Grace Romero is our Research Director. Here she is demonstrating the hybridization process to members of the press on August 19th. We received about 20 media folks per day for two days. This is in the Kitchen Garden at Fordhook Farm looking due south. It was hot, dry and gorgeous. Burpee Kitchen Garden looking north-northwest, […]
Before I put up a post about Media Day for 2011, our upcoming 135th year in business, I’d like to introduce you to the past President of W. Atlee Burpee & Co. before me, and the current President after me. On the left (my right) is William “Bill” MacDowell and to the right is Christos […]
In summer as children, we were allowed to stay out until dusk. In our northern part of the Central Time Zone, even on its eastern edge, dusk came late. I remember most the mosquitoes, fireflies, and bats. Some nights I would watch the bats as darkness fell. First there would be only one, then two, […]
Today, greener-than-thou gardeners crusade for heirloom seeds, while unjustly damming hybrids. Increasingly, their anti-science credo has hardened into a Luddite fundamentalism, resulting in confusion among the public between hybrids and genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Clearly, the hybrid versus heirloom imbroglio is about more than the quest for the biggest, most delicious tomato. As a […]
So close to the sun, canted to receive the longest days. So little cloud cover—or even precipitation in the air. Crops, including tests here at Fordhook Farm, are slowly drying out: roots, trunks, stems, branches, leaves. Petals wave in slow-motion. No wind; so all the desiccation comes from high temperatures and dry air. Stillness is […]
My fellow Americans, on July 4th we gather to celebrate our country’s independence and pay homage to its founders. We remember this country began as a unique adventure in freedom, individual liberty and rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The United States is today the preeminent world power and beacon of freedom around the globe. As […]
This land is your land, this land is my land, and more crucially, this land is land. As we celebrate Independence Day, let’s consider a new political party based, not on stimulants such as tea and coffee, but on flowers and vegetables. Hold your rallies in your yard. Everyone is welcome: north, south, left or […]
The litter layer of the soil is home to a myriad of small creatures. Most are familiar to the gardener, who has dug a little and turned over stones and compost piles. For the most part, these are unremarkable; the group includes worms (annelids), millipedes, centipedes, and roly-polys (a crustacean) that scurry for safety when […]
We live in a time that merits its own version of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles McKay’s classic 1841 study of human follies and frenzies, such as witch hunts, alchemy and bursting financial bubbles. Our current repertoire of fallacies is rich in conspiracy theories, apocalyptic prophecies and alien abductions. One such […]
Most scourges of our native trees were inadvertently introduced to North America. Think of chestnut blight; it wiped out the American chestnut throughout its entire range in about 25 years. And Dutch elm disease virtually eliminated the American elm and changed the look of American cities in a similar period of time. Both diseases are […]
