GB 244 2023 Fruit Trees TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Farmer Fred:
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.
[00:00:43] Farmer Fred:
Retail nurseries here on the West Coast are already getting in shipments of berry plants and fruit trees. The rest of the country will start seeing the arrival of these tasty edible and beautiful crops throughout the winter. Shop early for the best selection, because most nurseries will only be getting in one shipment. But which fruit trees or berry plants should you get? Which ones taste the best? Which ones are right for your area? Today, we talk with Phil Pursel from wholesale grower Dave Wilson Nursery. He’ll help you plan your 2023 fruit garden and orchard. Remember, the healthiest food you can eat is the food you grow yourself.
We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!
[00:01:27] Farmer Fred:
The weather may not be perfect for outdoor gardening, so how about some indoor planning for your next garden for 2023? It's the time to plan what you want to plant, where you want to put it, and you need some help to figure out what to plant, especially in the way of fruit or nut trees or vines and berries and things like that. What do I want plant? Phil Pursel is here to help us through, to figure out what to plant and where to plant it. Maybe we'll choose some taste test winners. Maybe we'll choose trees that are just nice looking trees. We'll find out because we're talking with Phil Pursel of Dave Wilson Nursery, a wholesale grower based in California. They sell their fruit and nut trees as well as berries, vines and ornamentals to states throughout the West, Midwest, and Southwest. And Phil, the easy question to ask right off is: what's new?
[00:02:20] Phil Pursel:
Such a busy time of year for us. We're in the middle of harvesting all of our trees, getting graded and getting ready to go out.
[00:02:28] Farmer Fred:
That brings up a very good question. You talked about “grading” trees and “harvesting” trees. Talk about that process of actually getting the trees into the retail nurseries. What all is involved? What the heck is all out there at Dave Wilson Nursery?
[00:02:41] Phil Pursel:
When many people go to the retail nurseries and they see these trees, they really have no idea of what it takes to grow a tree.
[00:02:49] Phil Pursel:
Most of our trees are two years old. From the time when we plant the rootstock and graft them. So we grow 'em. We got a good year and a half, two years of manpower into them. This time of year usually starts right after Thanksgiving when things start to go at dormant. This is known as our harvest season.
We call it our dig out, and it's at this time that we start to dig out. I think this year we're going to be close to 4 million trees, digging them out of the ground. And that's between the home garden division and the commercial division. So what this entails is that once the trees go dormant, we have a machine called the GK Digger. And it goes up and down all the rows, and it undercuts the root system.
And it actually lifts them out, to the point where we can have our workers out there and throw them onto a trailer. And we take this trailer into a one acre grading barn. And the grading barn is really the heart of the dig out at this point. All our tree varieties are hand graded, and when I say graded, we grade everything.
The caliper size of the tree by each variety. And this is when trees that don't make the standard will get culled out. We make sure that the trees that are too small or might be a little crooked, we go ahead and cull them. So when the trees go to this grading barn, each tree is hand graded by caliper size, and then it goes to the next section where it's bundled and bundled in fives.
And then it gets loaded onto another trailer, which we send down to what we call our river bottom, and that's our holding facility. And it's just a big heeling in ground. It's about 50 acres, and we stage our trees there by variety until we're ready to deliver 'em. And we go ahead, gather them out of the river bottom, then we ship them to our retailers.
So we are probably about 25% through right now in mid-December. It's a huge operation to get the trees out to the public.
[00:05:01] Farmer Fred:
And if people want to see this big machine in action, I know on the Dave Wilson Nursery YouTube page, you can find that video of that big dig out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLYI6MVJqs.
[00:05:09] Phil Pursel:
Yeah, these GK diggers. It's just fascinating what they can do.
And at that time you can see all the work into getting these trees that are field grown. We have to knock the soil off and then the whole process. So we have that on our website and it's really interesting to see.
[00:05:24] Farmer Fred:
You explained that grading is done by caliper size. Explain caliper size.
[00:05:29] Phil Pursel:
The caliper size is the diameter of the tree. All these trees are grown about six inches apart. right next to each other, you can have three-quarter inch, really sturdy tree, and right next to it could be a three-eighths inch tree. And the difference between the two is that a larger tree is something that a wholesale grower would wanna put into a 10 or a 15 gallon container. a smaller caliper tree is something that you would see in a smaller container in the retail marketplace.
So what we have to do is instead of just shipping, whether it's an independent garden center or a wholesale grower, a mixture. We make sure that each bundle that they receive, all the trees are identical in size, and that's how they order it from us.
[00:06:19] Farmer Fred:
You mentioned that it is judged by basically the diameter of the trunk. How tall are these trees when you dig them out?
[00:06:26] Phil Pursel:
The average height of these trees when we dig them out are approximately about six and a half feet tall between six, six and half feet tall. They actually grow much taller during the season. But we top 'em at that point because we feel that number one, it's for loading onto a truck.
It has to fit in laterally, onto the truck, but it allows people to make the decision if they wanna go ahead and have a higher canopy from the get or start with the lower canopy, whereas something, let's say like our commercial growers, those trees generally go out at around 40 inches. Beause that's what a commercial grower wants. He wants low scaffolding. But we tend to get a little bit of resistance when we send a commercial style tree into the home garden market because when a consumer goes out there and they're happy and they're excited about buying the Red Baron peach, they just want that big tree. So that's what we do. We supply 'em the big tree always. We tell 'em though, it's best to cut it. And start with that low branching.
