The history of the United States is a history lined with apple trees. Early European settlers in America brought with them apple seeds, which they planted to begin the first orchards. Apples were a fruit of survival at the time, storing well and serving as both food and, in the form of cider, drink.

After the Revolutionary War, apples proliferated across the frontier. The legend of Johnny Appleseed is the story of a real man, John Chapman, who planted apple seedlings across what is now Appalachia and north into Ontario, Canada. Most homesteads up and down and across the expanding United States had several apple trees, if not full orchards. They were planted for food, to produce new trees to sell and for the production of hard cider, which was one of the most common drinks consumed in colonial America. 

By the 1900s, apples had fallen out of favor. The introduction of prohibition eliminated the market for hard cider, and as railroads transformed transportation across the country, the market changed. Now, a few large apple orchards, growing only one or two varieties of apples, control the apple market. Today, 22 percent of apples sold in US grocery stores are the variety Gala, and most supermarkets offer only a few varieties. The backyard apple tree was left to grow wild—until a recent surge in interest in heritage varieties and hard cider production.

As scraggly and unkempt as an old apple tree may appear, it can still be a stellar start to an orchard or a fruitful addition to a family homestead. 

“Planting new trees is going to take some years before they’re mature and fruit bearing,” says Jennifer Ries, who coordinates the tree nursery department at Fedco, a tree and seed cooperative out of Clinton, Maine. “With these old trees, we have gifts from anonymous strangers of the past who planted these trees for particular reasons.”

Old tree discovery and restoration was once the purview of dedicated pomologists such as John Bunker, author of Not Far From the Tree, and Dan Bussey, author of The Illustrated History of Apples in the United States and Canada. Bunker would travel the backroads of Maine and knock on the doors of old farmhouses with peeling paint and sagging roofs. He would scout the property for aging apple trees and, if he found them, collect fruit and cuttings. He has worked to identify more than 500 cultivars in his ongoing career.

A restored orchard of heritage apple trees. (Photo credit: Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)

But today, it is more than just a few of the apple-obsessed who are discovering and rehabilitating old trees. The surging popularity of hard cider has inspired farmers to revitalize old orchards and plant new ones, and even single backyard trees are benefiting from the renewal.

“We get a lot of emails from cider makers,” says Amy Dunbar-Wallis, a graduate student at the University of Boulder in Colorado and community outreach coordinator for the Boulder Apple Tree Project. “And we hear from homeowners who have apple trees on their land and want to be cider makers.”

Organizations such as the Boulder Apple Tree and nearby Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project, as well as the Maine Heritage Orchard in Maine, the Lost Apple Project in Washington and the Temperate Orchard Conservancy in Oregon, have grown in the past decade to support curious homeowners and passionate arborists alike.

If you have a homestead with an ancient apple tree in the backyard or perhaps a small orchard full of leaning, bending and twisting trees, it is possible to reclaim the productivity of those trees. According to Ries, apple trees can produce bountiful crops for 200 years, so some of those homestead trees may just be getting started.

Identify the tree

You can restore an aging apple tree and appreciate its fruits without ever discovering what variety it is, but testing a tree to discover its lineage will help you understand its unique qualities and may help apple historians in their quest for “new old” varieties. Identification can help connect you through time with the farmers who originally planted the tree by understanding if they used the fruit for cider or cold storage or ate it fresh.

“There are thousands and thousands of cultivars in the US,” says Dunbar-Wallis. Some cultivars can be identified by comparing fruit to old records and old paintings, but there are more high-tech options available now. “We are able to take just a few leaves when they first emerge, fresh in the spring. We send them off to Washington State, where they are able to do some DNA analysis of those leaves and compare them to datasets in Europe. That allows us to figure out not only what the tree is but who its parents and grandparents are and figure out where all of these different cultivars fit into the overall pedigree of apples.”

You may discover you have any number of common homestead apple varieties or you may have something truly rare on your land. Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer of the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project have discovered varieties of apples where only one single tree of that cultivar remains. Among them was the Colorado Orange, a fruit that was part of state lore for its unique color, flavor and late ripening. 

First pruning

Most trees discovered on old homesteads require an initial pruning to remove dead growth and allow the tree unencumbered sunlight. The first steps in rehabilitating a tree include removing any brush or brambles that are overcrowding it and cutting out any larger limbs that have died or show signs of disease.

“The best thing you can do for old trees is some dead wood pruning,” says Laura Seeker, who works on old apple tree restoration for Fedco and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. “Get out anything that’s dead, decaying, diseased and damaged. Do any clearing out you can in the canopy so that the tree just has live growth.”

Annual pruning

After initial canopy clearing and deadwood removal, the key to a happy apple tree is annual pruning. This encourages the tree to focus its energy on fruit production by removing some of its new growth, and it also allows it to get the maximum energy possible from the sun by keeping it from shading itself out.

“Once we’ve got the canopy cleared up, that opens up the tree’s photosynthesizing,” says Mike Biltonen of Know Your Roots LLC, which specializes in the holistic restoration of old orchards. “At that point, we want to keep it on a maintenance schedule, pruning every year or every other year and addressing any serious issues. We don’t want to do anything to shock it in those first few years, and we don’t want it to lose its wild or feral nature or its uniqueness of being an abandoned or lost tree.”

Pruning a fruit tree during the dormant season benefits the overall health of tree and can increase fruit yields. (Photo credit: Kirsten Lie-Nielsen)

Annual pruning to keep the tree in top shape usually takes place in late February or early March, when the first signs of early buds begin to appear. 

“Apples really like to be pruned,” says Dunbar-Wallis, “So, during the dormant months, you are going to want to snip the new growth. The new growth is going to grow at a 90-degree angle to the original branch, and you want to snip new growth.”

Tree cloning

When you are pruning your tree, you can begin to start a new orchard from the old variety by taking clones from the tree. Apple tree clones are created by taking a pruned “sucker” or new year’s stem of growth from the original tree and grafting it to rootstock. Rootstock is apple grown from seed, and it is available from most tree nurseries.

“It’s very endearing,” says Seeker, “because, sometimes, there’s a young, young tree of the same variety planted next to an old tree. That old tree is not going to live forever. But having a little replacement there that’s grafted from the same tree is a really nice gesture to leave for whoever inhabits this land. We have these varieties because generation after generation was here grafting, selecting for what works for this climate and what works for our palates. And so, we get to continue doing that, selecting which varieties are still working for us and planting those out and leaving them as something for future generations.”

Trees from seeds

Apple trees do grow from seed, but as a heterozygous species, their seeds do not produce the same variety of apple as the tree from which they came. When you first start rehabilitating a tree, you can look for a graft line to understand if it was selected and planted by arborists of the past or if it might have been grown from seed. Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman famously only grew apples from seed in spite of their unpredictability, but most seedling trees are the remnants of a meal consumed by a coyote or a deer.

“Even on very old trees,” says Ries, “sometimes, you can still see signs [of a graft line] by the way the bark is there—there might be a bulge or there might be a change in the bark direction.”

But if your tree is a seedling, that does not mean its fruit cannot produce something delicious. Some believe that Appleseed planted from seed because he was growing for hard cider production, and the flavors of “wild” apples can be particularly unique for cider pressing. 

“Feral or wild varieties have quite a bit of bioregional resilience,” says Biltonen. “They may have more resilience to their current location and to the climate issues we are dealing with.”

***

Learn more:

Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project. Located in Colorado, MORP is dedicated to the restoration of old apple trees. Its website includes an extensive online handbook on heritage orchard management

MyFruitTree.org. Offers DNA testing for apple trees and other identification helpers.

Fedco Trees. Fedco supplies heritage and rare trees to farmers around the country as saplings and offers rootstock for grafting your own clones. 

If you’re unsure about beginning the pruning process, contact a local arborist. You can often find ones that specialize in apple trees and will be happy to help you. Companies such as Mike Biltonen’s Know Your Roots LLC specialize in holistic restorations of orchards and apple trees. 

Read more:

Not Far From the Tree by John Bunker. Carefully illustrated and painstakingly researched, this book chronicles the history of apple trees in the Waldo County region of Maine.

The Illustrated History of Apples in the United States and Canada by Dan Bussey. Seven volumes comprehensively document the apple tree’s history in North America. 

The post Making Old Orchards New Again appeared first on Modern Farmer.

I raise and sell several hundred vegetable, flower and herb starts every spring, which meant that I was constantly purchasing plastic pots. In my experience, even high-quality plastic pots tended to fall apart after a few years, and I knew many people who simply threw them away after a single season of use. The idea of eliminating this form of waste was appealing to me, as was the additional promise of raising healthier plants in the process.

What is soil blocking?

Soil blocking is the practice of utilizing compacted blocks of soil to germinate and grow out seedlings before transplanting them into the garden. Soil blocks act as both the container and the growing medium, relying on a metal tool called a soil blocker to create the compressed cubes. 

Although the concept of soil blocking has been around for quite some time, its popularity has been steadily gaining traction, touted by many regenerative-minded farmers and adventurous home gardeners as a way to decrease plastic waste and the resulting impacts to the environment. “Soil blocks are the answer for a farm-produced seedling system that costs no more than the soil of which it is composed,” writes Eliot Coleman, a vanguard of the modern soil-blocking movement, in his seminal book, The New Organic Grower. “Blocks free the grower from the mountains of plastic [trash] that have become so ubiquitous of late in horticultural operations.” 

Soil blocking is also gaining in popularity because it promotes a healthier root system by utilizing a process known as “air pruning.” Due to the freestanding nature of each soil block, the plant roots are exposed to oxygen on all sides. The result is that, as the plant roots hit the outside edge of the soil block, they are effectively “burned” off via exposure to air, causing the plant to consistently produce new branching roots and thereby creating an overall healthy root system. 

When it comes time to move seedlings into the garden, soil blocking also allows for a gentler method of planting, thereby reducing transplant shock. Even plants that normally don’t like having their roots disturbed, such as cabbage, can be grown and transplanted successfully using soil blocks. 

Left: A young soil blocked collard seedling in the Blue Ridge Farm greenhouse. Right: Soil blocked plant at the farmers market. (Photos: Jillian Garrett)

Daniel Mays, founder of Frith Farm and another early adopter of the practice, believes that soil blocking also allows for the creation of a larger rhizosphere, (which is defined as the zone of soil where complex symbiotic interactions take place between the plant’s roots and beneficial microbes and fungi), because each block holds more soil than the tapered cells of plastic plug trays. “This means more roots, more soil contact and a more resilient plant.”

