When asked why he does so many unique things, Bob Quinn laughed, and then said, "It's fun for me! It's my hobby. It's what I do for recreation. First, I try to have lots of ideas, in case some turn out." He laughs again. "In order to see if they'll turn out you've got to try them. So, I try as many as I am able."
He walks to his dry land garden every day, sometimes more than once, "because it is part of his garden". He considers his whole farm his garden, and his research laboratory. He has leased out his farm. He said he's had his turn, now it is up to the next generation to have their turn. And he "wishes them great fun and success".
I had heard about his experimental black wheat, but it is actually Purple Wheat that he grows in his test spots. He laughed when I asked him about it, because he knows less about the Purple Wheat than anything else he is currently growing. "This is only the second year I planted it. I bought a couple of envelopes at the Heritage Seed Festival in Santa Rosa California two years ago. I planted them and got a single row. I hand harvested them so I could plant five rows a foot apart forty feet long this year. It looks black on the inside, but the kernels are purple." He shows me the dark purple kernels. "It's supposed to be from Ethiopia. The Purple Wheat is supposed to have lots of Anthocyanins, in it so it is super healthy." Bob said, "What I am looking at now is not only food the feeds us, but food the nourishes us. Creates better health for us. So, we have to move beyond high yields and cheap food. We need decent yields, but foods that can heal our people and get us off the tread-meal of chronic diseases." The next thing he will do is to send it off to some small baker friends of his because not only does it have to be healthy but it has to tastes good. "Normally those two things go together because the secondary plant compounds are responsible for antioxidants and good health but are also responsible for aroma, flavors and good taste. So, if it tastes good, and smells good, it probably is good.
We walked down his garden past all his test spots. He comments as we walked. He also grows Purple Barley, and the modern wheat Judy to help compare it with the heritage wheat. "Heritage wheat grew taller and lodged too easy, spelt is damaged easy by the saw fly." He experimented with crops which are traditionally planted in the spring. He planted them in the fall to see how they would go through the winter. "With climate change, and some people don't want to talk too much about it. Farmers don't have the luxury to debate climate change but they do have to respond to it." He went on to tell me "This is regular feed barley, of course we had a really strange winter." He had three different kinds of barley. "They were planted October 16, which is late. They should have been planted earlier." The Hull-less barley is from Ethiopia, it doesn't have to be pearled for human consumption, but it has lots of Anthocyanins in it as well. So, it's super healthy too.
He stops to pull a weed, "Always have to deal with the weeds." But the one thing he did say, when you don't water the garden the weeds won't grow. But the plants still do.
He planted 110 variety of small grains from Russia, Palestine, and Israel. He'll hand harvested them after collecting all the data before he takes the top 50 or so and then plants them again next year.
For another experiment, he planted at three different times of year the first of May and middle of May and June 4th. It was easy to see the differences even two weeks make. He knows that everybody knows the earlier you get the grain in the better it produces. But he now has qualified data. He grows ancient, heritage, and modern grain all looking at the nutritional value. He works with Montana State and a place in Italy as well.
We moved on to dry land vegetables. "There is only one thing to worry about and that's water. So, you need to have three times more space. They will produce about the same as irrigated gardens, you just need more space. But we have space in Montana."
He was really proud of the Carnival Squash that tastes like sweet potatoes and will store for months and months.
He raises lots of different squash. Cantaloupes, Okra, Eggplants, beans from Israel, Spaghetti squash, and a new one Angel Hair spaghetti squash. He planted 5 varieties of potatoes. He started out experimenting with 42 varieties but has determined these five are the best varieties for a dry garden; Huckleberry Gold, Yukon Gem, Purple Viking, Redless Soda, (not sure I got that right) and Red New Orleans. He grew 10 different varieties of tomatoes, and I tasted them. "Flavor is really good. They have a more intense flavor." He grew three different onions that grew just fine, but can be miss-shapened.
I asked what he was going to do with all the vegetable. "I'm going to eat them for heaven's sake. And I do have lots of friends." He laughs again. We now come to the reason I wanted to visit him. He grew six different type of watermelon's "These leaves when it was a hundred degrees, the watermelon leaves, never even wilted." He has Yellow, Small Red, Sugar Orange, Red, Sugar Baby which are about 10-12 lbs. and from Israel. All different kinds of watermelon. He showed me one from Israel which kind of looks like a Cantaloupe with orange coloring, but the flesh is white, and "they taste like pineapple." He planted 30 hills of watermelon every six feet with rows about nine feet apart. "Look at this watermelon it has to be 30 pounds" and went to get a scale to prove it. It weighted 27 pounds, but there were three of them on the plant. "When I tried to grow them in my other garden they were only the size of my fist. I think they like it hot with less water. Later up at the house he cut into two different watermelons and they were delicious and extremely juicy!
You might think that was all he grew, but no he had a regular irrigated garden as well along with a large orchard of pears, apples, and grapes. His enthusiasm for growing is contagious and thought provoking.
