I sometimes get complaints about poor performance in raspberries. The most common complaint by far is reduced fruit quality: yields have decreased, and the fruits have become smaller, less sweet, and even less flavorful. I have noticed that most often this complaint comes from older raspberries. The reason for this is because raspberries tend to [...]
Tag Archives: food production
Beginning with Permaculture
The use of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, etc. is at an all-time high, especially among large agriculture growers. Why? Modern agricultural practices involve growing single crop species in high-density plantings in hundreds of acres of fields at a time. Now if you were an insect, what does that kind of farming look like to [...]
Creating ‘Seedless’ Fruit: the Odd-Diploidy Plant
Seedless fruit rarely occurs in nature. This makes sense, of course: Nature is in the business of creating and furthering life. The seedless fruit you will find in the grocery store is the result of an interesting breeding manipulation developed by geneticists years ago. Now for some science: Different organisms have differing numbers of copies [...]
Maple Syrup
When deciduous trees loose their leaves in the fall and go dormant for the winter, they store all the left-over food (sap) they’ve made from the previous growing season in their roots. They store these carbohydrates or sugars in their roots where they are better protected from the elements. Come spring, deciduous trees begin pumping [...]
Another Way to Get Your Plants to Flower or Fruit
There’s another gardening technique you can employ if phosphorus treatments don’t seem to be getting your plants to flower. Give your plants a bit of physical abuse. That’s right – smack your plants up a little bit. I know this may sound really bizarre but stay with me on this. . . . Just like [...]
Phosphorus: One Way to Get Your Plants to Flower or Fruit
There are two main life stages in plants: juvenility and maturity. When a plant is a juvenile it grows vegetatively; that is, the plant focuses on growing roots, branches, stems, and leaves, instead of producing flowers and seeds. When a plant reaches maturity the opposite is true – the plant’s energy is focused on reproductive [...]
Pruning Fruit Trees
Getting the Right Kind of Sugar out of Your Tree The basic idea: Fruit trees manufacture two main types of sugars: cellulose or fructose. Cellulose is a structural sugar meaning that it is the woody portion of the plant, used simply to give the tree its ability to stand and hold itself up. Fructose is [...]
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