[00:07:32] Farmer Fred:
I always enjoy watching you doing fruit tree planting demonstrations of bare root trees because it always involves the drama of taking your long-handled loppers and basically cutting that tree in half, to the shock and horror of everybody watching.
[00:07:50] Phil Pursel:
Exactly. Everyone, when they see that, the gasps that come out of everyone's mouth, they can't believe I'm doing it. But then I explain to 'em the whole process, the science behind it. Having a tree that if it has a lower scaffolding from the very beginning, it's still gonna get as tall as they want, but they're able to control the height and then you just makes it easy to pick the fruit. It doesn't make sense to start off with an eight foot tree in two years. You're never gonna be able to reach that fruit.
[00:08:14] Farmer Fred:
Now you mentioned your commercial customers, and we should point out for those that don't know, is that Dave Wilson Nursery is a large supplier of almond trees to the California farming industry. And those are the trees that go out at 40 inches, correct?
[00:08:30] Phil Pursel:
Correct. And at that point, the farmer will cut 'em down to, generally speaking, about 30 inches. So they still prune from the 40 inches down.
[00:08:40] Farmer Fred:
As we like to say. Cut it off at the knees.
[00:08:42] Phil Pursel:
Cut it off at the knees.
[00:08:43] Farmer Fred:
Exactly. All right. And I, I think the whole purpose of this for the home gardener want to start fruit and nut trees low because really you wanna be standing on the ground when you end up harvesting nuts or fruits as opposed to getting on a ladder. And the easiest way to do that is get it right from the start. Exactly. Cut them off at the knees.
[00:09:03] Phil Pursel:
Yep. If you have a tall tree and you try to bring the level down, it's more of a challenge than if just from day number one, you start with a shorter tree. And then you keep it at the height that you want.
[00:09:14] Farmer Fred:
In the old days, we remember, you would go to a nursery here in California in January, and behind the nursery would be this raised bed of sawdust. And all the bare root fruit trees, which basically are sticks with roots,
they would be in that bed of sawdust and you would pick out the tree and stare at the roots. And not knowing what you're looking at, you'd say, okay, I'll take this one. And now, though, many retail nurseries, even though you're still shipping them, bare root, many nurseries are now putting their bare root fruit trees in containers for a lot of good reasons.
[00:09:48] Phil Pursel:
Correct. So what's been very popular out here on the west coast is taking my bare root trees and putting them into biodegradable pulp pots. it allows the homeowner the option of they can pull it out of that pulp pot right away and stick it in the ground. But let's say we have a wet winter - which we are praying for this year - and you can't get to planting that bare root tree. The Fruit tree that you bought maybe a few days ago, the ground might be saturated for two weeks. You don’t want to plant in mud. You can't get that happening with this biodegradable pulp pot . You're able to plant whenever you're ready. All it's doing is rooting itself into this pulp pot. and it's now at the convenience of your schedule when you're able to plant it. A lot of this was developed because, of the changing marketplace and the fact that the younger generation is not very familiar with planting a bare root tree. So a lot of the independent garden centers have decided to adapt, and they listen to their clientele. People seem to be more comfortable with purchasing the fruit tree in a pot. So that's how these solutions come. about
[00:10:59] Farmer Fred:
And another good reason for doing that on a retail nursery basis is it makes for a nicer display when you have potted up plants, even though it may just be a start-looking bare root fruit tree, it looks nice with the rest of the inventory at the nursery when it's potted up.
[00:11:14] Phil Pursel:
it does, and then most of the nurseries use this opportunity to go ahead and prune the tree up in advance for the homeowner. it's ready to go. this allows the nurseries to keep their employees busy. Winter is the slowest time of year, and that's, they take advantage of doing this with having the plant in containers than just the old fashioned bare root way, where at the end of spring, anything you had left over would need to be potted up in containers, anyway.
But in spring they're faced with the crunch of the spring sales going on. And it just becomes a log jam for them. They've adapted and understood when things are slow, this is the time to go ahead and take advantage of the situation.
[00:11:56] Farmer Fred:
And you mentioned, too, that out there at Dave Wilson nursery on the growing grounds, you've harvested and graded those trees. You take 'em back down to the river bottom area where it's muddy soil and you heel them in. “Heeling” is a habit that a lot of homeowners unfortunately never got into when they were buying bare root fruit trees that hadn't been potted up. They might take that stick, which is wrapped in newspaper and wet sawdust, take it home and put it out on the back patio, just laying there, and forget that, “oh, this is a living plant”. It needs water. And they don't heel it in into a raised bed or a bare patch of dirt like they should until they get around to planting it. And now, by potting it up as so many nurseries do, that takes that problem out of the equation.
[00:12:40] Phil Pursel:
Absolutely. the enemy of a bare root tree is drying out. And in fact, I should have mentioned this before, from the time that we dig our trees, the first thing that happens is it goes under a sprinkler rain canopy and we drenched the roots. And from there we actually stoe tham in a rain barn until they're ready to get into our grading process.
[00:13:01] Phil Pursel:
And from the rain barn to grading to packing to the river bottom, it's generally less than a half hour time that the trees are exposed. Cause we wanna make sure all those roots stay moist. So it's key that if you do buy a, an old-fashioned bare root tree and you bring it home from the nursery, that doesn't mean you can just leave it in the plastic bag for two weeks.
