Luther burbank biography information sheets

Luther Burbank, — Luther Burbank was born on March 7th, , on a farm near Lancaster, Massachusetts. He received little more than a high school education, but showed interest in nature and mechanics at an early age. Among his early inventions were a steam engine for his rowboat, and a steam whistle made from combining a willow stick and an old teakettle.

Luther Burbank was a plant scientist who developed hundreds of new species of plants.

At the age of 21, he purchased 17 acres of land near Lunenberg, Massachusetts, and began a year plant-breeding career. In , he found a potato seed ball and planted its 23 seeds in a special plot. One of the seeds produced many large, firm potatoes. Burbank replanted these and reaped a small harvest of fine potatoes. In Santa Rosa, he established a nursery garden and greenhouse that became famous throughout the world.

These are ready-to-use Luther Burbank worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Luther Burbank who was a famous pioneer in agricultural science.

In , he bought 18 acres nearby in Sebastopol, and created his experimental farm where he ultimately produced many of his famous creations. I firmly believe, from what I have seen, that this is the chosen spot of all this earth as far as Nature is concerned. His standard process was creating multiple crosses of foreign and native strains to obtain seedlings, which he grafted onto fully developed plants for rapid assessment of hybrid characteristics.

He carried on his plant hybridization and selection on a huge scale. At any one time, he maintained as many as 3, experiments involving millions of plants. In his work on plums, he tested about 30, new varieties. Much of his valuable data was lost, but he wrote several books.