Bittersweet Farm and Nursery

05/11/2026

I grew a surplus of potatoes (and sweet potatoes) with the intention of making them available to the local community. I was successful at producing a lot of amazing, naturally grown food to contribute to local food security and community supported agriculture, but failed at the marketing, outreach, and sales part of getting this food I grew to the hungry people who might appreciate it. Now, I'm in the middle of home renovations that include gutting my root cellar and I still have a lot of potatoes. They are all sprouting to varying degrees, but are still edible while also being totally fit for planting. It is not too late to plant potatoes. I prefer this later planting window for my main storage crops, and I still have a lot left after planting all I want to plant. I was asking $1-5 sliding scale per pound all winter, but at this point I would rather give them away than compost them all, which is what I will probably have to do with whatever is left at the end of next week. Come and get em folks. Plant em. Eat em. I don't really have time to field a million texts and emails, but bring it on. I really want these taters to find homes in the ground or in your belly (yeah, they're a little shriveled and sprouting, but they've been kept in the dark and are still fine to eat...I've been eating em...but they won't keep too much longer. Hit me up. Pay what you can, or just take em. Several varieties...not sure what all I have left.
-Cailen (828)712-3473
and I still have plenty of sweet potato slips available for sale

05/03/2026

Day 2 at Growing in the Mountain was a whirlwind of plants…both in terms of business and the actual wind that left my face wind burnt and my neighbors rack of tomatoes and herbs in a pile of chaos (which myself and several others standers by quickly helped salvage). Looking forward to day 3 but gonna really miss my amazing little helper buddy….

05/01/2026

04/29/2026

These rare yellow/orange fruiting native black raspberries are just one of the exciting new offerings I'll have available this weekend at Growing in the Mountains Spring Plant Sale

04/27/2026

Who doesn't love a ripe fig? I certainly do...it's one of the few fruits I can literally fill my belly with and feel like I've had a proper meal. In our climate/region, it's challenging to grow enough figs to fill your belly. A lot of attention has been given to cold-hardiness, but the truth is that not even the hardiest varieties can survive the new normal polar vortex phenomenon brought to us by human created climate chaos. Figs just need winter protection in Western North Carolina period. I just unwrapped my figs a couple weeks ago and wanted to share a protection strategy that has been working great from me for the last 3 seasons in which we have gotten regular dips into the single digits (low to mid 20's kill most above ground growth). I came up with this relatively simple technique in my desire to combine a passive solar heated thermal mass (a black metal drum filled with water placed on the south side) with an insulation layer to retain that heat (fencing to encircle the fig and connect to the north half of the drum lined with ag fabric and filed with leaves)...more details in the photo captions. It works great! So, now, for me, the name of the game is selecting cultivars that ripen early enough so that we can actually harvest the bulk of the main crop in our relatively short season (the drum actually helps extend the season a bit as well, offering additional heat on cool autumn nights after sunny days have heated it up). I have two newish to me varieties that have proven their earliness and productivity called Ronde de Bordeaux and Florea. These cultivars start ripening their main crop (on current season's growth) in July and continue til frost. By comparison, the previous gold standard, Chicago Hardy, doesn't start really ripening fruit til early September and the majority of the main crop ends up not ripening due to cooler temps and eventual frost. I harvested way more figs from these two varieties than from Chicago Hardy and while they are not the tastiest figs on the planet (most of those absolutely won't ripen here regardless of how much protection you give them), but any tree ripened fig is an amazing treat by my standards. However, these two early figs do have an Achilles heel....if it rains a lot during the ripening period, they are highly susceptible to splitting which usually lead to spoiling before ripening...it's a bit of a role of the old weather dice, but such is the fruit growing game around these parts. But stay tuned, because I have been frantically researching and collecting all the earliest cultivars I can find, some of which have purported split-resistance, to add to my trials and hopefully make available soon! I the meantime, I have 1 year old rooted cuttings of Florea and Ronde de Bordeaux available and will have them at Growing in the Mountains Spring Plant Sale as well as the old standby Chicago Hardy, which I still love even though its not really early enough for my taste (the taste of a ripe one is a little better to my palate than the others). There are more than a few other varieties that I am cancelling because they aren't early enough for me despite touted cold-hardiness, including the often sold around here Brown Turkey and Olympic Hardy and Brooklyn White and others, some of which I still have in the nursery and will sell at a discount to those who wan give em a try in a pot or otherwise...

04/20/2026

I have been growing sweet potatoes in our region for 20 years and have trialed many dozens of common and uncommon varieties. I have been blessed to have mentorship from and access to the vast collection of varieties from a semi-local celebrity of a woman, a master gardener and homesteader and intrepid plant explorer and the undisputed Sweet Potato Queen (IFYKYK) who has been collecting and maintaining around 200 varieties for the last several decades. The varieties I'm growing and offering here are ones that have consistently performed well for me in our relatively short season and sometimes less than ideal sweet potato growing conditions and that we love to eat. It is probably the single biggest staple in our homegrown diet and it is my pleasure to make them available to y'all. I have sweet potato slips ready now for all of y'all who want to get a jump on the season. slips are $2 each, 6/$10, 15/$20. pickup at the farm only. variety descriptions as follows: (scroll to the end for more useful info)

Purple Flesh

"Co-op" Purple - dark purple skin and flesh. probably a modern variety, maybe Stokes Purple, Purple Passion, or Purple Majesty…source was a potato from FBFC. Whatever it is, it is sweeter and moister than any other purple I have eaten or grown (they tend to be starchy and bland). full of the renowned life giving anti-oxidants, very vigorous vines. a great keeper. has become a family favorite and major staple. I grow and eat more of this one than any other

White/Yellow flesh

Liberty - a boniato type (kind of like a Japanese) with purplish skin and whitish flesh. on the drier side. highly resistant to nematodes. extremely productive for me and an excellent keeper. drier flesh and sweet but not intensely so

Okinawa 100 - traditional Japanese type, hot pink skin, whitish flesh, sweet but not too sweet, dry but not too dry, floral undertones. thin, edible skin, like Murasaki but better. does tend to sprout in storage though

Kyushu 100 - traditional Japanese type, with deep pink/purple/almost fuschia skin and pale yellow flesh. very sweet and rich tasting. amazing flavor but less productive than Okinawa 100.