The opposite holds true for a plant raised in a traditional plastic pot: The plant’s roots become restricted and, having nowhere to go, head downward to the bottom of the pot, eventually resulting in what feels like an infinite swirl of frustration. When this happens, it is called becoming “rootbound” and this condition can not only stunt the plant but (in extreme cases) potentially even kill it. After being put in the ground, a rootbound plant can remain stunted, unable to overcome its constricted root system. It may take much longer to establish and, in the case of garden vegetables, produce a lower overall yield.

Now that we’ve covered many of the reasons in favor of soil blocking, what about the drawbacks? To be fair, soil blocking does involve a bit of an upfront commitment in the form of the costs associated to purchase the necessary tools, as well as a bit of extra labor involved to make the soil blocks themselves. I believe that these small obstacles are still vastly outweighed by the benefits that the overall system provides (not least of which, for my farm, included increased sales by offering a unique product).

How to soil block

 So, you’ve decided to try your hand at soil blocking—now what? The first thing you need to get started is one or more sizes of soil blockers, which are essentially an ejection-style press that compacts the soil into squares. You can choose from either smaller handheld versions (good for home gardeners and more economical in pricing) or larger (and more expensive) stand-up style ones. Most blockers come in several sizes, allowing you to keep sizing up your soil blocks as the seedlings grow and require more space.  

On my farm, I use three different sizes of handheld soil blockers. To germinate small seeds, I usually begin with a 20-square press (3/4-inch-diameter block size). When dealing with larger seeds such as okra, it’s best to skip this press size and germinate them directly into two-inch-diameter blocks. The one issue to keep in mind with the smaller block size is that the soil can dry out faster than with the larger blocks, so care and attention is needed so as not to accidentally lose fragile seedlings. 

At the onset of the seedlings’ first true leaves, I move them into two-inch-diameter blocks made using the four-square press. As the seedlings become more mature, I move them up to the final four-inch-diameter block size, using the one-square press, a couple of weeks prior to transplanting them into the garden. 

Part of what holds the soil block together is the established root system of the plant. It generally takes a couple of weeks for each seedling’s roots to fill out the soil block, so I highly recommend waiting for that amount of time before moving a seedling up in block size. I also recommend waiting until the seedlings have established roots in their soil blocks before attempting to transport them to market.

Soil blocked plant starts make a unique and popular display at the farmers market. (Photo: Jillian Garrett)

There are as many different formulas for ideal soil-blocking mixtures as there are farmers using the method. Each person has their own idea of what works, and everyone thinks that their recipe is the best. At the end of the day, the important part is that your soil mix is compactable but still possesses good drainage, which is why many folks recommend a blend that includes finely sifted compost (or potting soil) and coconut coir. I recommend experimenting to see what works for you and coming up with your own special blend. It can be something as simple as off-the-shelf seed starter soil or as bespoke as a mix of fine-grained homemade compost and sand with a small amendment of pulverized egg shells (such as that used by Siskiyou Farm). 

I also recommend using a deep rectangular tray (or even a wheelbarrow) in which to mix your soil medium. The secret to soil blocking is achieving the right consistency: If it’s too dry, it’s prone to crumble and fall apart; if it’s too wet, the blocks will slump over and deform. To make the mixture stick together and compact well in the blocker, you need to add a lot more water than you would think. According to Coleman, the ideal consistency is “much moister than most growers are used to. We are talking about something akin to chocolate fudge mix.” Essentially, it needs to be moist enough that, when you squeeze a handful of the soil mixture, a little water comes out.  

After you have filled all the squares in the blocker with soil mixture and smoothed off any excess, press firmly until you see water seeping out of the bottom. Then, release the handle and gently lift the blocker away (I recommend also using a slight rocking motion as you lift up), thereby freeing the soil block squares. Don’t feel bad if your first few attempts end in tragedy (mine certainly did!); perfecting this technique can take a little practice.

Beyond decreasing my reliance on plastic, soil blocking has had the added benefit of increasing my plant sales. By being one of the first farms to implement it on a commercial scale in my area, I can offer a unique product that really piques customers’ interest. Displaying shelf after shelf of soil-blocked plants in my farmers market booth is an excellent recipe for attracting curious passersby who want to know more about the pot-less plants. I have noticed a marked uptick in foot traffic and revenue at my booth by offering my plants in soil-blocked as opposed to potted form. 

While soil blocking does require a bit more labor and an upfront investment in tools, its benefits far outweigh these minor obstacles. Eliminating the need for plastic pots, creating healthier plants and root systems and—if you’re selling plant starts— increasing sales, are all reasons to give soil blocking a try. 

The post Soil Blocking Has Many Benefits. What is It and How Can You Get Started?  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

According to Jaret Daniels, curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, we no longer have the luxury of relying only on conservation lands to address biodiversity loss. Climate change, pollution, pesticides and habitat destruction are putting increasing pressure on pollinators, such as bees and butterflies. He says we need to look at nontraditional spaces as well, such as agricultural margins, utility corridors and roadsides. Although roads commonly fragment habitat for wildlife, pollinator programs, present in many states, flip the script and provide opportunities for conservation. 

Daniels is the lead of a new $155,000 grant from the Florida Department of Transportation that will plant 9,000 milkweed plants along Florida highways over the next three years to support monarch breeding habitat. Monarchs depend on diverse ecosystems, but they only lay their eggs on milkweed.

Monarchs are a “gateway bug” to improving habitat, says Daniels. Planting the roadsides for monarchs will also be good for insect pollinators in general. Beyond that, pollinators such as bees are key participants in agriculture, and we depend on them for our food. These roadside plantings aim to connect habitat, rather than fragment it. State Departments of Transportation (DOTs), often managing some of the most land in the state, are uniquely positioned to address this task.

“Even these fairly urbanized areas still harbor a lot of diversity,” says Daniels. “And if you connect those spaces, then it enhances it even more to provide connectivity between populations and movement.”

A milkweed plant grows along an FDOT roadway. (Photo by Jaret Daniels)

From beautification to conservation

Planting flowers along roadsides isn’t a new idea. Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification efforts in the 1960s spread beyond cities and to the highways, and many states have been planting flowers on roadways for years.

But some of these beautification efforts have taken up a second purpose—pollinator conservation. North Carolina began its Wildflower Program in 1985, and it now manages 1,500 acres of wildflowers along major North Carolina thoroughfares.

About 15 years ago, says Derek Smith, roadside management engineering supervisor for the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), discussion of pollinators entered the picture when a North Carolina State University scientist, Danesha Seth Carley, started studying the effects these plantings were having on pollinators. NCSU research confirmed that these roadside plantings drew in a higher number of bees and greater bee diversity.

The efforts then became intentional. The NCDOT planted gardens for monarchs at highway rest areas, welcome centers and wetland mitigation sites. Two of these welcome centers are certified monarch waystations on MonarchWatch.org.

An adult monarch. (Photo by Jaret Daniels)

Besides milkweed, NCDOT also plants a mix of perennial, annual and native plants. “Monarchs will nectar on all kinds of plants,” says Smith.

The decision to plant perennials and natives means that the NCDOT doesn’t need to go back every year to re-establish the plot. Additionally, it’s worked with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to support farmers who want to grow flowers on their farm margins in support of pollinators.

“Transportation departments are one of the largest landowners in various states,” says Smith. “Why not take advantage of it if we can, and create habitat.”

More than milkweed

The milkweed movement is commonly associated with a way to help the monarch butterfly. In recent years, it’s become a popular way to support the species—since milkweed is the only type of plant on which monarchs will lay their eggs. 

However, landscape designer and author Benjamin Vogt cautions against leaning too much on milkweed as the silver bullet for monarch conservation. Adult monarchs need a diversity of plants on which to nectar.

“A more diverse habitat planting fosters a thriving ecosystem, one in which countless other interactions are occurring, which not only benefit monarchs but all sorts of other butterfly and insect and bug species,” wrote Vogt to Modern Farmer in an email. “Gardening for monarchs means gardening for everyone else.”

[RELATED: Meet the Milkweed Man on a Quest to Help Monarch Butterflies]

Michael McClanahan of the Tennessee Department of Transportation is very familiar with the public’s love for milkweed. In 2023, the TDOT launched a program called Project Milkweed—free mail-order milkweed seeds for people to plant in their gardens to support monarchs. It ran out of seeds pretty quickly, restocked and ran out again. All in all, it received 130,903 individual orders, sending out a total of 799,601 packets of seeds. 

“I think we were shocked,” says McClanahan. “It’s really shown us that people want to do the right thing. And that people are really passionate about trying to preserve their space and create these waystations for migrating pollinators.”

A meadow planted by TDOT at a highway interchange. (Photo by TDOT)

In Tennessee’s planting program, though, it goes beyond milkweed. It started a few years ago when NCDOT wanted to “up [its] game,” says McClanahan. It didn’t start with planting but with other pollinator-friendly practices on the roadsides. TDOT started mowing less. It began deploying fewer herbicides and changing up their herbicide mixes. 

“That’s really kind of the genesis of our Pollinator Habitat Program is we started looking at our internal practices,” says McClanahan.

The program now boasts 11 sites, including welcome centers and state parks. Here, people can find diverse native plants, trees, bushes and grasses—such as partridge pea, false sunflower, frost aster and more.

For some of the roadside planting, McClanahan says sometimes people expect to see manicured,  blooming gardens. But many of their plantings are focused on native diversity and won’t always be in full color. Habitat restoration goes beyond pretty blooms and improves the ecosystem as a whole. 

“I think when you tell people that they’re native [plants], they’re more receptive to what’s out there.”

Use the space you have. Vogt doesn’t think you can necessarily “restore habitat” for pollinators in your backyard, but you can create a little island of resources. “Every plant matters,” says Vogt. “Every native plant matters more.” And if that island can connect to other islands, pollinators will be better off for it. “The more habitat we have in all shapes and form[s] the better,” says Vogt. He has published a few helpful books on this subject, including A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future and Prairie Up.

Think local and make connections. “You can make simple steps in your own landscape to enhance and attract wildlife—plant native vegetation, reduce your lawn a little bit, diversify your landscape,” says Daniels. “And then as you’re going in and around your community, look at other spaces that have potential.” This could mean connecting with DOT officials, local government or even your homeowner’s association.

Use your resources if able. Smith says North Carolina’s Wildflower Program is not funded through tax dollars but through the purchase of personalized license plates. If you live in North Carolina, that’s a good way to support the continuance of the program. Other states have similar programs, such as Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania.  

Go beyond planting. Pollinators experience pressures from pollution, chemical pesticides/herbicides and climate change. Addressing these issues in your community through advocacy or policy is an important way to support pollinators. 