You gotta go ahead and heel that tree in at your house, whether that's in a compost pile or a sand pile, or a bag of potting soil or something. You have to make sure those roots stay wet, and you make sure they're covered, protect them from drying out, and actually you protect them from freezing too.
[00:13:42] Farmer Fred:
So what some people may think is that when you're digging out these fruit trees from the ground, that you're keeping the soil that they were planted in around the roots, but you're not, you're washing that soil off.
[00:13:51] Phil Pursel:
We wash them. They were completely sterile clean roots when we sent send them to the retail nurseries.
That's just the nature of the bare root business, and if you think about it, if it still had soil on there, the load capacity on shipping would diminish because you know the weight of it. We wash all the roots off and they load them onto the truck and ship them out to the independent garden centers.
[00:14:22] Farmer Fred:
I’ve told you about Smart Pots, the Original, award-winning fabric planters. They’re sold worldwide. Smart Pots are proudly made 100% in the USA. They’re BPA Free and Lead-Free, making them safe for growing vegetables and other edibles.
The folks at Smart Pots have added a new product to their lineup, perfect for building the healthiest soil imaginable for your garden: by composting. It’s the Smart
Pot Compost Sak, a large, 100-gallon fabric bag that is lightweight yet extremely durable and lasts for years, and can hold 12 cubic feet of pure compost. This rugged fabric is entirely porous, containing many micropores that allow for air circulation and drainage. The fitted cover is a flexible plastic top designed to increase heat and help manage moisture in the mix, accelerating the composting process.It’s easy to start a compost pile with the Smart Pot Compost Sak. Just open the Sak, set it on level ground, and start adding your compostable materials: grass clippings, vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and more, as well as fallen leaves, straw, and shredded paper. Next, place the optional cover over the Sak. That’s all there is to it. Smart Pots are available at independent garden centers and select Ace and True Value hardware stores nationwide. You can find the location nearest you at their website. And you can buy it online from Smart Pots! Just Visit smart pots dot com slash fred. And don’t forget that slash Fred part. On that page are details about how, for a limited time, you can get 10 percent off your Smart Pot order by using the coupon code, fred. f-r-e-d, at checkout from the Smart Pot Store. Visit smartpots.com slash fred for more information about the complete line of Smart pots lightweight, colorful, award winning fabric containers and their new Compost Sak. And don’t forget that special Farmer Fred 10 percent discount. Smart Pots - the original, award winning fabric planter. Go to smart pots dot com slash fred.
[00:16:22] Farmer Fred:
Let's get back to planning our fruit tree orchard for 2023 with Dave Wilson Nursery’s Phil Pursel.
I think 20 minutes ago I asked you the question, what's new? And I know that a lot of people want smaller trees, migrating to what are considered dwarf fruit trees, and I know that at Dave Wilson Nursery, you offer several varieties.
One of my favorites is the Garden Gold peach, which is just gorgeous. It maxes out at four feet, five feet tall and just has a beautiful canopy to it. But you've got other new miniature white peaches out there, and a nectarine too. You've got the Snow Babe miniature white peach and a miniature nectarine called Arctic Sprite.
[00:17:02] Phil Pursel:
Yes. The miniature nectarines and miniature peaches were considered as a novelty, and these are just miniature by nature. They're not genetically modified or engineered. It just happens that these trees were found years ago. And they just naturally grew smaller. It’s been a lot of work for the Zaiger family over the years. They're the foremost producers of peaches and nectarines in the world. They've come up with some fantastic, just unbelievable flavors that surpass what you find in a grocery store. And these are miniature nectarines and peaches trees (the fruit is full size). They literally grow to mature heights without pruning , to about five to six feet. Some of them even stay a little bit smaller and the kind of the neat thing about all these miniature peaches and nectarines is they're blossoms. Every single one puts on a show in the spring. It’s unbelievable. The colors are just intense and like you say, of the new varieties that we're starting to offer, the flavors are just incredible on them. That's how they've been bred. We've gone from the old Bonanza and Elberta Peaches, which were the start of all these latest full flavored varieties working with the Zaiger family.
[00:18:21] Farmer Fred:
Now you mentioned flowering fruit trees, and I think that deserves a few minutes to talk about, because maybe you want a row of really gorgeous looking trees in the springtime when they're all in bloom or a focal point fruit tree for its blossoming; it may not be noted for the quality of the fruit, but the flowers are outstanding and there are all sorts of flowering almonds, flowering apricots, cherries, peaches, nectarines, crab apples, pears and plums that are all ornamental flowering winners. What are some of your favorites among those?
[00:18:55] Phil Pursel:
Probably the showstoppers - and the Asian community loves this one - is known as an Early Flowering Red peach. and it has double flowers on this flowering peach variety. and generally speaking, it always coincides with Chinese New Year's. So it's a good luck tree. And in fact, the flower markets in San Francisco, they buy these trees and they sell sprigs of them.
Once they grow them out in their orchard they actually sell sprigs through the Asian marketplace, and so that's the popularity of the early flowering Reds. It has just gone crazy. A fantastic peach, which we call putting on a show, is known as a Red Baron peach, which once again, has a dark red flower. But the fruit itself is just spectacular. There's a lot of different ways you could play around with fruiting or flowering trees in your garden to make it a dual purpose.
[00:19:50] Farmer Fred:
We should emphasize too, about the Red Baron, is that it is actually a very tasty piece of fruit, too.
