Like many New England farmers in the late s, Luther Burbank grew potatoes. Easily cultivated in a variety of climates and a cheap source of calories, it has long been praised for both its nutritional and economic benefits. View in our Collections on thehenryford. Henry Ford admired the work of Luther Burbank , an American plant breeder, naturalist, and author who was especially noted for his experiments with plants, fruits, and vegetables. The fellow innovators posed together for this photograph around United States, California.
Photographic prints. Burbank, Luther, Ford, Henry, There is always much to see and do at The Henry Ford. One late-summer afternoon in , when Burbank was 23, he spotted a tiny green seed ball among a crop of Early Rose potatoes.
Dangling from the leafy plant, it resembled an unripe cherry tomato. Aside from his desire to produce a healthy harvest to sell at the local market, he was also fascinated by evolutionary processes. It was one of the most important books Burbank ever discovered at his local library, where he went to read and teach himself horticulture and botany. He grew up on a farm and had a distant relative, W.
Atlee Burpee, who was a seed magnate. When Burbank got his own farm, he immediately began experimenting with cross-fertilizing plants, including beets and beans. Smith wrote in her biography of Burbank.
It would be his first exercise in assisting evolution. Burbank let the seed pod ripen. When he finally opened it, he was delighted to find 23 seeds inside. He planted them the following spring and waited to see what ancestral secrets they might reveal. All the seeds produced potatoes.
