FRUIT TREE CARE TIPS by Tom Spellman, Dave Wilson Nursery | Floyd Zaiger Hybrid Fruit Trees

[Music] all right my name is Charles Malky biologist and planning expert with ivory organics will we grow coal plants and I'm honored and humbled to be here today with Tom Spellman of the Dave Wilson nursery Thank You troph good morning and welcome to our vinyl project that's fantastic you've invited me to see what you call the high chill apple orchard that's here in Irvine and before we do and I know a lot of the audience on the are very organics YouTube channel have a lot of questions and I thought that I can blend in an intro with talking about the apples so we're gonna do a separate segment on the apples that are here surrounding us but before we do I've got a hundred and one questions and I was hoping you have the answers of just general fruit tree care tips yeah I'm just glad it's not a hundred and two questions no yeah we're gonna do 101 okay so the first one I have is the Dave Wilson nursery and for those of you that are watching at home Dave Wilson nursery is the leading American distributor of deciduous fruit trees and berry fruit trees in addition to shade trees as well I know as its define and nut trees and then that traces with our major crops yeah and you told me just before the interview that this year you've had over 14 million trees were sold this year yeah for well for for our season 2020 which will be coming up this this winter we're looking at harvesting and marketing about 14 million trees that's mind-boggling knowing that there's gonna be 14 million additional trees brought into people's backyards as well as I know you also supply the commercial orchard growers as well absolutely most of our product goes to commercial agriculture you know people that are growing nuts or fruit for the the commercial fruit market farmers market growers and we do sell a fair amount of material into retail and wholesale nurseries for resale to the public all around the country that's awesome I'm most excited about the fact that I see you as the authority when it comes to fruit tree care you've how millions of people just looking at YouTube channel and that have absorbed the information that you've offered there and you teach I know in classrooms that I've attended over the last few years and it even traveled the world offering the education to growers and other garden enthusiasts my question to you is when did this all begin when did your passion for fruit tree care start wow that's that's an interesting question I started in in horticultural in the nursery industry when I was a teenager when I was literally 13 years old you know my first job was in a small retail nursery where in the city where I grew up in the late 1970s I had the opportunity to go to work for Armstrong nurseries who were based in Ontario California at the time they were one of the leading producers of fruit trees for backyard growers and and even some for the commercial market and that's where it hit me that I really really loved growing fruit that's great oh you know I started out in my late teens and early twenties growing a few trees and and it's like most things I've done it snowballs great I'm really feel fortunate and honored to be in the position that I'm in now working with you know one of the the world's leading producers of fruit trees and somebody that has access to some of the great hybrids and things that have been developed over the last hundred years so that you know this this is my dream job it's been again such an honor and a privilege to be standing right next to Tom Spellman having been watching you on YouTube for well over ten years and I know that one of the key words that I learned my from one of my most recent friends being Cameron to crawl me of the busy gardener or YouTube channel yeah and when we sat together about a month ago over and over and over and over again he kept on using the words backyard orchard culture and again Thomas Bowman being the one that teaches demonstrates and explains you know the value that backyard orchard culture can bring to the home gardener and the way that we should be growing that's different than the orchard style growing that we see as we drive around different parts of California well backyard orchard culture originated probably about 30 years ago and it was the brainchild of a couple of guys that I've been honored to work with over the years Dave Wilson nursery Craig miner and Edie Laveau and what they were seeing at the time was the same thing that most nurserymen were seeing there was a frustration there were there were a lot of information out there on how to grow fruit trees and most of it was information that had been published by the UC system and most of it told us what to do to be a commercial farmer sure and you know backyard growing as opposed to commercial farming are two polar opposites so you know the first thing they wanted to do was let people feel comfortable that what they do in their backyard doesn't have to coincide with what a commercial farmer would do we don't have the same expectations we don't have the same amount of space we don't have the same equipment or or labor and involved so they wanted to simplify it they wanted it to be something where people could feel comfortable growing a size managed peach tree or lemon tree or apricot tree in their backyard so that they could do most of their work from the ground and they're still getting a good