Here I am in 2023—David Martin
I began breeding gooseberries twenty years ago. My wife and I also have a flower farm—as you might guess by the name of the website. I’m copping a page to blog about gooseberries.
My interest in plant breeding started when I was living in Louisiana, MO, working at Stark Bros. Nursery. Stark Bros. was a large mail order nursery renowned for its fruit trees. I was a field hand. I knew guys in the main office building and would occasionally stop by after work to chat. Inside was a small library—really just a few bookshelves—next to Joe Preczewski’s office, head of Product Development. An old 1950’s copy of Principles of Genetics by Sinnott and Dunn piqued my imagination. For me, plant breeding is not unlike an Indiana Jones adventure or panning for gold.
My interest in horticulture began much earlier, on a Sunday after church. Some friends and I were playing with the whirligigs falling from a maple tree in the church yard. Despite their familiarity, when Dad told me they were seeds, I was incredulous. I took some home and planted them in pots… Sixty years later I still get a kick from planting seeds.
In the early 80s a slump in the nursery industry prompted me to head for the Pacific Northwest, an area mentioned in all the horticulture books I had read. Soon I would discover why—a Cadillac climate for growing horticultural crops.
The USDA maintains seeds and plants of many crops at several facilities across the country. The Ribes collection (currants and gooseberries) is kept at the National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Corvallis, OR. Pyrus (pear) and Rubus (blackberries, raspberries) collections, among others, are also kept at the Corvallis facility.
I worked there part-time while working toward a degree in horticulture at Oregon State University (1985) . Harry Lagerstedt was running the repository then. After graduation I moved east, taking rooted cuttings from some of the plants with me—extras headed for the compost pile—for hybridizing in the future.
Now, here I am in the future. My wife Martha and I have a 60-acre farm in western Kentucky, near Hopkinsville. We rent part of it to neighbors for corn, wheat, and soybeans; and part for pasture. About four acres is fenced against deer and is irrigated. This is where we grow our flowers and, of course—gooseberries.
Hosting the Master Gardners’ potluck ca. 2016. Photographed by Tom Marshall, Hopkinsville, KY.