Experimental Farm Network

'Gharib' is a medium-grained aromatic rice from Iran. It's one of the only short-season aromatic rices that can be reliably grown under upland (dry land) conditions, at least that we've ever encountered. I'm glad to see good germination from these seeds we produced a couple years ago at @princetonseedfarm . Hopefully we can grow enough this year to make it available through our catalogue. (Our original stock seeds came from John Sherck, who isn't selling seeds anymore.) If you know the aroma that permeates a house when you're cooking jasmine rice or a nice basmati — or the smell of a good Thai restaurant — you know what "aromatic rice" means. One surprising thing about it: the plants smell the same! When you walk through a patch of aromatic rice growing in the field, that same delicious scent wafts off every plant. It's really lovely. Rice has been grown in Iran/Persia for at least 3,000 years. It's a central part of the cuisine and culture. Even before the US and Israel began this foolish, cynical, criminal war, we were planning to grow a lot of Iranian varieties this year — largely due to our work with the @iraqiseedcollective , which has an interest in seeds from Iran too — including many sourced from the US government itself. In our crop planning this spring, we've doubled down, and already we have sprouts of Iranian leek, celery, parsley, basil, ajwain, and lettuce, in addition to this rice. EFN growers have melon, squash, cukes, etc. We do this kind of work, with seeds from various countries threatened by war and imperialism, first and foremost for conservation purposes (because when peoples and cultures are under threat, so are their seeds). But we also do it because seeds and food are uniquely able to humanize people across borders. It's obviously too late for this generation of warmongers in leadership, but if we can play even a tiny role in helping more Americans realize — as more and more already do — that the countries our government so callously bombs are full of real, beautiful, wonderful people, maybe we can help finally put an end to this abominable cycle of violence. It's not all we can do — not by a longshot — but it's something. #peacenow

Through our work with the @paliheirloomseedlibrary and @vivien.sansour , I've become increasingly interested in the history of plant-life in Palestine — both agricultural and wild. Some unexpected primary sources I've recently been diving into are these little booklets with titles like "Pressed Flowers of Palestine" and "Pressed Flowers of the Holy Land." Some are bound with olive wood on the front and back. This example, published around 1902, is particularly interesting because it includes farmed plants like lentil, bean, and flax (though it seems this is a wild flax). The inclusion of poison hemlock is also notable. It's also rather poignant (and illustrative) to see a document from a US government official — in this case a U.S. consul who no doubt received some sort of kickback for his blatantly commercial endorsement of Rev. Greene's pressed flower enterprise — plainly marked "Jerusalem, Palestine." Right there in black and white: Jerusalem, Palestine. (Yes, it was under Ottoman occupation at the time, but even then it was recognized as an occupied COUNTRY.) So the next time you hear someone say "Palestine doesn't exist" or "Palestinians aren't real", or "Palestine was never a country", please show them this. #freepalestine

This post is a little late — we've been offering these special seeds for a few weeks now — but this is the official announcement that we finally now have 'Miss Gladys McGee's Turnip' Rutabaga-Turnip in stock!!! I first got these seeds in 2018 from the great Bill MacKentley, longtime proprietor of St. Lawrence Nurseries ( @sln_grow ) in Potsdam, NY (north of the Adirondacks near the border with Canada). I was there to buy some of the cold-hardy trees St. Lawrence is famous for (since the late legend Fred Ashworth ran the place), but when Bill learned I was into seeds, he excitedly took me into his semi-underground cold storage room to introduce me to Miss Gladys McGee's Turnip. Like the famous Gilfeather turnip from Vermont — and the less famous Macomber or Westport turnip from southeastern Massachusetts — Miss Gladys McGee's turnip is actually a hybrid between a turnip and a rutabaga. The root's flesh is white like a turnip, but has a sweet flavor much more like rutabaga. The leaves are also tender and mild in flavor, like it's 'Red Russian' kale cousin (that type of kale is Brassica napus, the same species as rutabaga, and itself the result of an ancient hybridization between turnip and cabbage!). But what really sets this rutabaga-turnip apart is its ability to reach an absolutely ENORMOUS size while still remaining non-woody and delicious! The one Bill was showing me here (probably 7 or 8 months after harvest) was about 12 pounds, but this variety has been known to reach 25 pounds!! No doubt it helps to be an extremely northern locale like Potsdam, where summers have more hours of daylight. You can read the whole story on our website (link in bio or ), including the tale of how this plant nearly went extinct but for the foresight of a helpful neighbor and the resilience of one individual plant! (If we could grow brassicas other than Deitrich's Wild Broccoli Raab in South Jersey, we would've offered this much sooner. But thankfully we have our dear friend Clint Friend of @cultivatingthecommonsllc in Wisconsin, who produced these seeds for us.) #missgladysmcgee #missgladysmcgeesturnip #turniprutabaga #rutabagaturnip