Learn more. There are many resources online for learning more about pollinator health and how to support them. Here are a few:

• Florida Wildflower Foundation.“They also have wildflower resolution templates on their website to work with local communities to try to increase planting along roadways or get areas designated as wildflower areas where mowing is reduced during spring bloom,” says Daniels.
• The Xerces Society. You can take part in nationwide movements for pollinators such as No Mow May.
• Tennessee DOT has a short series of educational videos online led by “Polli, the Bee from Tennessee.”
• Remember that there are some things that might seem helpful for pollinators but actually aren’t. Read about that here.

The post Pollinator Habitat is Falling to the Side of the Road—in a Good Way appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Here in Oaxaca, the southwestern Mexican state known for rich cultural traditions ranging from intricate artisan goods to vibrant music and dance, the veneration for corn is apparent when surveying some of the area’s favorite foods. You might greet your day here with a steaming mug of atole, a sweetened corn gruel akin to a thinned-out porridge; enjoy a midmorning snack of memelas, thick corn tortillas swiped with pork lard and a variety of other toppings; and, at dinnertime, crunch into a tlayuda, an oversized tortilla stuffed with mozzarella-like quesillo cheese and griddled over hot coals until crisp. And if, for some reason, the Oaxacan adoration of corn wasn’t glaringly obvious, a stroll through the area’s yearly Feria Estatal de la Agrobiodiversidad—the state fair of agrobiodiversity—clears the matter up in no time. 

This much-anticipated daylong event, which aims to both promote and protect Oaxaca’s agricultural richness, takes place every year in late November or early December. This year, the fair opened its doors on Saturday, December 2, in the community of San Pablo de Mitla, located about an hour’s drive east of the capital, Oaxaca City. A multisensory celebration of local crops ranging from sweet potatoes to medicinal herbs to amaranth, the Fería naturally has a heavy presence of corn. This year, visitors to the fair—who range from foodie members of the public to agronomy students to biologists and more—were greeted by an elaborate arch bedecked in multicolored corn kernels and flowerlike dried husks, with a mosaic-style image depicting a woman with long braids emerging from an ear of corn.

Visitors to the fair admire offerings from the mountainous Sierra Mixe region of Oaxaca. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

Passing through the archway, visitors arrived under a big white tent where more than 500 farmers from across the state and a handful from out of state displayed their colorful, edible wares. Sprawled out on the ground atop well-worn petates (woven-fiber mats) or seated on low stools, the farmers showed off their hard-earned ears of corn, yes, but also laid out carefully arranged piles of smooth, shiny beans, bowls of bright red and yellow chile peppers, verdant heaps of string beans and many more crops. This year, according to to the Secretaría de Fomento Agroalimentario y Desarrollo Rural—the governmental body that’s part of a multigroup organizing committee that puts the fair together—more than 500 expositors belonging to 16 indigenous ethnic groups were present, bringing with them 35 of Mexico’s 64 native variants of corn alongside other important crops.

In Mexico, as in the rest of the modern world, biologically diverse traditional agriculture is increasingly being crowded out by hybrid and genetically modified crops that can withstand heavy applications of industrial herbicides and pesticides. For many millennia, the land of the milpa—an interdependent, mutually beneficial growing system of corn, beans, squash and the class of wild-growing greens collectively known as quelites—the country, since the so-called Green Revolution of the 1950s and 60s, has increasingly shifted to vast, chemical-dependent monocultures of crops, including corn, limes, papaya and single-species forests grown for harvesting timber. 

A kaleidoscope of native corn varieties, plus colorful beans in a range of shades. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

The idea for the Fería, now in its 11th year, was born as a response to this ecological crisis, which necessarily endangers the existence of small-scale traditional crops that are more time consuming to grow and less lucrative to sell, according to Girmey López Martínez, an agricultural engineer and promoter of traditional agriculture. Each year, the fair unites a diverse group of farmers who continue to grow traditional Oaxacan crops even in the face of the rising tide of big ag, sharing their products with the public in order to help maintain culinary familiarity with them, as well as saving seeds to exchange them with other farmers they meet at the fair in an additional effort to maintain agricultural diversity in the region.

“The aim of the fair is to strengthen and maintain the biodiversity of the region’s gardens, milpas, coffee plantations and cacao plantations,” said Martínez in an interview a few days after the most recent edition of the fair, which he helped fundraise. In addition to an increasing dependence on monocropping in Oaxaca, Martínez cited factors such as the growth of the local ranching industry and the explosion of unsustainable ecotourism practices as additional pressures that endanger agricultural diversity in the region. 

The display of husband-and-wife producers José Gregorio Justo and Reina Ramirez Ronquillo from the rainforested Chinantla region, which includes yucca root, fresh banana leaves, and chayote gourd. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

For husband-and-wife producers José Gregorio Justo and Reina Ramirez Ronquillo from the rainforested Chinantla region of Oaxaca, continuing to grow the corn sown by their ancestors is of utmost importance. “We can’t lose the traditions we’ve had since the olden times,” Ronquillo said at the fair as she stood behind the couple’s abundant display of organically grown sugarcane, bananas, squashes, green beans, coffee, beans and several types of corn. “Where we live, lots of people are growing genetically modified corn. But we know that what we grow is better than that type of corn. And we’re taking care of the soil, too.”

Accompanied at her display by her daughter-in-law, Ronquillo added that farming in the old way takes future generations into consideration, too. “We don’t buy anything at the store,” she said. “Everything we eat, we grow. Lots of mothers and fathers today are buying their children sodas and chips, and it’s pure poison. Our grandchildren eat boiled chayotes, bananas, yucca; we make a fresh infused water to drink and it’s much healthier.”

Nearby, Maria de Jesús Fuentes attended to her display of panela, or raw sugar-sweetened tostadas made from native corn and flavored with additional ingredients such as cacao and grated coconut. Fuentes had traveled from the Mandimbo community close to the Oaxacan coast and, in addition to her prepared products, had in tow a variety of young fruit trees ranging from jackfruit to starfruit to mango. She explains that part of her work is saving the seeds from different types of fruit, both to trade with other farmers as well as to grow into trees that she sells. 

“There are two major threats to criolla [native] seeds today,” said Fuentes. “One is the threat of all the GMO crops everyone is sowing. And the other is that the young people just don’t want to keep farming. Under both of these threats, species can go extinct. And that is why we save seeds.”

Women producers of Tlahuitoltepec, in the Sierra Mixe region, display corn (of course), plus prickly chayote and freshly fermented pulque drink, made from the tapped sap of the agave plant. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

While many of the vendors adhere to organic practices, others continue to sow native crops but take advantage of the convenience offered by agrochemicals, such as one farmer from the mountainous La Cañada region who admitted to mixing commercial fertilizer in with goat manure. 

Overall, Martínez noted, the majority of the expositors left this year’s fair feeling delighted with the event and the opportunity to exchange products, seeds and ideas with other growers as well as with the Oaxacan public. “This is our second year participating, and we really enjoy being here,” said Ronquillo from the Chinantla region. “It makes us happy to be able to offer the products that we grow.”

The post In Oaxaca, a State Fair That Celebrates Native Crops’ Rich Legacy appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It can all get out of control very quickly without some organization and focus. Hence, the binder. 

Rice growing in one of the Lundberg Family Farms test greenhouses. Photography by author.

Rice is a critical global crop, responsible for about 20 percent of the calories people consume. Crucial to food security, we’ll have to both protect and invest in rice within our food system as the population grows.

Rice is also a crop that is highly susceptible to extreme weather, especially changes in water availability. Too little water, like farmers often deal with in California, is not good. It can take around 2,500 liters of water, through both rain and irrigation, to grow one kilogram of rice. So, breeding more efficient rice requiring less water is a big win for drought-prone areas. 

Conversely, too much water is also a bad thing when it comes to growing rice. While rice can grow well in a paddy, especially compared to other cereal grains, there is a limit to how much water the plant can bear and for how long. 

Lundberg grows more than 13,000 acres of certified organic rice, along with another 5,000 acres of conventional rice, and that all gets turned into dried goods such as rice cakes, chips, risotto and, of course, rice blends. When the company’s leadership wants a more vigorous Basmati variety or decides the short grain brown rice didn’t yield as much expected, they go to Bergmann and JJ Jiang, the nursery manager and plant breeder, with a goal. 

After testing the germplasm of new rice varieties in their greenhouse, Bergmann and Jiang plant a small batch in one of their test fields, taking notes throughout the season to build up their binder of statistics. Each field test is also a multi-year process, as they let the rice adapt to the growing conditions. Bergmann says they particularly focus on qualities such as weed competitiveness and drought tolerance. “We do look a lot at rice varieties that are going to have good root structures that give them resilience to dry up periods, so they can withstand those periods of time where we’re not putting water out to the field,” in an effort to make the rice resilient to a wide range of environmental conditions. 

“Breeding rice is a formidable task,” says Jiang. He calls the work “experimental design,” in that it’s not haphazard, but you do need to test out a lot of options before finding the one that works for you. “And there’s no standardized quality criteria (for rice.) It’s all up to us.” That means growers have to factor in multiple competing traits while also accounting for flavor, taste and consumer trends—not to mention changing environmental factors. 

Cross-breeding rice at Lundberg Family Farms. Photography by author.

Under water

Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, has spent years working to develop rice with a high submergence tolerance. “Most rice varieties form well if they’re in standing water, but they’ll die if they’re completely submerged in water for three days,” says Ronald. This is a big concern for rice-growing regions in which flash flooding and tsunamis are occurring more regularly, such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and India. Ronald says it’s estimated that four million tons of rice—enough to feed 30 million people—is lost to flooding each year. This is a problem that is going to get worse in the future, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that flooding will increase in both frequency and intensity going forward. 

In 1995, Ronald’s lab isolated a gene for submergence resistance that is now used by rice growers throughout India and Bangladesh, among other areas, with success. Her work has continued to help the crop in disease prevention, and in 2022, she was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture for her contributions to humanity. “More than six million farmers are growing the [submergence-tolerant] rice, and they have a 60-percent yield advantage in some places in the world, such as eastern India,” says Ronald. “It’s benefitting the poorest farmers in the world.” 

When rice doesn’t get the right growing conditions, it’s also more susceptible to disease, such as phytopathogenic bacteria, which can significantly reduce yields. At the University of Missouri, Bing Yang, professor of plant science and technology, has used CRISPR to edit samples of the bacteria to determine which genes had the qualities that would infect rice crops, to help breed rice that is more disease resistant. “Bacteria usually have some weaponry or some factors which they employ to infect a host plant,” says Yang. Figuring out which genes those are, and then working backwards, can help determine which genomes in the host plant may need strengthening. “Farmers and breeders always want high-yield rice and, at the same time, try to breed a high-temperature tolerance or a high-salt tolerance. People are always turning to science to identify the beneficial genes which could give them an advantage.” 