[00:19:55] Phil Pursel:
It is. It's one of my favorite. It has that true old fashioned peach flavor that you get in a yellow peach. White peaches tend to have a higher sugar content, less acid. So they are more of a sweet, super sweet treat. But the Red Baron is like that old fashioned peach that you remember as a kid.
[00:20:15] Farmer Fred:
There are a lot of interesting new crosses out that people may not be aware of, and they may be wondering exactly what they are. Things like the Pluerry. what the heck is a Pluerry?
[00:20:27] Phil Pursel:
The pluerry has become my favorite fruit.
In fact, I have four of them in my backyard. At Dave Wilson, We only have four. And what a pluerry is, it is a cross between a plum and a cherry. And people think, “oh, here they go again, It's genetically modified”. Nope, it's the old Luther Burbank hybridization process because cherries and plums are from the same genus (Prunus).
So the pollen is interchangeable, and by doing this, you come up with a new fruit type. The happens to be one that is just starting to get introduced in the market. But it is so versatile. The fruit is a little smaller in size, halfway between the size of a cherry and a plum. But they really hang on the trees for a long time. I had the Sweet Treat Pluerry and I planted it when it first came out. And so I've had it now for almost 10 years. And the amount of fruit that it produces is just mind boggling. And the nice thing about Pluerries, you can eat them hard, right? Or you can let 'em hang on the tree for a month, pick them soft, right? Unlike something like the Santa Rosa, which tends to produce all of its fruit within a week or so. Pluerries have a long hang time, so you don't have to worry about picking them all the at once. We have early varieties, mid varieties, later varieties, and the fruit quality clearly tends to be among the highest brix count, and that's the amount of sugars that you'll get on a fruit. That's why they’ve become super popular, very easy to get established, adaptable to low chill or high chill areas. And the fact that the fruit hangs on for so long. These traits make it a perfect tree for a homeowner.
[00:22:11] Farmer Fred:
And it’s a beautiful fruit as well. One of the Pluerries, I think it's one of your newer introductions, the Candy Heart, and that has just a beautiful heart shape to it.
[00:22:20] Phil Pursel:
It's a heart-shaped fruit. It has a kind of a plum purple color outside, but you bite into it. And it's just red and juicy and the flavor is just amazing. In fact, it was one of our taste test winners on a previous taste test that we had with the industry,
[00:22:37] Farmer Fred:
And I think another popular Pluerry these days is the Flavor Punch.
[00:22:42] Phil Pursel:
It is, the flavor punch is a very late ripening variety. The one thing that we do in the home garden market, and if you go onto our website, you can see we have a harvest chart. we want people to make sure that they have fruit through the whole season. That's why I select this pluerry, even though we only have four varieties, they are an early, a mid, a little bit later in late season so that you can have fruit for the whole timeframe, and that's something to really consider when you're plotting out your orchard. Do your homework because you don't want all your fruit coming during the same week every single year. You're gonna get bombarded. So plan your orchard so that you have fruit in May all the way through October. Heck, you can even go all the way December with the persimmons, but make sure you stagger the fruit so you're not getting all your fruit at one time.
[00:23:34] Farmer Fred:
Yeah, that harvest chart that you have is a great reference, especially for US gardeners here in California, for finding the varieties that can literally take you through five months of the year.
[00:23:50] Phil Pursel: If you like peaches, there are varieties that you can be planting that, that extend all the way from
May through Octoberfest. That's our last of our peaches, and which is a fantastic variety. Like the name says, it in ripens in October.
[00:23:58] Farmer Fred:
All right. May to October
[00:23:59] Phil Pursel:
For peaches. And this harvest chart, even though it's based on the dates of California, it doesn't matter where you are in the nation. It might be a condensed time, but it's still gonna work for you. If you follow it in the Midwest, and even though we have a variety that says it ripens in the beginning in June, for you, it might be July. But it's still going to follow the same sequence on this chart. So you can still use this as a planning tool.
[00:24:25] Farmer Fred:
We'll have a link to the Dave Wilson Nursery Harvest Chart in today's show notes so you can check it out for yourself. That way, when you go to the nursery and you're picking out fruit trees, you can mix the varieties that you're buying so that you get that extended harvest as opposed to buying two different varieties that may all ripen, say, in early July.
Let's talk about what's showing up at the nurseries right now. And among your Farmer's Market Favorites, and these are usually the first arrivals at nurseries, especially in USDA Zone 9 are the blueberries. And boy, oh boy, if there's a plant that I enjoy, it's a blueberry, but it's nice to have several varieties that ripen at different times, so you can extend that blueberry harvest.
[00:25:07] Phil Pursel:
We like to think that blueberries for the new gardener is a great plant to start with. But we really like people to plant those blueberries in containers, larger containers. That way you can go ahead and control the acidity of the soil. If you were to plant a blueberry into the ground, and let's say you're in the area that the soil is not ideal for blueberries, you might not have success.
[00:25:30] Phil Pursel:
But a gardener can go onto our website and they can see us planting blueberries in a container. As long as you just follow some simple rules on the soil mixture, you're gonna have success with it. Plant two or three varieties. Now you have an early, a mid and late season blueberry. You just go out and pick whenever you want.
[00:25:51] Farmer Fred:
Speaking of that, we'll have a link in the show notes as well on blueberry planting tips in containers that will tell you more about the best containers for blueberries. The best sort of soil mix to use. And how to maintain that low pH of around 5.5 to 6.0 that blueberries thrive in.