Quick reminder: THESE TREES EXIST! (And we've got seeds!) The pehuén (Araucaria araucana) has long been a staple food plant of Mapuche peoples in what's now Chile and Argentina. Called "monkey puzzle tree" in English (apparently because some Brit once remarked that this tree would "puzzle a monkey!"), this species has been around since the actual Jurassic age — some 170 million years ago. Its armor evolved to repel grazing attempts by dinosaurs. It thrives in the Pacific Northwest (where these seeds were collected by @headhandsandheart Nursery), but it is surprisingly adaptable and can also be grown in California, much of the interior southwest, lower midwest, Gulf coast, and the east coast from central Florida all the way north to lower New England! @longwoodgardens outside Philadelphia has planted a bunch of trees right by their entrance. And the largest tree shown here (in the last two slides) was spotted in a yard in Hilversum, a Dutch town not far from Amsterdam! Chris harvested a bumper crop last year and the seeds we still have in stock are ready and raring to go! Grab a handful today!

Still got room in your garden? Here are eleven seeds from this year's EFN catalogue that haven't sold as well as we think they should! (*The ones marked with an asterisk are ones I grew myself so feel particularly attached to!) 1. Bear's Garlic (Allium ursinum) - The original "ramson", the delicious European woodland wild leek from with American ramps get their name (takes 3-5 years to reach maturity, while ramps take at least 7). 2. Yixuan watermelon - A sweet and delicious watermelon from Xinjiang, the homeland of the Uyghur people in western China (and home to some of the best-tasting melons and watermelons in the world).* 3. Red Rubine Brussels sprouts - A tasty and gorgeous purple Brussels sprout! 4. Western Sand Cherry (Prunus besseyi) - One of the most sought-after wild edibles of western North America, a widely adaptable little wild plum/cherry. 5. Shirazi Loobia Chiti bean - A productive, delicious, beautiful pole bean from Shiraz, Iran. 6. Mission Mountain tomato grex - A spectacularly beautiful tomato breeding mix from Montana (don't miss 'Mission Mountain II' too!). 7. Kkwanigochu pepper - A hot and spicy strain of shishito-pepper from Korea.* 8. Canary Islands Dragon's Blood Tree - A legendary tree that bleeds a red resin used for centuries for medicinal and other purposes. (Can't be grown outside in much of the US, but can make a surprisingly good houseplant!) 9. Wild Goose Plum (Prunus hortulana) - Another much-beloved wild native plum (depicted here by the great botanical illustrator Amanda Newton). 10. Togolese hoary basil - This stuff smells like Juicy Fruit gum! Its flavor is out of this world! I've never met a basil like this before.* 11. Ukrainian dill - A classic dill, excellent for pickling, from a part of the world where dill pickles are an art form! For your consideration! Happy Spring!! #seeds #efnseeds #underdogs #organicgardening #farming