An Arkansas rice field. Photography by Shutterstock.

Field work

Although California produces about half a million acres of rice a year, it’s only the second-highest rice producer in the country. The top honor goes to Arkansas, at nearly triple that output. In fact, Arkansas rice producers grow almost half of all rice in the country.

And while they don’t have the same complicated system of dealing with water as producers in California, they do have to contend with water and what’s naturally available all the same. Mark Isbell of Isbell Farms in central Arkansas is a fourth-generation rice farmer who’s watched the boom-and-bust cycle of rice growing get more erratic in recent years. “Two years ago, we had a massive flood that was fairly devastating to a good portion of the crop. And then last year was a pretty deep drought, which we were able to irrigate,” recalls Isbell. Isbell, and his father before him, have tinkered a bit with breeding in their rice crops, but most of their interventions have been more tactile. They have worked to adapt their 3,500 acres to make them more water efficient as the resource has become more scarce. 

First, they carefully precision-leveled their fields, to get them completely flat. An average rice field, says Isbell, will likely have a serpentine-style levee that holds water at different depths, which is needed for fields with slopes in different directions. With a flat field, “we more than have the amount of water that’s needed for [our rice] because you can so much more precisely flood the field without overusing water,” says Isbell. In that way, their rice may not be changing in the same way, but they are becoming more efficient, producing more bushels per acre on less water than 20 years ago. Isbell has, at one point, done the math down to the grain. “A high-water-use rice from another country is somewhere in the range of 14 cups of water to 400 grains of rice,”saysIsbell. “If you look at the mid-south, with average irrigation techniques, that’s maybe eight or nine [cups of water]. For the type of conservation practices we’ve implemented, we brought it down to about four or five cups of water [per 400 grains of rice].”

The view from a combine at Lundberg Family Farms. Photography by author.

The rice of the future

The benefits of healthy and efficient rice fields go beyond feeding the world. There are environmental benefits, with rice fields “acting as basically a sediment basin where the water is significantly clearer coming out of the fields than it was going in,” says Isbell. Producers will also often flood rice fields in the winter, which act as surrogate wetlands for migratory waterfowl. Lundberg farms estimates it has saved 30,000 ducklings in the last several decades of conservation efforts. 

All of this work and effort is making a difference. Farms and varieties are getting more efficient, producing more rice with fewer inputs and less water. Breeders are finding combinations of rice that are more drought tolerant or capable of withstanding torrential downpours. And scientists are finding ways to strengthen all of this from within the DNA itself. 

On the surface, all of this is good news for rice. But, there is a downside. Without a certain amount of variance within crops, they are more at risk of disease (take the Cavendish banana, for instance). Bergmann says it’s necessary to maintain a balance of crop diversity and predictive performance. “A farmer wants predictable performance; you want everything to mature at the same time. But from an ecosystem standpoint, variation is what gives a population strength,” he says. So, within their breeding schedule, they must account for time to let a variety “settle down,” taking years to go through successive generations of a bred variety to arrive at the right combination of variance and predictability. 

Ultimately, though, no rice variety will stay exactly the same forever, no matter how many resources growers pour into it. “Rice will change,” says Jiang. “No variety will last for life.” That means those farmers, growers, breeders and researchers will have to keep innovating to stay one step ahead of future challenges.

The post What Will Become of Rice? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Henry Mustin popped open the trunk of his electric Volkswagen to reveal his arsenal: Loppers, pruners, saws and trowels, tucked into bags. Taking up the most space was Mustin’s weed wrench, an L-shaped specialty tool branded The Extractigator, which leverages the ground to yank deeply rooted vegetation from the earth.

We were in the parking lot of Island Center Forest, a 440-acre wooded park home to miles of hiking trails and one large pond where birdwatchers flock. Island Center Forest is on Vashon Island, southwest of Seattle. Mustin’s summer home is on Vashon, and my partner and I have a small farm here.

We were looking for English holly, a cherished Christmas symbol that is threatening biodiversity in the Pacific Northwest. We were there to poison it.

Perhaps nobody in the state of Washington has killed more holly trees than Mustin. After a long career as a doctor, Mustin retired in 2013 and began dedicating several days a week to bushwacking deep into the woods to destroy the plant he loathes.

We hiked through a tunnel of greenery: Douglas firs towered above and sword ferns fanned around our feet. It was a mild day in July, and Mustin, wearing long sleeves and work pants, worked up a sweat. At 75, he is a discursive thinker and talker, answering questions before I could ask them.

“Start looking for where the contrast in the vegetation stands out,” he said. Holly’s dark green leaves and red berries pop against the forest’s lighter hues. We climbed over downed branches, dodged stinging nettles and stomped across carpets of trailing native blackberry. 

We walked until we found a tree not already flagged for removal by county workers. Standing at about 20 feet tall, its many branches were lined with alternating leaves, each shaped like a “POW!” bubble in a comic strip, oval with serrated edges. The reds and greens were unmistakably Christmassy. The trunk split into a v-shape, the thicker sub-trunk reaching toward a nearby alder as if it wanted a hug.

English holly’s green and red appearance evokes the Christmas holiday. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Mustin knelt and dug into his backpack, pulling out a plastic tube containing .22-caliber shells he’d purchased online from a forestry supply store in Colorado. Mustin’s shells contained a heavy concentration of tarry black imazapyr, an herbicide favored by weed technicians as the best—really, the only—method for tackling big holly efficiently.

Most people who inject holly with herbicide-filled shells use a specialized spring-loaded lance called an EZ-Ject. To avoid alarming anyone, Mustin left his EZ-Ject in the trunk with the weed wrench. “It’s kind of like walking into the park with a pickax or a shovel,” he said. Instead, we’d have to Macgyver today’s application.

Some might accuse Mustin of committing a misdemeanor—herbiciding without a license. Mustin would argue that he still operates as an “arm” of the Washington Department of Natural Resources, which supervised his holly-killing sprees from 2015 to 2022, when he led volunteers on restoration excursions. Today he mostly works independently, finding solo missions more efficient, though the state still occasionally supplies him with herbicide equipment and he maintains permission to work on state land.

Using pliers, he carefully lifted an imazapyr-filled shell and pressed its open end against the holly. With a tack hammer in his other hand, he tap-tap-tapped the shell into the wood, repeating this process every four inches around the tree. He stopped halfway; I finished the other half, completing a collar of shells around the trunk.

Over the next few weeks, the tree would absorb the imazapyr, which would travel through its vascular system, slowly killing it. “By the fall, there may not be many leaves left on there at all,” Mustin assured me.

We made plans to return.

VASHON ISLAND, at less than 40 square miles, accounts for a tiny percentage of the hollies invading the Pacific Northwest. English holly has roots in parks and forests from Vancouver Island to the Willamette Valley. Municipal watersheds, private timberlands and tribal nations have all contended with it, and it’s become widely established in the lowlands of Olympic National Park.

There are more than 500 species of holly, but only the English variety (Ilex aquifolium) threatens Northwestern ecosystems. In its native range—Europe, West Asia and Northern Africa—English holly can grow upward of 80 feet tall, but the tallest known specimens in the United States hover around 50 feet. Conservationists are less worried about holly’s height, however, than they are about its spread.

Under human control, holly can be shaped and shifted to meet our needs for beauty and privacy. Cut through a holly stem, and several new limbs will eventually emerge. Wander through a Northwest neighborhood, and you might see holly hedges meticulously shaped into sharp-edged boxes.

Some of the same qualities that make holly such a desirable landscaping plant also make it a ruthless invader. It can live for a century, withstand considerable damage and thrive in the shade. It also reproduces prolifically; many parts of one tree can make new hollies.

Holly’s shallow root system spawns new growths through a process called suckering, in which holly fledglings, connected to their parent’s network, shoot out of the ground. Dozens of holly suckers can emerge from a single root system. Over time, some suckers develop their own root systems and strike out on their own, emerging as independent plants.

Holly branches can also produce new hollies. Lower branches on taller trees often sag groundward, brushing the soil. Given enough moisture, roots can grow from just about any point of contact, supporting a new holly stem in a process called layering. If something in the woods—a falling branch or an animal—severs the connecting shoot, you’ve got a new holly tree.

The tallest known specimens of English holly in the United States hover around 50 feet. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Suckering and layering often produce dense thickets, which suppress native plants, reduce visibility for wildlife, and haunt conservationists. But roots and branches can spread holly only so far.

Long-distance travel requires the collaboration of bird and berry. The red of ripe holly berries, somewhere between Kool-Aid and blood, beckons birds like a well-lit diner at night. The cold-hardy berries must look especially tasty in wintertime, when other foods are scarce.

When robins find holly berries, they split into teams. One team dive-bombs the berry bonanza, picking fruit at a speedy clip. The others watch for predators from nearby trees. Fruit in tow, a feeding robin retreats to a relay perch for lookout duty, allowing its flockmates to take their turn at the buffet. The robin digests its meal while keeping guard. Processing berry pulp, from beak to butt, takes about 15 minutes, though, contrary to popular belief, most holly seeds do not depart through droppings. Instead, they go down and up again, exiting via mouth, one-by-one, like Pez.

During a feeding frenzy, robins can regurgitate holly seeds more than 150 feet from the source. If a predator— say, a hawk—interrupts the meal, the birds may scatter nearly a third of a mile before expelling their seeds.

Viable seeds can take years to sprout, but once they do, the resulting sapling has the potential to grow into a mature tree capable of suckering and layering. If the tree happens to be a female near a male, it will one day produce berries.

“IT’S ONE OF THOSE THINGS that, once you see it, you start seeing it everywhere,” said David Stokes, a former ecologist at the University of Washington Bothell and perhaps the foremost expert on invasive holly in the Northwest.

Stokes, a fit 70-year-old, has kind eyes and a professorial beard. As a doctoral student at the University of Washington, he studied the migration patterns of Magellanic penguins in Patagonia. Later, his focus shifted to urban ecology. As a professor at Sonoma State University, he dabbled in invasive plants as faculty advisor for a student conservation group, leading field trips to a creek where they removed the notorious tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima).

After returning to the Seattle area in 2006 to teach at the UW Bothell, north of his alma mater, Stokes spent a lot of time at St. Edward State Park. Walking in the shade of alders and maples, Stokes noticed clusters of English holly in the understory, something he knew did not belong. Alarmingly, the non-native shrub appeared to be thriving in a mature forest, contrary to the prevailing scientific view.