[00:26:08] Phil Pursel:
Absolutely. Like I say, blueberries, they are great for beginners, but it's definitely a plant that experienced gardeners enjoy having too.
[00:26:17] Farmer Fred:
And they're fairly easy care as well. I look forward to blueberry harvest every May through July.
[00:26:23] Phil Pursel:
Yeah they are very pest free. They also give you some really nice fall color too. The leaves turn a scarlet orangey red. It's a nice plant for container gardening.
[00:26:35] Farmer Fred:
So what else is showing up at the USDA zone nine nurseries now in the way of Farmer's Market Favorites, besides blueberries?
[00:26:41] Phil Pursel:
Yeah, we have a program that we developed a few years back called the Farmer’s Market Favorites program. And in the old days, blueberries and blackberries and raspberries were actually sold as bare root little plugs, and people would struggle with them. You take 'em home and they dry out, and people didn't have success. So what we did is we developed a system where we plant them in liner pots, and we send them out in boxes so that the home gardener has a plant that's ready to go whenever they're ready. Right now, the whole gamut of our assortments are there, so there are blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, grapes, figs, pomegranates. They are are all in the stores and it's it's a great time to plant 'em. The nice thing about these liner sleeves in the Farmer’s Market Favorites line, if you're not ready to plant them now, you can plant them in spring, but now's the time to get the best selection, because this is when we send them out to the nurseries and they generally only get one shipment. Whether it's the Farmer’s Market Favorite berries, or with bare root trees, your best selection is gonna be right when they hit the stores. Because they don't get a replenishment like they would do on regular general ornamental plant shipments. You have one chance a year for the best selection, and now's the time to do it. So hitting most of the stores out here on the West Coast are the Farmer’s Market Favorites, the blueberries and blackberries. And then in the Midwest, those will be coming out in March or so.
[00:28:11] Farmer Fred:
And all gardening is local, but all these plants will eventually make it to your favorite independent nursery. And we should stress too, the Dave Wilson Nursery is a wholesale grower and they're selling To independently owned retail nurseries. You won't find them at Home Depot or Lowe's?
[00:28:26] Phil Pursel:
No. We strictly sell to independent garden centers, so that's always been our core business and those are the nurseries are the ones that supported us and we do the same.
[00:28:36] Farmer Fred:
Since we're heading to that area, let's talk about the best varieties on a state-by-state basis. You have a wonderful webpage that we'll have a link to, called “the most ordered Dave Wilson Nursery Home fruit varieties by state”, and you even list the best of seller ones, as well, in that process. By the way, you divided California into two states. Thank you. Northern California and Southern California. Because like I said, all gardening is local and it's different down there than it is up here.
[00:29:07] Phil Pursel:
Yeah, I think California would take the same type of fruits, but believe it or not, we actually have two distinct zones, more of a low chill area, which would be Southern California. We have a mid chill area, which is the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley. But as you start getting towards the Oregon area, there's a different zone there too. And that's the uniqueness of California. So that's why we broke down the availability between Southern California and Northern California because the requirements on Chill factor are different in Southern California than up here in Northern California,
[00:29:45] Farmer Fred:
which is one reason why the Sunset Western Garden Book divided California into 24 separate gardening zones.
[00:29:52] Phil Pursel:
Yep. They were ahead of the game. They understood the differences way back when.
[00:29:57] Farmer Fred:
Let's talk about ones that do well in Northern California that are some of your best sellers. And there's some great apples on that list.
[00:30:08] Phil Pursel:
This list was populated by what most of what the retail nurseries stock in Northern California. if you look at the list it's like the old standbys, Fuji Gala, Granny Smith, Honeycrisp. That's what the public wants now. We grow so many different varieties of apples, antique apples, and more. But when it comes down to it, people still tend to gravitate to what they're comfortable with. So that's what this list shows, Blenheim Apricots and Moorpark apricots. Even though we do so many different varieties, this is actually what the standby plants that sell through the independent garden centers.
[00:30:49] Farmer Fred:
But good cherry varieties too. And even one of my favorites, the Stella.
[00:30:53] Phil Pursel:
Yeah, Stella is a really good producer, it's does well in high chill areas and low chill areas. Now cherries are one variety that really need to be very specific on their chill hours, and most of Southern California doesn't get enough chill hours for cherries. But Southern California gardeners want cherries. So once again working with the Zaiger family, they were the first to introduce low chill varieties of cherries and we carry the Royal Crimson. Nice thing about the Royal Crimson. It does well in Southern California, Texas, and all of Northern California, and it’s self fertile. So you only need that one tree. You don't need a colonizer like Bing or a Black Tartartarian. So that's now becoming, with the climate change going on, that's becoming the Dave Wilson go-to cherry. People are moving away from the Stella and away from the Lapin and more into the Royal Crimson. So the homeowner will have success and will have fruit set if you can't depend on having a lot of chill hours.
[00:32:03] Farmer Fred:
In today’s podcast, we’ve been talking about fruit trees and chill hours. What exactly are chill hours? And are they really that important when considering the fruit tree varieties for your yard? We’ll hear about an ongoing experimental orchard in balmy southern California where growing high chill apple trees has been very successful. And, can you really grow an apple tree from a seed?
For current newsletter subscribers, look for the All About Chill Hours podcast and newsletter, in the Friday, Dec. 16th edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, it’s in your email. Or, start a subscription, it’s free! Find the link in today’s show notes or sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, garden basics dot net.