Norton - tan skin, yellow flesh, old heirloom from 1800’s, less vigorous vines (semi-bush), good keeper (doesn’t sprout in storage), medium sweet, nice balance between moist and dry types

Minimiyutaka - a rare white skinned/white fleshed Japanese type. very sweet, dry, and nutty kinda like a chestnut. delicious baked with copious amounts of butter (but what isn't?) (edit: the white skinned/white fleshed Japanese types are sweet early in the storage season but have lost all sweetness by the following spring)

Taihaku Saitama #6 - another rare, white skin/white flesh Japanese type from an experimental breeding program in Japan (not sure if it was ever officially released), very sweet, mildly floral, slightly starchy, slightly nutty, winner of last years taste test of new varieties (edit: the white skinned/white fleshed Japanese types are sweet early in the storage season but have lost all sweetness by the following spring)

Yellow/Light Orange Flesh

Old Paint - aka Old Painters, Yellow Swirl Cake, from the collection of Yanna Fishman (as are most of these), very productive, pinkish tan skin, yellow/orange flesh, cloying/dry-ish, nutty with slight floral notes, family favorite. the best for holding shape and texture as in slicing and re-frying baked whole taters. does tend to sprout in storage, but doesn't seem to affect eating quality much

Faux Beau - pink skin, pale orange/yellow flesh, moist, sweet, bright, and clean tasting, thin mild skin, productive, and a really good keeper. a favorite all around sweet potato. definitely not Beaureguard

Orange Flesh

Carolina Nugget (looks exactly like Mahon in the picture) - rose/orange skin and medium orange flesh, pleasantly moist, but not as moist as deep orange fleshed varieties, clean, sweet but slightly nutty flavor, very productive. semi-bush habit (less vigorous vines) good keeper. current favorite orange variety

Diane - good producer, dark red smooth skin, deep orange flesh, moist, not too sweet, traditional orange sweet potato, tends to sprout in storage for me

call or text me at (828)712-3473 to arrange pick-up

FYI...it's definitely on the early side for planting these now. I do know people who like to try and get a jump on the season in various ways...some folks plant their slips in cells or pots and grow them on heatmats or in greenhouses to try and get a headstart...others use black plastic to prewarm the soil and even plant through the plastic to keep the soil warm and discourage weeds. You certainly can get larger taters if you make the efforts to extend the season on the front end. I usually wait till mid-late May and plant directly into the ground. A slip does not need to have roots to be viable...some folks say this is ideal so they can form their roots directly in the ground. They will not be happy in cool soil or with cool air temps and will need to be watered for their first week at least to get established. I find that these are very forgiving and generous plants...also, the greens are delicious...rabbits, groundhogs, and deer agree and can destroy your crop. towards the end of the season, once the foliage is not as needed for tater production, i pick, blanch and freeze the newer growth and store for winter.

03/23/2026

An edible alternative to Forsythia....Cornelian Cherry (Cornus mas) is a species of dogwood native to eastern Europe where it is prized for it's large red "berries" which contain a single large seed inside...somewhat like a tart cherry and loaded with vitamin C. The tree blooms very early in the spring before anything else has leafed out or bloomed and looks a lot like forsythia. The blooms are very cold tolerant and even though they bloom so early I have yet to see fruit set be impaired by cold snaps. You do need two for pollination to get fruit, but one would still have great ornamental value. It is a small attractive tree like our native dogwood, but this one has a beautiful exfoliating bark kind of like river birch but in lovely shades of cream and rust. The wood is incredibly dense and hard and was used for tool handles and war clubs....supposedly, so dense it will sink in water!. The fruit is a lot like a cranberry and can be used in any sort of cranberry recipe once pitted. I know someone who pickles the unripe fruit in brine and makes an "olive" of sorts. I am evaluating several named cultivars from eastern Europe that are known to have larger, sweeter fruit, but in the meantime, I am offering 3 year old seedlings for sale. An interesting anecdote is that the seed has a double dormancy, sprouting only after 2 winters in the ground, so I actually have five years invested in these lovely little trees. 3-4 ft trees for only $40, some smaller ones for $30. Nursery is open by appointment.

03/19/2026

looking forward to participating for the second time in this truly wonderful plant sale

10/01/2025

Hazelnuts! The hybrid harvest is in and the the pure americans are ready now. My Europeans are still too young, maybe next year. One of the cool things about the americans and the hybrids is that they can be harvested while still inside their fleshy involucres as soon as the nuts start to turn a pale brown (you have to peel back the frilly edges to see the nut inside. This often allows you to beat the squirrels. The Europeans fall free of their shallow involucre as soon as they ripen and you therefore need to have a reasonably clean/mowed area under the trees and have some way to fend off the rodents. We have nearly 30 or so individuals planted in our trials including hybrids from Badgersett, Forest Ag, and Z's Nutty Ridge, Europeans from OSU and Rutgers, and select americans from WNC collected by our friend Osker who scoured the hills for 10 or more years for the best producing genetics. Because of their sexual natures and wind pollination, a genetically diverse and sizable planting block is needed to ensure good nut fill and significant harvest. I have been planting the best nuts from these various seed sources and many of these seedlings are available in the nursery now at an affordable price to allow you to plant your own hazelnut patch this fall!