crop of fruit a very usable very nice-size crop of fruit for the average family yeah that makes a lot of sense so another lesson you shared on again the Dave Wilson nursery YouTube channel about eight years ago in 2011 you mentioned towards the conclusion about getting back to your roots and I found that extremely powerful and motivational I want you to share that with our audience well you know absolutely if we go back three or four or five generations almost everybody was involved in agriculture almost everybody was a farmer whether it was just for their family or whether it was a commercial operation you know we go back to hundreds and thousands of years as people that developed in a farming culture well and it's like it or not you were there were a lot of it we you need to do that to feed your family right yeah so we've we've we've gone way beyond that at this point but there's still this sense there's still this feeling that we'd love to be out in nature we'd love to be out with our trees and our tomatoes and our flowers and all these things in our landscape I learned this years ago working in retail nurseries when when I was just a kid and I would I would see a lady in there in a dress in high heels and I'd say oh you're looking for anything in particular today well you know what I'm on my lunch break and I just don't want to sit in an office I want to get out here and I want to I want to smell these roses and I want to see these hummingbirds and look at these butterflies and and I heard this repetitively over the the next few years where people wanted to spend time out in nature they wanted to spend time in their landscape and I thought this is where it came from this is where it developed and we whether we whether we really think so or not we all have a passion for it we all have a love for the outdoors and we all have a love for what we can do on our own postage stamp or or large sized piece of property for sure it's it's it's a wonderful thing to be able to do that and you know it's it's soothing it's calming it's it's good for your nerves it's good for your health you get outside you get a little exercise and you know I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon and if you plant fruit trees you also reap the benefit of all those things you said the mental health the physical health and you know the air quality the relics relaxation offers but if you're planning a fruit tree or what else do you get a benefit well you know I mean of course you get something delicious to eat yes you know people tend to get discouraged sometimes with what they can buy in the grocery store but in all fairness to the commercial fruit industry they can't ship a tree right peach they can't ship a tree ripe apricot they they have to pick fruit when it's still firm and they can grade it and they can wash it and they can box it and they can cold store it and they can ship it out and they get their pants what they do for a living yeah but if you were to ship a tree ripe peach you'd be shipping mush the next day correct so they absolutely have to pick fruit before it's it's it's tree-ripened taking whether it be days and depending on the variety of fruit it can take weeks and by the time it finally lands on your kitchen table it could be also depending on I'm thinking about bananas avocados other things that are right way in advance yeah and some things being you know shipped from thousands of miles away on a big freighter and and you know having to be cold stored and and redistributed when they reach there for their final destinations and it takes time it's not it's not gonna get done overnight and that tree ripe fruit which is obviously gonna be the most delicious the most nutritious I always talk about when you pick it fresh off the tree how do you know from the Sun and reaping all the benefits that you know of health that it has but if it's harvested days weeks and months ago it's been dying since it was harvest and that value that that plant or fruit offers is being taken away then the value can get by growing it in your backyard orchard for example absolutely the best quality fruits always going to come from your backyard now we do you know we have a wonderful blossoming industry the farmers market industry whether it's farmers market events that take place weekly or whether it's small farmers market farm stands they have the ability to pick this morning and sell this afternoon or pick this afternoon and sell tomorrow yeah so they can pick much closer to tree-ripened fruit but in general if you want that flavor if you want that quality if you want something that where you know exactly how that's been grown you know if you use the pesticide on it you know what type of fertilizer you've used on it you know exactly how that fruit has been produced from the time it bloomed until the time you picked it and ate it and and that's important it's very important that's your nutrition that's your health that's your well-being I got a quote here from Hippocrates group that says let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food and at the end of day a lot of medicines I've graduated you know from next door are here and you know used to UC Irvine on a pre-med path way back when and I know that a lot of the drugs and the pharmaceuticals depend on the research that comes from trees plants fruits berries nuts and so forth and a lot of our nutrition have medicinal benefits and to get the maximum