seems my garden is becoming more and more of an insect haven as the biodiversity of the plants I grow improves.  I think that is a good thing. That said, the "improvements" to the garden that seem to attract various pollinators were initially for my benefit, in order to increase the amount of food I can grow for my family.  Today, I want to share some of the things I made improvements upon from last year, as well as some brand new techniques for this year that have hel
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