Let's get back to planning our Fruit tree orchard for 2023 with Dave Wilson Nurseries. Phil Pursel.
[00:32:58] Farmer Fred:
You mentioned something else, and we can go down that road too, because it's very important for new gardeners and those who are expanding their orchard that some trees need a close friend, a slightly different variety, but it improves the pollination of probably both trees. And we should point out too, that there is a lot of varieties that are self pollinating.
[00:33:19] Phil Pursel:
Yes. So for example, there are a lot of varieties of apples that are self pollinated. But through our studies we've come to realize that even though it's self fertile, if you have other varieties of apples around, you get increased yields all the way across the board. It's the same thing with cherries, certain varieties. You have to have a pollinator. Bing by itself will not fruit. Bing with a Black Tartarian or Lapin will fruit. In fact, when you have two or three varieties of cherries, now you're going to get increased fruit on each tree. Some categories that don't really need as much pollination are the peaches and the nectarines. But certain varieties, like cherries and apples, it is best to have a couple of different varieties in there just to have a little bit of help to set fruit.
[00:34:10] Farmer Fred:
If you hear a low hum in the background, that's my dehydrator going. Because I'm busy dehydrating persimmons, which has turned out to be a very bountiful tree this year. My Fuyu persimmon. I love to slice 'em up, put 'em on the dehydrator and have sweet treats all winter long. Now, it used to be in the world of Dave Wilson Nursery that the biggest selling tree you had was the Fuyu persimmon. Is that still true?
[00:34:35] Phil Pursel:
It is. It's not only the best selling persimmon we grow, the Fuyu is the top seller of all the fruit in the home garden market.
[00:34:43] Phil Pursel:
That's our number one variety that we grow. More than Fuji apple or Honeycrisp apple. And when I tell people that, they're just floored. But easily, the Fuyu persimmon sells twice as much as the next of variety, in terms of popularity. Once again, the persimmon is very adaptable throughout the whole country, and it's pest free. it doesn't get any diseases and it's just a great all around tree. It is the very last harvest of everything that we've grow. In fact, here we are in mid-December, and our Fuyu trees still have persimmons on them. They are still rock hard. And the trees have totally lost their leaves and it's like these orange ornaments on these beautiful trees. It's just a great tree for the landscape.
[00:35:41] Farmer Fred:
And the Fuyu persimmon fan club wants me to be sure to mention that the persimmon tree is self fertile. The Fuyu persimmon, you can eat it right off the tree once it has a little bit of softness, not the softness that a Hachiya persimmon needs, which is droopy soft, but just a little bit of give, you can eat the Fuyu persimmon right off the tree.
[00:36:05] Phil Pursel: It is just like you're picking an apple off the tree. You can have a Fuyu, in San Diego. And you can have a Fuyu persimmon over on the East coast. I sell a lot of Fuyu persimmons to the growers out on the East coast, out on Long Island, and New Jersey. I’ts a super adaptable tree.
[00:36:24] Farmer Fred: And I noticed, too, that as we move to the northwest, to Oregon and Washington, that there's a lot of sales of berry plants, and that's Berry country up in Oregon and Washington. Blackberries, raspberries. What are some of the best blackberry varieties and raspberry varieties to grow ?
[00:36:42] Phil Pursel:
For the blackberry varieties, the best tasting would be something like the Marion berry. They make fantastic shakes, but for the homeowner, they tend to want to go with thornless varieties, because it's just easier to pick.
So we sell in the home garden division a lot about thornless blackberries. So the Black Saturn. We grow boysenberries, as well as the thornless berry, Triple Crown. These are all super popular varieties for the home because Marion berry have little spines on them. These other varieties don't. And that's kinda the same with the raspberries.
Candy is a great variety for the home gardener. Doesn't have thorns, but like what you're used to in the grocery stores, that's more like the Heritage or the Willamette Red. Those have thorns on them. Now we do have within our Farmers Market Favorite line, we do have a Blackberry and the Raspberry, which is part of the Bush Home Berry series.
It's just goes right along with planting blueberries in containers. The Raspberry Shortcake is a bushy small growing raspberry that's meant to be in a container. And the Baby Cakes Blackberry. That is a blackberry that's bushy, that's meant to be grown in the container. Both of these are thornless, so once again, it falls right into the backyard home gardener’s desires, and just makes it easy for them to do some nice container gardening.
[00:38:19] Farmer Fred:
What size container is best for growing a blackberry or a raspberry?
[00:38:24] Phil Pursel:
The bigger the container, the better off you're gonna be. When you see our Farmers Market Favorites, they come in sleeves that are four by nine inches. You don't want to go out and get a a six inch pot. The bigger, the better. And in fact, if you can, get like a wine or a whiskey barrel, you can plant two or three in there. If you have a good size container, you're gonna get a just a much nicer plant. What tends to happen, I think this kinda happens in the plant world, people tend to. Plant in too small of a pot, and especially on these berries, whether it's blueberries or blackberries, they have a root system that's gonna outgrow a small pot quickly. So you wanna make sure that if you're not quite sure on what size pot to get , err on the larger size, because they will fill that up in a season.
[00:39:12] Farmer Fred:
For decades, I have always planted my blueberries in cattle watering troughs. They're widely available at your local farm implement store, like Tractor Supply or online. And they're just the perfect size. Maybe drill some holes in the bottom for drainage and paint 'em up and they look great.
