352 Shares
When Charles Rosen founded Ironbound Farm in 2015, he was quick to plant an orchard with 10,000 apple trees on land that formerly grew grapevines. He soon faced his first challenge: The trees on his 108-acre Garden State farm weren’t thriving. And without fruit, his plans to revive a lost apple variety and launch a hard cider business looked bleak.
Looking back, Rosen sees exactly where he went wrong. “We hadn’t dealt with the mugwort or the thistle or any other invasive species,” he says. “There was no life in the soil. There wasn’t an earthworm to be found.”