Check out this unusually beautiful pea!! It's easy to forget how much diversity there is among peas (Pisum sativum), since most of us are only exposed to fresh green peas, whether frozen, canned, or actually fresh. But those sorts of peas are just the tip of the iceberg. Working with the seeds, suddenly one is exposed to all different shapes, sizes, and colors. Some peas dry down to wrinkly misshapen blobs, while others are perfectly smooth and round like these. They can dry green, yellow, brown, red, orange, purple, or even black, and in solid colors or with a bi- or tri-color dappling. They can have a conspicuous hilum (the part like a navel) or an inconspicuous one. And of course there are different culinary types, with some better for fresh eating, others for dried use, still others for the tender pods or prolific edible foliage, and even some that are just grown as cover crops. I can't find much information about this 'Odesskij 53', other than that it was donated to the USDA from the Soviet Union's famous Vavilov Institute in the early 1980s, and that it was originally collected (or possibly bred) in Ukraine. Based on the name, it no doubt has roots in or around the port city of Odesa (just like me, through my maternal grandmother's parents!). I expect it will likely make a good soup pea, but it'll probably be a couple years — given the small sample size I'm starting with — before I can begin playing around with it in the kitchen. Will keep you posted! #peas #pisumsativum #odesa #ukraine #seeds

Springtime by the spoonful: Stinging Nettle & Morel Mushroom Soup. Ingredients: Stinging Nettle (maybe 8 oz.) Morel Mushroom (about a dozen) Garlic (6 cloves) Shallot (3 medium-sized) Butter (3 tablespoons) Einkorn flour (1 tablespoon) Milk (about a quart) Water (about a quart) Salt Pepper (I'd planned to add celery too, but I forgot!) Instructions: Saute chopped shallots in 2 tbsp. butter until soft. Add chopped morels and diced garlic and saute for a couple minutes, then add flour and last tbsp. butter. Saute for another minute or so, then add nettles to wilt. A minute or two later, add milk and water. Bring to boil, then lower heat and stir occasionally until it becomes soup! If you have an immersion blender, use it, or spoon solid ingredients into a food processor (this is what I did — and I missed some solid stuff, but that made for some nice texture). Salt and pepper to taste. You could add a bit of honey if it needs it, but this one didn't. Enjoy! #yum #morel #nettle #soup #spring

The war against Iran by the US and Israel has been disastrous far beyond Iran and the Persian Gulf region. It has of course been horrific in those places — bringing death and destruction to countless innocent people, disrupting daily life in Iran and neighboring countries, and making the future for millions of people painfully uncertain. But this post is about the less well-known impacts of this criminal war. The cabbage farmer in this photo (taken last month in Atok, the Philippines, by Eloisa Lopez for Reuters, and featured in a NYTimes story today) made the painful decision to leave his crop to rot in the field rather than lose money bringing it to market due to the skyrocketing price of gasoline. The Philippines gets 90% of its oil from the Gulf region, so the price of fuel has nearly doubled there already — and will likely continue to rise. If you're scratching your head wondering how it could possibly be better for a farmer to let his cabbages wither and die, consider this: Cool-weather crops like cabbage and broccoli can only be grown in relatively cool highland regions of a country like the Philippines (and other tropical island countries across the globe, from Jamaica to Cape Verde to Indonesia). These are often sparsely populated areas, so it takes a long drive to get produce to markets in more populous areas (the capital Manila is more than 7 hours from Atok, while the nearest major city, Baguio, is itself nearly 2 hours away). If it costs more in gas money to drive your cabbages to market than you know you can get for selling them, of course you're going to let your crop rot. This is just one example of the knock-on effects of Trump and Netanyahu's reckless war, which analysts say is already sending millions of people across Asia into poverty. All around the world, people are feeling the impact of this foolish adventurism. Even here in the US, where fuel prices have risen less dramatically (around 35% for gasoline and 45% for diesel), it's still enough to cause prices for food and other goods to rise. For already struggling people, this war is only making things worse. (So much for America's new Golden Age!) When will we ever learn?