value you got to pick it fresh absolutely you know one of the presentations that I do is called antioxidants from your garden and I love that one because I can talk about all the high-value antioxidant fruits you know red pigment at orange pigmented you know anything from from plums and cherries and pomegranates and blueberries to to avocados and and all these things that are high nutritional value high phytonutrients high antioxidant values and and and you know those are things that we can grow all over the country and all anti-cancer absolutely absolutely that is as medicinal as you're gonna get that's fantastic another thing I want to share at least with our viewers as I've been researching and there's a lot of research now out there talking about the value that City trees bring to the community as well and cleaning up air pollution and cooling I mean just imagine like one shade tree in your backyard and the cooling effect that brings to your home forget about global you know global warming whether or not you believe in that or not but trees in fact cool the climate they actually bring moisture into the air and they bring a lot of value and they're saying that cities with more trees have residents that are living longer and not just living longer but living healthier than cities that have fewer trees and I'm just again so inspired by the fact that Dave Wilson nursery is introducing into the world 14 million new trees and you know bringing you know these delicious fruit and nut trees and you know and and those shade trees on that you make available into all of these backyards and helping to make this world a better place well you know what I sleep good at night I really do I my love what I do for a living I love the people that I that I work with and and the influence that I have on what happens in the market it's really important to me to feel good about what I do and I and I really really do you know trees clean the air trees you know produce a value to our lifestyle one of the worst things that's happened in the last decade was the recent drought that we went through in Southern California and there are many that say we're still in it and I'm not going to dispute that we've had a couple of decent years of rain and about eight years of minimal amounts of having fall so another thing you shared over and over and over again for as long as I've been watching you let's say over a decade you've always been focused on organic gardening organic pest control management and also minimal pest control man it's been I remember you discussing that as well as using organic fertilizers yeah can you share why well I you know I I'm an advocate I love organics and and honestly and I've said this many times before I can never claim to be a hundred percent organic but I'm perfectly comfortable being 90 percent or 95 percent organic and understanding how to use the other products that are not yeah so you know right up front I'm gonna tell you I'm not a hundred percent organic but I'm a huge organic advocate mulching is extremely important using friendly pests and disease control is fortunate interestingly enough on this project this is a was six years March first that these trees have been in the ground a while these trees have never been sprayed with anything for sure you mentioned something about fire blight I thought finally has work done physical removal that's a blade that's it so again no no's pest control and and disease management no so but right yeah I'm right now we were looking at the trees a little earlier seen on some of the fresh tips there's a there's a infestation of aphid yeah but there's also a beautiful hatch of ladybugs there you know what in the next two weeks they're gonna control all the aphid I don't hey with that and if there's a little bit of twisted foliage I can live with that I'm glad you mentioned it because I also like sharing the fact that you've got had a fit which are the prey and the ladybugs and the praying mantis are the Predators and if you eliminate the prey gonna lose the Predators to the beneficials insects that you'd want in your orchard in your home garden exactly that's great another lesson when it comes to fruit tree care is relating to potted trees versus in-ground trees what is the rule in regards to like what's best or what should we you know bear in mind when it comes to you know putting our fruit tree or deciding you know what what trees should be in pots versus in ground well there's several different schools of thought on that and and again everything we're talking about today is is my philosophy and you know kind of a Dave Wilson nursery philosophy on on what we should do in our backyards yeah potted the potted fruit trees are huge and they're as real estate prices become more expensive and lot size goes down and down and down you know there aren't very many new homes being sold with a 10,000 square-foot backyard anymore for sure so a lot of people are turning to container culture and I think that's wonderful we're we're growing varieties that are adaptable to container culture now we're doing a lot more dwarf type material we're doing a lot more bush type fruits and things that can be grown in containers I think one of the one of the most important considerations is drainage you've got to have good drainage you've got to make sure that you can run that water through and out so there's going to be a lot more nutrient requirements for container grown plants