When the study of invasive plants took off in the ’80s and ’90s, scientists focused on the fast-growing, sun-loving species that overrun grasslands, farms and disturbed or logged forests. Ecologists thought intact forests were largely immune to such invasions.

Scientists began publicly questioning this assumption in the mid-aughts. In a frequently cited 2009 paper in the journal Frontiers in Ecology, a trio of researchers identified more than 139 shade-tolerant plants that have invaded deeply shaded forests. The authors theorized that the relatively slow growth of these plants lulled scientists into “ignoring their potentially severe and long-term impacts on forest ecosystems worldwide.”

By the time Stokes noticed holly on his walks, some researchers and environmentalists had already raised anecdotal concerns about the plant. In 1992, Robert Ticknor, an Oregon horticulturalist, expressed misgivings about “holly trees where they are not desired.” Ticknor had devoted his life to ornamental plants, including holly, often in service of growers supplying the Christmas market; he’d even lived on Holly Street once, with a daughter named Holly. But toward the end of his career, Ticknor questioned whether English holly was, as his article in the Holly Society of America Journal put it, “A Jewel or a Menace in the Pacific Northwest?”

Once you see it, you start seeing it everywhere.

Then, in 2005, a US Forest Service researcher named Andrew Gray published perhaps the earliest data-backed report on holly’s presence in Northwestern woods. As part of the Forest Inventory and Analysis, a program that sends crews out across the country to collect data, Gray studied invasive plants in Oregon forests. He singled out English holly—and another European import, English ivy—for their shade tolerance and predicted that they would “continue to spread” in the state’s lowland woods.

In 2011, Stokes decided to determine the true rate of holly’s spread. He chose St. Edward State Park as the site of his field research.

Student lab assistants traversed a 20-acre section of the 300-acre park, treading in straight lines regardless of topography, up and down steep inclines, over and under downed branches. If a tree blocked their path, they’d step around it, then return to position.

Whenever one was spotted, the students took a sample. Sometimes that meant pulling up a young sapling and sticking it in a plastic bag. Sometimes, Stokes said, an “unlucky person” landed the triceps-burning job of sawing through a dense trunk.

The field work took two field seasons. Wood rounds gathered, Stokes and his assistants counted their tree rings to discern their age. The resulting data covered almost half a century.

The first holly to invade Stokes’ study area sprouted in 1966, during a residential construction boom north of the park, where ornamental holly still grows today. The invasion started slowly, and then exploded, a common pattern for invasive species. After 1990, the holly population in their study area doubled about every six years.

Stokes and his students also observed a significant reduction of native vegetation under holly canopies. In the biggest holly clump they found, roughly 645 square feet, they found no native plants. Stokes’ findings were published in the journal Northwest Science in 2014.

Holly reproduces prolifically; many parts of one tree can make new hollies. (Photo: Shutterstock)

But the forests of St. Edward weren’t the only woods where holly spread exponentially. In August, 18 years after Gray published his analysis of invasive species, I asked him over Zoom if he had since tested his prediction that holly would spread in the Northwest’s shaded woods. He hadn’t, but was willing to take a look.

With input from Stokes, Gray crunched two decades of Forest Service data on holly in Washington and Oregon. The surveys were taken from 2001 to 2009 and 2010 to 2019.

When Gray looked at all 87 of the forest plots that had holly in either decade, he found a 108 percent increase of holly cover in Oregon and 105 percent in Washington. Over 10 years, the holly spread had roughly doubled.

When he looked at plots with at least 50 percent tree cover—shade—the increase was starker: 143 percent increase in Oregon and 119 percent in Washington.

Gray’s analysis of this publicly accessible data has not gone through a formal peer-review process, but I sent it to Stokes for his opinion. Stokes noted the differences in their methodology, but said that Gray’s findings broadly confirmed his own conclusion that holly spreads exponentially in closed canopy forests. Gray’s data provides further evidence that holly’s rate of spread “is very rapid relative to ecological time scales,” Stokes wrote to me in an email. The relatively slow growth of holly in the forest compared to that of the weeds more often seen near places used by humans has kept it from getting as much attention as, say, Scotch broom or tansy ragwort.

“Invasion will take place more slowly on human scales,” Stokes said. “It’s when you consider that a forest takes 200, 300, 500 years to mature—it’s happening quickly.”

IN THE MID-TO-LATE 1800s, European settlers planted the first hollies in the Pacific Northwest, perhaps as a reminder of home. A Dutchman named Jan Bajema, for example, sailed to New York City in 1893. He changed his name to John, settled on a farm in north Washington, fathered 15 children, and, according to one grandchild, planted several holly trees.

In the 20th century, US demand for Christmas wreaths skyrocketed. A few entrepreneurial farmers in the Northwest wagered that English holly could make them wealthy. The region benefited from “an exclusive monopoly,” as one grower put it. English holly, as its name implies, thrives in a temperate, wet climate. The lowlands of western Washington and Oregon are its Goldilocks zone.

By the 1940s, Washington and Oregon were supplying the vast majority of holly shipped in the US Farmers saw it as a safe investment, and nurseries marketed holly as a retirement plan. “Plant a holly orchard and let nature do the work for you,” read one brochure. By the end of the decade, an estimated 300 acres of western Washington were dedicated to holly.

It’s unclear whether this marketing inspired either John Bajema’s third son, Dingeman, who started a holly farm along the Columbia Gorge after a career as a schoolteacher, or Dingeman’s son Ken, who spent many weekends and evenings as a teenager helping his father harvest holly branches during the cold, wet winters. “The worst weather of the Pacific Northwest,” he told me over the phone. 

“Invasion will take place more slowly on human scales. It’s when you consider that a forest takes 200, 300, 500 years to mature—it’s happening quickly.”

After a long career in the federal government, Ken Bajema retired in 1988, returned to his childhood home, and picked up where his dad left off: Harvesting, cutting and shipping holly branches to customers across the US. There were about 50 growers in Washington and Oregon then, and the industry brought in millions of dollars annually.

The same year Bajema started farming, he also volunteered to serve on the Skamania County Noxious Weed Board, which regulates unwanted plants in his county. In 2005, Bajema also joined the Washington State Noxious Weed Board, the governing body that decides which unwanted plants counties can regulate.

Bajema kept his private and public business separate for many years. But then his two worlds collided.

In January 2011, fresh off harvest season, Bajema traveled north to Olympia, walked past the grand columns of Washington’s neoclassical Capitol, and took a seat before the state House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.

In the 20th century, US demand for Christmas wreaths skyrocketed. (Photo: Ali Edwards/Flickr)

The fall before the hearing, officials in King County (which includes Seattle) sent a proposal to the Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board asking Bajema and his colleagues to add English holly to its official list of regulated weeds.

“Holly, a longtime tradition at Christmas, has taken a bum rap from activist groups for several years in news articles, publications, word of mouth and hearsay,” Bajema told the lawmakers, apparently referring to conservationists’ warnings about holly’s invasiveness. 

So, Bajema, holly farmer and holly regulator, donned yet another hat: holly lobbyist. As secretary of the Northwest Holly Growers Association, he launched an aggressive defense of his crop. Holly farmers dismissed claims of its invasiveness while extolling its value to the economy. Although the board’s proposal would not have banned commercial production, farmers said that merely associating “holly” with “weed” could hurt sales.

Their campaign succeeded: The nine board members voted unanimously to keep English holly off their big list of bad weeds, citing the need for more empirical evidence.

A WEED IS JUST A PLANT out of place, or so the saying goes. From the late Middle Ages until very recently, “out of place” meant anywhere that might inconvenience agriculture: “The noisome weeds, which without profit suck; The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers,” as the Gardener said in Shakespeare’s Richard II.

In 19th century America, industrialization brought new weeds to new places. Seeds crossed state lines as stowaways on trains or carriages. Farmers discovered new thorns, literally, in their sides and in their fields. And states began passing “seed laws” to target unwanted plants.

This approach to weeds, centering humans and ignoring the environment, was still mainstream when President Gerald Ford signed the Federal Noxious Weed Act of 1974, creating a Federal Noxious Weed List that regulates interstate and international commerce. Today, more than 100 species of plants are federally regulated; another 600 or so are controlled by state authorities.

Washington’s Noxious Weed Control Board resembles most of its cohorts in that it sprang from agricultural interests. When the Legislature created the board in 1969, lawmakers defined “noxious weed” as any plant that harms “crops, livestock, or other property.” 

“This is a worst-case scenario. But it could get even worse.”

It wasn’t until the 1990s that agencies caught up with increasing scientific interest in ecological invasions. The state noxious weed board became the de facto invasive plant regulator. Now, “out of place” included forests, wetlands and wild prairies, as well as farms and ranches. Washington codified this change in 1997, when lawmakers expanded the legal definition of noxious weed to consider impacts on “natural resources.”

Trying to advance ecological goals through regulations that favored agricultural systems proved ineffective. “Weed laws developed as a reaction to potential economic development,” Bryan Endres, a professor of agricultural law at the University of Illinois, told me. In 2013, Endres helped author a paper in the journal Bioscience showing that weed regulators heavily favor listing agricultural pests over ecological ones.

Such was the situation in 2011, when Bajema lobbied lawmakers to prevent holly from ever again appearing before the noxious weed board. It wasn’t enough that the industry had already kept holly off the noxious list; Bajema was hurt that the state board had even considered the question. “The damage to our industry has already begun,” Bajema told the House Agriculture Committee. “Once an allegation is made, your crop is guilty.”

Ornamental holly starts. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Working with the Washington State Farm Bureau, the holly lobby pushed a bill that would have banned any commercially grown crop from being listed as a weed. That was a nonstarter for state weed officials. A compromise bill, eventually signed into law, said that new scientific research on a plant’s invasiveness would have to be published before it could be brought to a second noxious weed vote. 

The slow pace of science guaranteed that the growers had bought themselves time. Stokes’ study would not be published for another three years. But it would take much longer for the Noxious Weed Control Board to consider listing holly again.

IF YOU ASK HOLLY WATCHERS why they’re so worried, they’ll often point to an overrun section of forest— a total hollypocalypse—in a fenced-off area in the suburbs south of Seattle.

On a damp morning this August, I met Zoe Loutos, a restoration ecologist for Seattle Public Utilities, in a parking lot outside the fence. We were joined by Jamie Trotto, an invasive species technician, professor David Stokes and Elliott Church, his former research assistant.

Beyond the fence and restricted-access signs lay Lake Youngs, a reservoir that provides treated drinking water to the Seattle metro area. The lake is surrounded by 2,000 acres of forest. Access to the woods is restricted to Lake Youngs staff. We planned to visit a section on McElhoe Peninsula, which is named for 19th century homesteaders, though Loutos calls it “Holly Peninsula.”