I've been waiting so hard to read this book (pre-ordered it in December!). I haven't come close to finishing it yet, but it already exceeds my high expectations. As an anti-Zionist and a Jew, learning about the Jewish Labor Bund and its principled, pragmatic stance against Zionism (particularly in the decades immediately before Israel's founding) has been as important for my political development as learning about the anti-Zionism of the rabbi my great-grandfather Moshe followed back in Romania in the early 20th century. I've been following @mollycrabapple on social media for years, relishing every new tidbit she shared as she pored over obscure Yiddish texts in dusty libraries while researching this book. The people she revealed were already starting to come to life for me, but now, in this book, it's like I can hear their voices, or even feel them breathing next to me. These ancestors help me build confidence in my own stance — secure in the knowledge that I'm not an aberration: I'm part of a tradition. I'm so thrilled for @mollycrabapple right now, not just because of how much I'm enjoying devouring her book, but because I know SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE are too. It just debuted at #4 on the @nytimes bestseller list!!! (And the Times review called it "terrific"!!) I hope lots of Jews who don't (yet) consider themselves anti-Zionists will also dive into this largely forgotten history. If they do, they'll learn that voices within our community have been warning about the dangers of ethnonationalism since decades before Israel was born, and if they're honest with themselves they will see that the warnings have proven horribly prescient (like Bundist leader Henryk Ehrlich's in 1933: "Our nationalism is just as ugly, just as harmful, and has the same inclination to fascist debauchery as a nationalism of other nations.") The Bundists ultimately lost. Their movement was murdered along with 6 million Jewish souls. But their vital legacy carries on. Thanks, Molly. Endless gratitude. #herewhereweliveisourcountry #mollycrabapple

Anyone recognize these seeds?? I'm trying to figure out who gave them to me! (Maybe at NOFA-Mass. a couple years ago? Maybe an @ujamaafarms gathering? Maybe @organic_seed_alliance ?) Little help, please!! Thank you! #seedmystery #seeds #oops

It makes me sad that this used to be normal small-scale farming equipment — a Planet Jr. 300A — made from cast iron and wood. Over a hundred years old and it still works as well as the day it was made. Now the equivalent seeder is made from plastic and aluminum and you'll be lucky to get ten years out of it. I wish someone would take all the old Planet Jr. patents — all in the public domain now — and start making these (and more) again. UPDATE: Apparently the Cole company is still making these!!! (Oops! 😂😂😂) #planetjr #seeder #planter #oldtech #farming

Even amidst all the big horrible things happening around the world today — unconscionable wars, genocide, refugee crises, economic hardship, etc. — sometimes very little thing can still bring immense joy. These are all photos of Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) seedlings taken by our friend and EFN grower Aaron Parker of @edgewoodnursery in Falmouth, Maine. Aaron has long been the source for some of the best perennials in our catalog (nodding onion, mouse garlic, Turkish rocket, pushkarmool, Szechuan peppercorn, and much more), so I knew I could trust him with some of the precious seeds I collected in the #faroeislands last fall. I also knew they'd be a lot happier in Maine than in New Jersey! A couple patches of Sweet Cicely I collected from were especially exciting due to their smooth stems and leaves, which I've been told taste the best (and are much nicer for raw use). They're also quite hard to find. Over two trips to the Faroes, located about halfway between Iceland & Norway in the North Atlantic, I found about a dozen patches of Sweet Cicely, exclusively growing in towns, often on abandoned lots or overgrown yards. Only two had hairless plants, one in the capital Tórshavn and one in a small town called Skáli. As these photos show, Aaron's seedlings — though exclusively from hairless parents in the Tórshavn patch — were mixed. Because we're after the hairless, Aaron culled the hairy ones. He found 39 hairy and 22 hairless seedlings, a clear sign — even with a small sample size — that the smoothness trait is recessive (which is not surprising, given its rarity). We're very optimistic he'll be able to establish a nice patch and hopefully within a few years we'll be offering seeds! Sweet Cicely was historically something of a staple in the Faroes, along with angelica and rhubarb, though it has largely fallen out of use. But it's an incredibly versatile plant, with edible roots, shoots, leaves, stems, flowers, and seeds (which, when fresh, taste like Good n Plenty!). It's also notoriously hard to germinate, requiring very fresh seeds and cold stratification. So every one of these 22 seedlings feels like a much-needed gift! Thanks Aaron!! #sweetcicely