Happy Groundhog Day!I’ve written before on the value of experiment and in particular on the worthwhile praxis ofgrowing fruit trees from seeded player .
of late , while doing my research ongrowing apples in Florida , I came across the inspiring tale of Albert Etter inthe following postal service at Green Mantle Nursery . Good for them for preserving the bequest of a on-key pioneer!Check this out :
As a boy growing up on a farm near Ferndale CA , Etter expose a precocious gift for horticultural experimentation . He aggregate aptitude with vision at an other old age , making his life goal the creation of a new fruit varieties uniquely suited for California and the Pacific Northwest .
While still in his late teenager , Albert had the tremendous just luck to stumble onto the slice of nation that was to become his ranch and experiment station .
The young Etter find this bench of forest land above Bear Creekduring a sportfishing trip up the Mattole River Valley . broken and remote , the parcel was available for free through the Homestead Act . In 1894at the age of 22 , Albert was able to take ownership of the dream placehe do to call Ettersburg . Clearing and ameliorate the land was a formidable undertaking , but he was facilitate in the oeuvre by several of his brothers who homesteaded adjacent parcels . And so a animation - foresightful quest for fresh and skilful yield varieties took build in the wilderness …
Etter ’s school of thought contradicted the conventional wisdom of the academicpomologists of his day . While many of these expert reckon him as anunder - civilize chump , others , like Dr. George Darrow of the USDA , made the long pilgrimage to Ettersburg to learn from this inspired visionary .
Etter was a remarkably systematic actor with an ambitious agenda . His orchard apple tree broadcast began with his grow out a grid of seedling to serve well as understocks . By 1900 , he was quick to top - work these trees to several hundred diverseness prevail through the new University of California Extension Service . The goal of this trial was to identify mixture that had desirable qualities needed as parents for subsequent education experiment . Etter finally made thousands of cross , grew out rowing of the resulting seedlings , and then grafted wood from these onto his understock Tree .
While Etter was hold off for his apple experiment to bear fruit , hisstrawberry oeuvre made it “ bragging time ” . The new strawberry varietiescame to the attention of Edward J. Wickson , California ’s leading pomological agency and newspaper publisher of Pacific Rural Press . Under Wickson ’s medium mentorship , Etter and Ettersburg became Earth famous for authoritative new strawberries . Etter was glorify as a hillbilly successor to Luther Burbank , and dubbed “ the humans who made himself in the woods” . By the 1920 ’s , several of Etter ’s strawberry mark were being grow commercially in Oregon , England , New Zealand , and Australia .
Fame , however , did not lead to portion , at least not for Etter . Othersprofited from his new strawberry , but Etter himself did not succeedas a businessman or gardener . letters patent rights did not apply to planthybridization until 1930 . Isolated from railroad and trucking routes , Ettersburg was not well suitable for berry commerce .
At any charge per unit , Etter shortly shift his hope and horticultural attentionalmost entirely to his maturate tilt of young apple variety …
mouse click HEREto keep reading over at Green Mantle Nursery ’s site .
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