“It’s a legend,” Church said. Neither he nor Stokes had been there. “You see the pictures and go, ‘Wow.’” 

Church, who’d been Stokes’ lab assistant over 10 years ago, continued to research English holly, completing a master’s thesis on the plant in managed timber forests in 2016. Now 32, he works as an arborist. On the day we met, Church wore his hair in a bun, binoculars around his neck and a wool Forest Service jacket from eBay.

“You’ll have to tell me if it’s worse than St. Edward’s,” Loutos said, wearing a neon orange safety vest and a gray baseball cap embroidered with a hummingbird. Loutos led a three-car caravan through a gate and onto a dike road encircling a lake larger than Disneyland. 

Before we entered the forest, Loutos reminded us that Lake Youngs was closed to the public. Nobody seemed to know for sure exactly how long it had been closed, though Loutos thought it had been since the 1920s, when a dam was built to increase the lake’s capacity; that would suggest that birds introduced holly to the area rather than humans. In any case, the limited access makes it a poster child for a holly infestation unmitigated by human intervention.

“Anyway,” Loutos said. “Should we walk into the woods?”

She led us up a short incline. Our boots squeaked against wet salal, while damp shrubs brushed our pants, soaking them. And then we emerged into what Loutos aptly called a “sea of holly.”

We saw holly to our left and holly to our right: 20-foot-tall trees dappled in beams of sunlight. Ankle-biter hollies congregated below us, and tangles of branches blocked the light; at times it was nearly opaque, nothing but bare ground underneath. Partially felled holly trees grew at angles, like javelins thrown by gods. Impenetrable thickets obscured our view. We saw sick hollies with yellowish-brown splotches on their leaves, but very few dead ones.

“This is a worst-case scenario,” Stokes observed, carrying a meter stick that doubled as a hiking pole. “But it could get even worse.” 

“You got these guys filling in between,” Church added, pointing to a cluster of young saplings. The retired professor and his former student bounced ideas off each other as if they were back in the classroom.

“In this case, you wouldn’t have a complete replacement of vegetation because it’s Douglas firs above the holly,” Stokes said. “Holly’s never gonna get that tall. But the whole understory, instead of being native plants, you’ll have holly.”

“Holly would be in a position to really dominate,” Church agreed. If a forest disturbance, like a storm or fire, wiped out a chunk of the overstory, “it could change that successional trajectory.” Translation: It could become a holly forest.

“The other thing that we never really addressed is the potential for holly to be a ladder fuel,” Stokes added. In a 2022 wildfire risk study, King County cited holly as a “flammable thicket-forming understory shrub” that could carry flames upward.

In recent years, wildfires in the Pacific Northwest have become more frequent and intense, a trend that will likely continue with climate change. 

The scientists tossed out hypotheses and imagined experiments. Could they replicate their St. Edward study here, on Holly Peninsula? Maybe compare the age of the hollies with Douglas firs to determine which came first? What changes would they notice in holly if they moved from the outer edge of the forest inward? 

Church was most excited about the sickly holly. He walked quickly, as if spellbound, to a plant with graying shoots and yellowing leaves. Palming a cluster of leaves in one hand, he snapped a photo with his phone. “It’d be great to get some cuttings to a lab and get some analysis,” he said. (Seattle Public Utilities would first need to sign off on any kind of scientific collection, so no collecting was done that day.)

A few meters away, Stokes was examining a plant with crinkly brown leaves and a desiccating stem.

“Is that a holly that’s totally dead there?” Church shouted to Stokes. We descended on the tree. Stokes’ voice lifted multiple octaves. “Check this out,” he trilled. He pointed at a fresh sprout, shooting out from the holly’s lifeless stem.

“It’s suckering from a dead—” Loutos said.

Stokes finished her sentence: “—from a dead tree!”

IN THE SPRING OF 2022, private citizens emailed the Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board, urging it to label holly as a noxious weed. That set the stage for another vote.

Eleven years had passed since Ken Bajema successfully campaigned to stop King County from listing holly. Conservationists had reason to be more hopeful this time; Stokes’ research lent scientific legitimacy to all the anecdotal evidence of a holly invasion.

At Bajema’s suggestion, weed board staffers worked with the state attorney general to add the term “feral holly”—meaning not intentionally planted by humans—to Washington’s administrative code. The proposed listing would cover only “feral holly” and explicitly exclude holly grown on farms or for ornamental purposes.

Bajema had returned to the board in 2018 after several years away, reprising his role as holly’s defender.

He didn’t think much of the new research. “Dr. Stokes has a hatred for holly,” Bajema told me. “He’s been after holly for 20 years.”

English holly in a forest. (Photo: Shutterstock)

During one September meeting held on WebEx, Bajema tried to shut down the holly-listing effort by invoking the law he helped pass in 2011. He claimed, inaccurately, that “there is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence to prove that holly is a noxious weed.” A staffer corrected him, noting that at least two such articles had been published since the last vote.

“I don’t recall the Holly Society of America or the Horticultural Society signing off on those peer reviews,” Bajema replied. (Industry groups do not take part in the multi-step, anonymous peer-review process for scientific journals).

Stokes, Church and Andrea Watts, another researcher who wrote a master’s thesis on holly, presented their findings to the board. Stokes left one meeting thinking, “Well, this is a slam dunk.”

The vote fell on Nov. 2, 2022. Though two members were absent, there was a quorum, and the director called the roll:

Ken Bajema, holly grower: Nay.

Jerry Hendrickson, former rancher: Nay.

Allen Evenson, weed inspector: Yea.

Carey Caruso, beekeeper: Nay.

Janet Spingath, habitat restoration specialist: Yea.

Bill Agosta, retired chemist: Yea.

A tie means no. English holly remained unlisted in Washington. 

Bajema’s victory seemed complete—for about a year. In response to several complaints over his clear conflict of interest, the board passed a new rule barring any of its members from voting on proposed weeds in which they have a financial interest. This time, only Bajema voted Nay. 

THIS OCTOBER, Henry Mustin and I returned to Island Center Forest to check on our poisoned holly tree. Mustin, who’d spent the morning clearing holly in another park, wore raingear. I lacked his foresight and was once again doomed to soaking-wet jeans.

Fall was in full swing. Fern tips were turning brown and crinkly. Baseball-sized mushrooms poked out of the ground along the trail. My eyes, now trained, locked on all the hollies, evergreen standouts in the senescing understory. 

After less than half an hour and a couple GPS consults, Mustin spotted our tree. It was a skeleton of its former self, its top completely devoid of leaves and its body thinned out, emaciated. Brown leaves sagged from the tips of branches, and most of the berries had dried up like prunes, black and wrinkled.

“It’s been a very effective injection,” Mustin said.

Then I saw the saplings surrounding our tree, all very much alive. To truly eradicate this colony, we’d have to return to Mustin’s trunk, grab more tools, and get our hands dirty again.

I thought of all the berry-bearing hollies still in this park. Poisoning our tree was relatively pain-free, but controlling thicker growths requires trimming, digging, wrenching, crawling, lifting and pulling. It’s back-breaking, blood-drawing labor, often performed on hands and knees by underpaid 20-somethings just starting out in natural resource management. Or by the Henry Mustins of the world, volunteer “weed warriors,” the term used by stewardship groups who have found their calling in preserving natural habitats.

No one has calculated how much public money has been spent controlling holly in the Northwest. Washington State Parks spent more than $30,000 removing holly at St. Edward State Park after David Stokes studied that invasion. When Sally Nickelson, the former invasive species manager for Seattle Public Utilities, discovered the holly at Lake Youngs, the agency approved around $90,000 of taxpayer dollars for control work. Those efforts—and many more tucked within local budgets and contracts—merely snip at an exponentially branching problem.

Even when holly hunters do defeat an invasion, keeping new hollies out requires constant vigilance and optimism.

During our field trip to Lake Youngs, Zoe Loutos described the “hamster-on-a-wheel” nature of her job. “That’s a familiar feeling for me and honestly keeps me motivated,” she told me. When Loutos tackles holly in the Cedar River Watershed, another natural area under her watch, she envisions Holly Peninsula as the disaster she’s working to prevent. “I’m one piece of the puzzle. And even my little contribution is still meaningful.”

Mustin represents another piece of the puzzle. He is credited with removing hundreds of hollies on Little Si, a small mountain and popular hiking spot east of Seattle. (On a recent hike there, I didn’t see a single holly.) During our walks in Island Center Forest, Mustin often mused that a similar effort could work here. “It’s not an impossible task for even a few people to just stop it,” he said.

Weeks later, I returned to our poisoned tree with gardening gloves and a weed wrench and yanked out the surrounding holly saplings. Following restoration best practices, I hung the freshly unearthed invaders on a nearby tree, keeping their roots away from the damp soil, ensuring they would stay dead.

Steven Hsieh is a freelance journalist, formerly of the Santa Fe Reporter, Phoenix New Times and The Stranger. He also owns a small vegetable farm with his partner. 

This story was originally published Dec. 1, 2023 at High Country News. High Country News is an independent magazine dedicated to coverage of the Western US. Subscribe, get the enewsletter, and follow HCN on Facebook and Twitter.

The post Horrible Holly: A Festive Plant Runs Amok appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The crop itself is hardly new. It’s most prevalent today in states such as North Dakota and Montana, where it’s grown to make linseed oil and flaxseed meal. But the varieties now springing up in places that have long been dominated by corn, wheat and soybeans aren’t meant to be used for seed. Instead, these new flax farmers are targeting the plants’ fibers.

Flax fibers are used to make products ranging from twine to banknotes. In some cases, they can even serve as a substitute for materials such as carbon fiber. Crucially, however, linen fabric is made from woven flax fibers.

“Flax is linen, and linen is flax,” says Heidi Barr, a home goods designer and co-founder of the PA Flax Project. “And it is remarkable how many people don’t know that.”

The vast majority of the world’s linen is grown in Western Europe. Most of the remainder comes from China. In North America, linen production is all but nonexistent, save for one very small mill in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The PA Flax project is one of a handful of local groups trying to reestablish commercial linen on this continent.

It all starts with education, says Barr. Demand is on the rise for sustainably made clothing and other textiles. And that’s exactly what advocates for North American linen believe it can provide.

Heidi Barr and Emma De Long, the co-founders of the PA Flax Project, harvest flax at Kneehigh Farm in 2020. (Photo: Zoe Schaeffer)

Yet truly sustainable linen will be expensive, at least early on, when the supply chains are still getting up to speed. The more familiar people are with where linen comes from and how it’s made, the better it’s expected to fare in a market saturated with cheap synthetic fabrics.

