Interesting article in this morning’s Washington Post about Harry Swartz, a Cornell grad at the University of Maryland who’s breeding ‘better’ strawberries, specificially ones that can be harvested mechanically.
It sounds like Swartz hasn’t forgotten about taste. But like a flower-breeder looking for that rare sport that’s going to make a mint, Swartz found his in Spain — and it had nothing to do with flavor:
One day, while slogging through a field of 12,000 plants in Spain, still recovering from a bottle of wine the night before, mind numb at the end of the day, he stopped. He did a double take: He was looking at the perfect plant. All the berries were ripe at the same time, and it had single leaves rather than clusters.
He spirited the plant away and is now working on commercializing it.
Swartz’s company, Five Aces Breeding, is the privatized version of the university’s small fruit program. … “You can’t make five aces without a wild card,” he said. “We use wild species — that’s our wild card.”
I’ve had LiveEarth — Al Gore’s climate crisis concert extravaganza — on in the background while blogging tonight. I’ve learned a few things:
Madonna plays a decent rhythm guitar.
Recycled tires and oil drums can be used to good effect as a stage background.
Kelly Clarkson has some pipes. (I had no clue she won American Idol. Maybe AI voters are smarter than I give them credit for.)
Red Hot Chili Peppers are, indeed, hot.
The Beasty Boys can still belt out Sabotage.
Drink enough gin and even Bon Jovi sounds pretty good.
Lenny Kravitz = Jimi Hendrix wannabe.
Bobby Kenedy would be great heading up EPA, but I already knew that.
I’m sorry I missed the Spinal Tap set featuring a performance of Stonehedge.
It’s easy to dismiss efforts such as these as all hype. But I don’t. I see the names of kids (mostly kids, I guess) scrolling across the screen who at least took the time to visit the LiveEarth website and took the LiveEarth pledge, and I’m encouraged. And I recall a similar concert more than 20 years ago, just about this time of year.
On July 13. 1985, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s LiveAid concert reached 1.5 billion people worldwide to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.
I was a wired gardener back then, too. I remember weeding and listening along with the rest of the world on my cassette player/FM radio strapped to my belt, and realizing (while Phil Collins was singing “I can feel it coming in the air tonight … “) that the world had changed.
Is there still hunger in Ethiopia? You bet. But while I’m no fan of unfettered globalization, I’m glad that word travels faster and farther than it did just a generation ago. We’ve still got some work to do to make sure that that word is truth. But I, for one, am hopeful.
Look for Al to declare in October or November.
Updated/bonus track: So they could get a venue on every continent, LiveEarth included a pre-recorded performance by Nunatak — a garage band of British researchers in Antarctica. (Do they have garages in Antarctica?) They’re not bad, really — especially when you consider how cold their hands must be.
The great big long post I was going to do about weeds and weeding will have to wait for winter. Meanwhile, here are two three that I like to look at, motherwort (left), wild parsnip (right) and Verbena hastata (bottom). (I’m sure I’m driving Graham crazy with my lack of proper nomenclature. But I don’t have enough energy this evening to look these up.) There is a lot of concern about wild parsnip taking over the ditches and roadsides around here, and apparently in Iowa.
Good news on the invasive species front: In many areas of Upstate New York, purple loostrife is on the decline due to the importation of a beetle that feeds on it. I’ll admit that I haven’t seen any around this year yet.