[00:39:30] Phil Pursel:
Every time I see those, when I go into a farm supply store, that's exactly what I think. Blueberries or even like the Baby Cakes blackberry, the raspberry shortcake you can fill out. It's just makes a great planter and it makes the perfect planting size container. And it displays nicely out in your patio.
[00:39:47] Farmer Fred:
One plant that I've noticed gets a lot of exposure, a lot of sales throughout the West, in California, Oregon, Washington are the pluots, the plum apricot cross. Plants like “dapple dandy”, “flavor grenade”, “flavor king.”
[00:40:03] Phil Pursel:
The pluots are what revolutionized what we like to call the hybrid market. 50 plus years ago, Floyd Zaiger decided to go one step beyond what Luther Burbank did when Luther Burbank just crossed an apricot and a plum. He made a straight cross. What Floyd Zaiger did is that he improved on that and he kept on hybridizing, taking the pollen from one plant to another, to another, to the point where he developed what's known as a pluot.
The genetics of a pluot is 70% plum and about 30% apricot. So it has the characteristics of a plum, but it gives you a little different flavor that the apricot puts in there. The difference between a pluot and a regular plum, when you look at 'em, they might look very similar, but the flavor intricacies of a pluot are just so much more dynamic than a standard plum.
If you go to a farmer's market, they'll call the pluots by their specific names, but let's say someplace in the Midwest or even back east, they call these pluots, plums. They just simplify it. But out here on the West Coast, people specifically go to farmer's markets for these pluots. Because the flavor is second to none.
It's basically you take a plum and you increase the flavor profile by a hundred percent and now you got pluot flavors that are just unbelievable.
[00:41:37] Farmer Fred:
I believe it's true that grapes are grown in all 50 states, even in Alaska, and there are table grapes and wine grapes. And those are part of your arsenal as well.
[00:41:47] Phil Pursel:
They are, yeah. There are American hybrids that. For the cooler areas, European hybrids is what you would see more out here on the west coast. And for the homeowner, it's just a way to once again cover a fence that's unsightly. You put a grapevine on there, you get some fruit off of it. People are more into homestead. We have a lot of little cottage gardeners who decide that they're gonna be at the next Robert Mondavi. So they plant, they go out and then they buy our grapes. It's a great way of making just a small investment and playing around and having little vineyard of your own. And the nice thing about these Farmers Market Favorites grapes is we have the whole catalog, all the basic wine grapes, all the basic table grapes. We have everything covered for all zones.
[00:42:37] Farmer Fred:
And just like with fruit, the seedless varieties are very popular among table grapes. Things like Crimson Seedless or Flame seedless, or the Thompson Seedless grape.
[00:42:46] Phil Pursel:
Yep. That's uh, once again, it's the homeowner that wants easy. They wanna be able to pick it right off, not worry about seeds and all that. Seedless grapes will outsell our seeded grapes 10-1.
[00:42:57] Farmer Fred:
As I'm going through this list of the best sellers on a state by state basis, there is some commonality, fruits that seem to be popular just about everywhere. And there's one that people may not be aware of called the goji berry. What is the goji?
[00:43:11] Phil Pursel:
So the goji berry has been known to produce high antioxidants, so it is a bush plant that produces these teardrop, almost tomato looking fruit that can be eaten right off the plant. Or you can dry 'em and you'll see gold berries, dried gold berries at all the health food stores. And generally speaking, that's generally how you see em, dried, very adaptive again. Once again, you can grow 'em San Diego, you can grow 'em in Alaska. They take the super cold. They take the warm areas. And it's another one that's great for container gardening. And this is more of something that people who want to add some more antioxidants to the diet, they'll play around with the goji berry.
The nice thing about these Farmers Market Favorites is that you can play around with all these different plants. It's not a huge investment. you can see what works for you.
[00:44:07] Farmer Fred:
The goji berry can be harvested summer through fall, and even though it is called a shrubby plant. It can get eight to 12 feet tall. But the good news is, I guess, you can prune it back to whatever height you want.
[00:44:16] Phil Pursel:
Absolutely. It takes hedging very well and it grows well in containers.
[00:44:18] Farmer Fred:
and it's self fruitful. .
[00:44:23] Phil Pursel:
It is. It checks off all the desirable attributes for the homeowner.
[00:44:28] Farmer Fred:
Yeah. I think I just sold myself on getting a goji berry . I mentioned that the commonality among all these states, and I'm not surprised, especially with Apple varieties, there seems to be popularity across the board for Fujis and Granny Smiths. They seem to be popular wherever you live.
[00:44:47] Phil Pursel:
They are. the Fuji is the number one apple in production, and the reason being is that's what people like to taste. and it's a great apple. We could try to get fancy with all these different apples and such, but whether it's Fuji or Granny Smith, it’s just that they produce everywhere.
They're consistent. And that's one thing that you want in your backyard. You don't wanna experiment too much because there is a time investment that you do when you plant these trees. So you wanna make sure that it is something that you're gonna have success with. And that's why when you look at this list that we have populated, that's a good starting point for a homeowner. We're not saying this is the only thing to plant, but if you're a beginner, this is where you start and then you expand from there.
[00:45:33] Farmer Fred:
One nice thing about both the Fuji and the Granny Smith apple is they are self fertile, but I would imagine that even though they're self fertile, they would do better with another variety nearby.