“People who are working in textiles want [linen],” says Barr. “It’s so versatile, it’s so environmentally friendly, and then there are all these benefits to our small and mid-sized farmers. … I just think that making that connection of, ‘Oh, this fabric can come from this plant,’ is like magic to people.”

Over the past several years, the vision of a sustainable North American linen industry has started to crystallize. Groups like Barr’s are well aware of the many challenges that stand in their way, but they also believe each one can be overcome.

Even under the best of circumstances, though, bringing linen goods to buyers will require a lot of innovation, money and time.

The limits of traditional methods

Linen has a long history in North America. Early European settlers brought flax with them and used rudimentary tools to process it. After extracting the fiber from the plant using a flax brake—a sturdy contraption that looks sort of like a short wooden guillotine—they combed it into usable strands, spun it into thread, wove it into fabric and then sewed it into clothing. 

As textile mills began to proliferate, the cotton grown on Southern plantations, which relied on the labor of enslaved people, proved to be a cheaper option than flax. The latter tended to fare better in the North. Pockets of linen production persisted for a while, but by the middle of the 20th century, even those were gone.

These days, the flax grown for linen is an industrial crop. It spans hundreds of thousands of acres in Europe and Asia. It’s treated, in most cases, with conventional fertilizers and pesticides, and is harvested, processed and made into cloth using huge machinery.

Outside of the world’s main flax-growing regions, there are few options available to those interested in working with the plant or its fibers. They can always fall back on the traditional methods, of course. But it’s hard to overstate just how labor-intensive it is to turn flax into fabric without the help of modern equipment.

Amber Rose Ostaszewski, a fiber artist based in Kentucky, is one of the few North Americans alive today who have done every step by hand. She devoted much of 2022 to transforming four bales of Ohio-grown flax into a simple, knee-length shift dress.

Amber Rose Ostaszewski lost count of the hours it took to produce this dress from flax using traditional methods. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

“With the exception of my flax brake, which my dad built based on antique flex brake plans, all of the equipment I own is antique,” she says. “It’s something I’ve either bought off eBay or found in a thrift store. The old-school style is just a ton—a ton—of work.”

Ostaszewski, who is an experienced spinner and weaver, spent the first three months of the project breaking down the flax stems, scraping off excess plant material and running what was left through beds of nails to separate the tangled fibers. (The latter two steps are known to insiders as “scutching” and “hackling.”) It took her a month to spin the yarn, two weeks to weave the fabric, a week to sew the dress and a week to dye it. She used every bit of the fiber she processed.

She’s not sure exactly how much time she wound up spending on that singular dress. About a month in, when she’d logged 180 hours and still had piles of flax to work through, she stopped counting.

Getting the industry off the ground

Most of the people aiming to turn North American linen from a cool idea into an actual industry say that money is the biggest barrier. They’re hopeful that once they’ve managed to design and buy the mid-sized machinery that will be needed to support production at any meaningful scale, everything else will fall into place.

The PA Flax Project and several groups like it have begun partnering with nearby farmers and gardeners to grow small volumes of organic flax and experiment with different ways of planting, tending and harvesting it. They’re wary of asking farmers to commit to more than that before a market exists for the crop. Already, though, farmers are starting to pay attention.

“They’re skeptical, still, on the payout, and how that works, as it kind of feels like we’re building an airplane in the sky,” says Jess Boeke, a high school English teacher and co-creator of the Ohio-based Rust Belt Linen Project. “But they’re very curious to hear more.”

Dried flax plants—like these ones grown as part of the Rust Belt Linen Project—can be stored for years before being processed into linen. (Photo: Rust Belt Fibershed/Suzuran Photography)

Sarah Eichler, an assistant professor at Kent State University who studies agricultural sustainability, is also looking to fill in some of the gaps. It’s already known at this point that flax is “reasonably easy to grow,” she says. Her research explores where flax can be incorporated most effectively into existing crop systems.

While early signs suggest that flax would fit neatly into summer crop rotations with corn and soybeans, the precise benefits and any drawbacks remain to be determined. And although there’s also evidence that flax plants grown in moist regions could be particularly resilient to drought and unpredictable weather caused by climate change, more research will be needed to say for sure.

“By anyone’s standards, this would be the idea phase,” says Boeke. “What we’re doing this year is, by hand scale, creating proof of concept for how flax grows well here. But there’s no real proof of concept from a machinery standpoint yet.”

As linen’s proponents apply for agricultural grants and seek other sources of funding, they’re trying to make sure that when the machinery does finally reach North American shores, farmers will be ready to go.

Boeke, in particular, wants to make sure that as the industry matures, it remains committed to sustainable practices, not only for the land but for the people who tend to it.

“We have such an opportunity to do it differently,” she says, “and to do it well.”

Competition vs. collaboration

Growing and processing linen entirely in North America will require major investments in harvesting equipment that’s suitable for flax and in mills that are capable of extracting the fibers and spinning them into yarn. Some US weaving facilities are already capable of working with linen yarn, but space there is limited, too.

In total, the anticipated cost comes out to millions of dollars—an imposing number for linen enthusiasts who mostly have separate day jobs and are working out the logistics in their spare time.

Still, there’s a general consensus that the first commercial-scale mills are likely to open their doors and start turning out small batches of North American linen within the next five years.

The fibers extracted from flax plants gave rise to familiar descriptors like “flaxen-haired” and “tow-headed.” (Photo: Rust Belt Fibershed/Lily Turner)

Some aspects of building a new industry around growing flax will be dictated by geography. But many will be universal. That’s why, in September 2022, the people behind the continent’s emerging regional linen projects established the North American Linen Association.

The trade organization is now working to import and build the needed machinery. It’s also become a sounding board for more experienced members and a source of information for newer ones. Instead of confronting the same challenges one by one, its members are beginning to deal with them together.

The North American Linen Association represents a major step toward commercialization, says Shannon Welsh, another founding member. Welsh co-founded Fibrevolution, a group whose work is aimed primarily at Oregon, in 2017. Hers was one of the first linen initiatives on the continent. Looking back now, she says , it’s easy to see how much progress North American linen has already made.

“We always wanted multiple mills to come online at the same time throughout North America, so that we could share resources, share experts—for the machinery, for fixing them, for problem-solving them—but also just to really create a supply chain,” says Welsh.

One day, she says, the regions could wind up in competition with one another. For now, however, she believes that collaboration is the best approach. “I think we have a lot more power that way,” she says. “We haven’t been in the world market for linen for many decades. And so, to reenter the market, it’s much stronger if we come united.”

The post Can Linen Make a Comeback in North America? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“We lost 10 percent of our saleable Christmas trees that year,” says Leanna Anderson, owner of Aldor Acres Family Farm in Langley, British Columbia and treasurer of the BC Christmas Tree Association. “The needles burnt from the heat, and we had to trim them back.” 

Photo courtesy of Aldor Acres Farm.

Across North America, heat waves and average increases in temperatures are affecting Christmas tree growers. Without a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, average temperatures in Oregon, the largest producer of Christmas trees in the United States, will increase 8.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2080. Warmer and drier conditions could alter the composition of Oregon’s forests and reduce productivity of evergreen species such as the Douglas fir, a popular Christmas tree choice.

But increasingly longer and hotter summers are already having a detrimental effect on Christmas trees. Evolved to go into dormancy as temperatures drop in the autumn, conifers develop a resin coating that keeps the needles intact and protects them from frost damage. But with longer summers, the trees are harvested while temperatures in November often remain above freezing. Thus, they aren’t getting that cold signal to develop their resin coat, which causes post-harvest needle loss—that pile of shedding needles under the decorated tree.

Dr. Gary Chastagner, a professor of plant pathology at Washington State University, has been studying Christmas trees for more than 40 years. His research has taken him to Turkey and the Republic of Georgia, where evergreen trees such as the Nordmann fir thrive in the area’s milder climate. Trials, which Chastagner has conducted, have shown that Eurasian trees can last up to three months in water as a cut tree and still retain its needles. 

He predicts that, in the future, trees that  thrive in these warmer regions will become popular consumer choices. “By identifying trees that don’t need cold acclimation for good needle retention, it will help mitigate problems of post-harvest needle retention, especially if we have warm falls,” he says.

Photography courtesy of Aldor Acres Farm.

Heat, though, is not the only issue affecting the beloved Christmas tree. 

Climate experts predict that, as the atmosphere continues to warm, its ability to hold moisture will increase. This will cause periods of heavier rain and waterlogged soil. For Christmas tree growers, this means phytophthora root rot, a species of spore-like fungal organisms that can lay dormant in soil or plant debris for years. During wet periods, the swimming spores germinate and become attracted to tree roots. Over time, they deprive the host of nutrients and water. Spread by rain, runoff water or even on footwear or farm equipment, once phytophthora is active in the soil, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.

At North Carolina State University, Justin Whitehall, an extension specialist in Christmas tree genetics, notes that there’s been a slow but steady increase in phytophthora in North Carolina. “Eleven percent of fields were infected in 2014. In the last few years, that number is closer to 16 and 17 percent,” he says. This is concerning for a state ranked as the second largest producer of Christmas trees in the US. 

 “Growers and consumers want high-quality trees, but in some places, North American trees cannot be grown because of phytophthora,” says Chastagner. “Eurasian firs, particularly the Nordmann, Trojan and Turkey firs, have shown some resistance to the disease.” Cones from mother trees have been brought back to Washington State, where seeds have been extracted and orchards planted to gauge the trees’ adaptability to the Pacific Northwest. 

The Momi fir from Japan has also proven to be resistant to phytophthora. “By working on a biochemical level trying to explore how the species resists the disease, we may be able, through genome editing or modification, get some of those traits into North American Christmas trees,” says Whitehall.  

Photography courtesy of Real Christmas Tree Board.

While researchers look at ways to adapt to an altering climate, growers are already making changes. 

 “When you have a crop that takes between eight  and 10 years to grow from seed to harvest, a lot can happen in that window,” says Marsha Gray, executive director of the Real Christmas Tree Board (RCTB), a non-profit organization supporting Christmas tree growers throughout North America. “When we are talking about weather issues, especially when it comes to getting seedlings established, growers are having a harder time,” she says. But they’re adapting. 

In the United States, there are 15,000 farms growing Christmas trees and more than 100,000 people are employed annually by growers and sellers. In an industry valued at more than  $2.5 billion, approximately 25 million to 30 million natural Christmas trees are sold annually. With so much at stake, growers have no choice but to adhere to changing conditions. 