[00:45:43] Phil Pursel:
They do.In fact, in my backyard, I have a Fuji , a Granny Smith and a Pink Lady, all growing in the same hole. And it is now just one big bush. I just harvested all the Fuji apples off of it. Last week I got a ton of fruit, and it was just because I had, literally six inches away, I had another pollenizer, which is the Granny Smith and the Pink Lady, and they all work together. This is something that we like people to go ahead and try, is multiple plantings in a single hole in your backyard, especially if you have a smaller backyard. If you take a look at this list that we have, it's gonna go ahead and get you into the type that’s best for the different states.Texas, you can tell that it's low chill varieties. If you go into the Midwest, like Kansas or even Washington, Oregon, these tend to be, especially in the peaches and the nectarines, these are later flowering varieties, that will tolerate a late frost. When you look at this list, it gives you a idea of a good starting point and then use our website as a reference. Because each variety will tell you if it's a later blooming variety. And if you're in a more cold climate state, you want a variety that blooms later. If you're in California, Southern California, heck, you don't care if a variety blooms in February or January even, you're not gonna have the late frost. Gardening is all local, and we grow all the different varieties to make sure that they fit into everyone's profile.
[00:47:16] Farmer Fred:
If you go to the their homepage, davewilson.com, and you hover over the tab towards the top of the page that says “Home Garden”, there's a dropdown menu that includes where to buy Dave Wilson products,Upcoming events, the product catalog, all about backyard orchard culture. The fruit and nut harvest chart dates that we talked about, the YouTube channel, recent videos, and one of my favorite pages is the fruit variety recommendations because one question when people are perusing the rows and rows of bare root fruit trees and berries at the nursery, you might hear somebody mumble, “What does it taste like?” The Fruit variety recommendations page is where you go on the Dave Wilson website to find out what these fruits taste like and how they scored. Because from that link, you can go to the fruit tasting reports that have been compiled, I think, over 20 years or so with several panels of experts every year, and they basically rate the Dave Wilson varieties, and varieties they are considering growing, and judge them on all sorts of criteria. The way it looks, the acidity, the sugar, the flavor. Imagine being locked in a room for an entire day and you're tasting 25 different apple varieties. Well, the door isn’t really locked.
[00:48:31] Phil Pursel:
Yeah. So that's what we do because we wanna make sure that we get the right varieties into the backyards of the home gardener. This is the research that we've done in the past to make it easy for someone who is on the fence on what to do. Just you can always kind of cross reference our fruit tastes and winners or something that is low chill or something higher chill. Our website has a plethora of information on it . We want people to do a little research before you head on out to your independent garden center. That way when you go out there, you're not overwhelmed. You have a list of things you're looking for, and if you see it, now is the time to get it. And our bare root trees will be getting into the stores here at the first of the year and it really is the best time to get the best selection. Because once these stores are sold out, that's it until the following January.
[00:49:28] Farmer Fred:
And if you don't wanna pore through all eight pages of the fruit tasting report, they have another page, called the Dave Wilson Nursery “Top 50 Home Garden Tree Fruit Varieties”. And that takes into consideration of a lot of different factors. The number one fruit for rated taste is the Flavor King pluot.
[00:49:44] Phil Pursel:
Really, it goes back to the flavor. The Flavor King is like the Fuji apple. It's sometimes those old varieties. Ours are still the most favorful and to this day In the pluot line, it's been really tough to outdo the Flavor King and Dapple Dandy. Those were the original.
[00:50:03] Farmer Fred:
And there are other great varieties on there too. If you're looking for a tasty apricot variety, the Blenheim apricot is in the top 10. As is the weeping Santa Rosa plum, which in my mind has a better taste to it than the regular Santa Rosa plum. But being a Santa Rosa plum means you're gonna get a lot of plums.
[00:50:22] Phil Pursel:
And it's gonna be in a short period of time. Just understand that if you want to do canning, that's a great one to go with. I understand. So those are little things, little tidbits to understand. So when you're out there searching, the new fruit trees, Maybe you want the Santa Rosa plum. Maybe you want everything all at once, but if not, maybe consider a Pluerry.
[00:50:40] Farmer Fred:
Since I'm sitting here in barking dog studio staring out the window, I'm not only staring at the tree, I'm also enjoying the fruit from the tree right now, that's been made into a muffin. It is a fig tree. It's the Violette D’ Bordeaux Fig. and it is a tasty fig and it's a nice polite tree. It doesn't get too out of hand. And if you've never had fig muffins, hey, they're good.
[00:51:02] Phil Pursel:
Yeah. Also with your dehydrator, because its a smaller fig, that's one that really lends itself to being dehydrated. So you enjoy it all winter long.
[00:51:12] Farmer Fred:
And what's nice is you get two crops a year. You get a spring crop and a fall crop. You get a lot to choose from. Check out davewilson.com for information about growing fruit and nut trees. It is an encyclopedia for anybody who's interested in fruits and nuts, and you can find out a lot more at their website, davewilson.com. And be sure to check out all the videos they have on how to plant and grow all their delicious varieties of fruit and nut trees.
It's going to be a great fruit and nut year for 2023. It should be part of your gardening plans. Phil Pursel, Dave Wilson nursery. Thanks so much for hanging out and talking fruit with us today.
[00:51:49] Phil Pursel:
It’s been my pleasure, Fred.
[00:51:56] Farmer Fred:
The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays. Plus the newsletter podcast, that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, continues, also released on Fridays. Both are free and are brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our home page, Garden Basics dot net. , where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That’s Garden Basics dot net. or use the links in today’s show notes. And thank you so much for listening.