In North Carolina, planting on slopes encourages better water drainage and helps combat phytophthora. In other places, such as Oregon, growers are looking at adding irrigation. Although common in other regions, the soil in the state has traditionally held enough moisture to keep trees from drying out. At Aldor Acres in British Columbia, Anderson touts irrigation as having been the farm’s saving grace during hotter summers. “It’s a fine line, though, between keeping the tree moist when it’s hot but not too wet that it encourages disease.”

The RCTB has invested more than  $250,000 in research to try and ensure the future is merry and bright for the trees. “That might seem like a lot,” says Gray, “but, for our industry, that’s more than has ever been invested. Over half of our research is in response to the changing weather.” 

The post Climate Change is Coming for Christmas Trees. Can They Be Saved? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It can take up to two hours to cook dry beans—and that’s not including the sometimes 12-hour presoak. That’s why scientists at the USDA’s Sugarbeet and Bean Research Unit are breeding dry beans that cook in a fraction of the time. Led by plant geneticist and dry bean expert Karen Cichy, they’re putting their hopes in two beans with which  most Americans aren’t familiar: the Mayocoba and Manteca, which are both quicker-cooking, and perhaps more importantly, yellow. 

Scientists at Cichy’s lab grew and cooked 295 bean varieties of different sizes and shades of yellow in 2018 and 2019. Called the Yellow Bean Collection (YBC), this assembly of beans was sourced from around the world, including Uganda, Colombia and Haiti. The goal? Identify which beans in the YBC cooked the fastest in Michigan and Nebraska, two major bean-producing regions of the US, and which genes in the DNA of those beans gave them their speedy cooking time. The team published its findings in 2022.

Dried bean plants. Photography by Jim Kelly.

Yellow dry beans are already popular in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. The popularity of dry yellow beans in other parts of the world could help persuade American farmers to grow a new crop that has potential, but not proven, demand in the US.

The Mayocoba, which originated in Peru, is popular in Mexico and is actually a recognized market class in the US. However, the bean isn’t popular nationwide, although folks in Michigan and the western US, as well as members of the Hispanic community, are probably familiar with and know it as the Peruano. Oval-shaped and plump, it’s often refried because of its creamy texture. 

However, traditional Mayocoba beans still require hours in the kitchen. Instructions from bean supplier Rancho Gordo state that cooking time for its Mayocoba can range from one to three hours, depending on how long the beans were soaking beforehand. The new Mayocoba variety will take around 20 minutes to cook (similar to the cooking time for rice) and be high-yielding, which will likely increase its appeal to farmers. As for the Mayocoba’s coat color, Cichy says the group is aiming for a “highlighter yellow.” It’s the shade that appeals to consumers in Mexico and was proven desirable enough in the US to grant a controversial 1999 patent (which was eventually canceled) that claimed monopoly rights over the bright yellow bean color. 

The Manteca originated in Chile. It’s a pale yellow and sometimes appears curved because of its hilum ring, the scar on its seed coat that marks where it was once connected to the plant. The bean isn’t a recognized market class in the US, but it’s popular among consumers in Chile for its easy digestibility and perceived low flatulence. 

Additionally, a 2018 study, which Cichy helped to author, found that some Manteca varieties are not only fast cooking but also high in iron bioavailability. This means that the iron in the bean is easily absorbed by our bodies. However, the Manteca is “not as pretty as the highlighter Mayocoba,” Cichy concedes—t least, not in bean form. But its appeal may lie in other uses. Because of its muted color, one plan is to mill the Manteca into a flour so it can be used as an ingredient. “When you make a flour, you don’t want the bean to be too colorful because sometimes those colors don’t look nice when they’re milled,” says Cichy. The pale yellow Manteca flour could be perfect for things such as  pasta. 

A bean flour could also increase consumption among Americans who don’t want or know how to cook dry beans, and a Manteca yellow bean pasta could provide three times the iron bioavailability of chickpea, wheat and gluten free pasta—all while cooking in only five minutes. This is according to the Sugarbeet and Bean Research Unit’s recent report, which also concluded that a single serving of Manteca rotini provides more fiber, calcium and iron compared to chickpea, whole wheat and gluten-free rotini.  

Scientists cooked the beans in a machine called a Mattson cooker. A rack of beans, like the one pictured above, is boiled in water. Above each bean is a pin, which pierces the bean once it’s softened. The time it takes for the bean to be pierced is its cooking time. Photography by Jason Wiesinger

According to previous studies, cooking time is probably a trait in yellow beans influenced mostly by genetics and less by the environment, and it can be passed down to future generations through breeding. By identifying associations between cooking time and a molecule called a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), which is a common source of genetic diversity, breeders can isolate genetic variations for the fast-cooking trait and use them to create marketable Mayocoba and Manteca beans. The YBC study identified a candidate gene for the fast-cooking trait.

When it comes to achieving the other desirable trait, a bright yellow coat color, scientists have to pay attention to a bean’s post-harvest darkening process. The YBC study found that a bean that doesn’t darken after harvest is also likely to have a fast cooking time. While the non-darkening trait doesn’t entirely account for variation in cooking time, it’s one influential factor. 

Achieving an attractive bean color isn’t a challenge reserved for just American plant geneticists. “Seasoned bean breeders all attest that it’s not easy to recover the attractive yellow color as you pursue productivity traits,” writes Clare Mukankusi in an email. Mukankusi is a bean breeder for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Uganda, which donated samples it’s collected from various African breeding programs to the YBC study. To East Africans, an attractive broth color after cooking is also important. “In Uganda and most of East Africa, a light brown (chocolate) thick broth is most preferred,” Mukankusi writes.  

Since the study’s publication, the lab has bred two Mayocoba and Manteca varieties that were evaluated in field trials and are now awaiting intellectual property protection and approval for release. If everything goes well, Cichy anticipates the two varieties will be commercially viable next summer. From there, it’ll be up to bean producers and sellers to market the beans to American consumers.  

The lab is also working on another study that explores the role of fiber in cooking time. “We found that yellow beans, especially the fast-cooking ones, have less insoluble dietary fiber,” Cichy shares from the study that’s yet to be published. “It’s only about six percent less if we compare them to yellow beans that take longer to cook. But we think that less fiber is what makes them cook faster.”

Data shows that legume consumption in the US is rising on average, from 8 pounds per person, per year in 2014, to over 11 pounds per person, per year, in 2017. That still falls just shy of the recommended 1.5 cups of beans, peas and lentils per week (or around 13 pounds per year) for a 2,000-calorie diet, as set by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 

“I am not saying that people must only eat beans. Certainly not. But beans can have a bigger presence in people’s diets,” writes the YBC study’s lead author Rie Sadohara in an email. She hopes that one day yellow beans will be considered their own category in the USDA’s bean consumption statistics, rather than grouped together with other minor beans. “Seeing beans grown and used at the levels of wheat or potatoes in the US would be great.” 

The post Will Yellow Beans Become the Next Superfood? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Fertilizer basics

The concept of soil fertilization likely extends back 8,000 years, when early farmers added manure and bones to their crops. Chemical versions weren’t invented until the 19th century, and their widespread use didn’t come about until the second half of the 20th century. Nowadays, fertilizers are an essential part of farming, and there are plenty of options: synthetic or organic (think: manure or seaweed), liquid or dry options, and a wide variety of formulations. 

All plants need fertilization. After sitting in the same soil week after week, they eventually eat up all of the nutrients, which then need to be replenished. Which fertilizer they need, however, requires some sleuthing. 

Most fertilizers are composed of three major nutrients: nitrogen, which stimulates the growth of healthy leaves; phosphorus, which encourages root and flower production; and potassium, which supports general health and disease resistance. (You’ll see these noted on bags of fertilizer as an NPK ratio.) Some fertilizers will also include micronutrients such as iron, copper, zinc, and magnesium. The best way to determine which nutrients your soil is lacking is via a soil test.

For home gardeners: Fertilizers can also be formulated for specific types of plants. There are versions for annuals, vegetables, turf grass, tropical houseplants, etc. Choose—or blend—the one(s) that best fit your greenery.

Fertilizers in agriculture

Of course, fertilizers are especially important when it comes to agriculture, and are responsible for boosting crop yields. Fertilizer application is believed to have been responsible for at least 50 percent increase in crop yield in the 20th century, according to an article published in Agriculture in 2022. Higher crop yields mean that less land is required for agriculture, which can benefit wildlife habitats and forests.

But fertilizer is a delicate addition to farming practices. Use too little and the crops lack critical nutrients. Apply too much, and you can offset the pH of the soil, thwart plant growth, increase pest attacks and cause topsoil erosion, among other issues. 

The use of chemical or synthetic fertilizers can also have serious environmental consequences. Their high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus can leach into and contaminate groundwater, cause algae blooms that harm aquatic ecosystems and remove healthy bacteria from the soil. One major example: the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, where overwhelming amounts of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus have killed off marine life.   

Animals that eat fertilizer-treated plants can get sick, and some research shows that synthetic fertilizers are causing decreased fetal weight, neurological damage, diabetes, and cancer in humans. 

Globally, only about 35 percent of the nitrogen applied to plants is actually absorbed by them, leaving the rest to run off into the environment. Precision farming can help growers use fertilizers more efficiently so they get more of the benefits and less negative side effects.

It pays to be stringent about fertilizer use, not just for the health of the planet, but for the health of your wallet. Drastic jumps in fertilizer costs are hurting farmers’ bottom lines. The USDA forecasted that input costs for the 2024 growing season are expected to hit the third-highest level in history. Though fertilizer costs are expected to drop from their all-time high, the category remains a significant expense; for example, fertilizer accounts the largest single operating cost when growing corn. In short: Being smart about where fertilizer is applied, and how much, can have a major impact on budgets. 

Using fertilizer 

Adding fertilizer when a plant is in its dormant cycle can mess up its natural cycles. You’ll get the most out of fertilization at the start of spring when plants are generally in their active growth period. Depending on the plant, additional applications (every couple of weeks or so) may follow until fall; some indoor greenery also benefits from sporadic applications throughout the winter. 

As we’ve mentioned, just be cautious about how much you use—too much can have a contradictory effect, damaging the plants and the environment. 

Thankfully, there are safer alternatives available. 

Organic fertilizers are considered healthier for the environment and for us because they are made from living organisms (like fish emulsion). Two challenges that come with these options: They can be pricier, and they’re slow-release, meaning it’ll take days or weeks for the effects to become evident. 

Outside of the home, additional organic materials—like grass clippings, cover crops, or compost—can also help support soil health, suppress weed growth, and reduce soil erosion.

What do you want to know about fertilizer? Ask a question in the comments section below.

The post The Dirt on Fertilizer appeared first on Modern Farmer.