because as they're irrigated and losing that in that moisture they're also leeching nutrients out so lightly and frequently as far as the fertilizing whereas that's keys contrary to what we would do in the ground yeah so in the ground I know in general I think you've fertilized every two to three months right but for a container monthly probably monthly for about eight or nine months out of the year but lighter but much much lighter we're talking tablespoon that's very helpful yeah pounds so less more frequent because again all of that is just leaching out of the container exact reverse is an inground it would remain in the ground it's going to stay there makes I think the other thing that's really important to consider is if we go down to a retail nursery and we want to buy a 15 gallon size oak tree well I'm gonna go and look at a 15 gallon size oak tree and a in a container this big around and about that deep and the trees going to be 8 or 9 feet tall with a well-developed head up on the top yeah and that is a nursery tree that is a tree that is in that container for a limited amount of time that tree is meant to be bought delivered and planted in a landscape it's not meant to grow in that container for the next 3 or 5 or 10 years yeah so if we want to grow for longevity if we want to grow fruit trees or fruiting bushes in our landscape for longevity in containers you want to maintain a balance between the overall structure of the plant and the root zone you're giving it to grow in makes so light frequent prunings also aid that and you know if I've got a sa 1/2 wine barrel which I grow lots of material in half wine barrels dwarf citrus blueberries dwarf peaches and nectarines things along those lines about how many gallons are you talking it's about thirty five gallon capacity or thirty gallon capacity okay so another thing that Dave Wilson and it was one of the first people that did the education on the Dave Wilson nursery YouTube channel what was his name again ed live Oh was was the the you know the guy who did all the early videos so was Ed libel that was painting some trees within his orchard and the concept in gardening is known as whitewashing and I go to garden center after garden center nursery after nursery teaching about I buy organic products and when I say the word whitewashing I can tell you that ninety to ninety nine percent of the staff not a hundred percent of the south I've never heard the word and when I mentioned painted trees they're like so scratching their head they're like why paint a tree can you explain whitewashing and why and I'm noticing all of the apples that are here behind us and even though avocados that are behind the apples are all whitewashed absolutely why is everything painted well you know this is this is our vine California it's in it's in the heart of Orange County it's not a really harsh climate however we had a hundred and seventeen degrees here last summer correct right after fourth of July and it did some damage to some trees but these trees came through with flying colors there was no structural damage there was no wood damage it was no sunburn damage because we whitewash these trees from the first time they went in the ground we've used conventional white washes we've used the ivy organics product over the last couple of years that's fantastic and the main reasons are to prevent against physical stress that Sun is going to promote a large amount of physical stress in a short period of time especially when we get into a temperature extremes you know 100 degrees down here is unusual 117 was unprecedented yeah so we had literally hundreds of thousands of trees in Southern California that were damaged by that heat spike so you're you're taking the pressure off the tree you're allowing the tree to maintain itself and not be affected by the effects of that hot afternoon Sun yeah and that's the most important part to protect from on the east side of the tree you're not gonna get any sun damage on the north side of the tree the third scenario sun damage Brooke it's all this Southwest base that's where the hottest part of the afternoon Sun is and that's where the damage is gonna come that's the side that needs the most protection the side that needs the most protection so from the direction we're facing looking at these trees you can see they're clearly whitewashed on that Southwest face that's great so why washing predominantly the goal within this orchard is protection during the summer extremes protection against the summer extremes you know also it's protection against some winter extremes - very cold dry wind I wanted you to say that you we had the issues here in Southern California are we just talking about just nationally across the country we don't have as bad an issue with winters stress in Southern California as other parts of the country do yeah so I think it would be more important to protect in in Salt Lake City Utah and Reno Nevada and you know some of the areas in the Midwest and on the East Coast against winter time extremes okay but we certainly get the summertime extremes and the same technique and the same products are gonna prevent against damage from both that's fantastic and that winter extreme is known as Sun scald Sun skull so that's that winter nighttime low freezing daytime warm temperatures and just guarding and protecting the planet against those fluctuations and temperatures during the winter months yeah and you know the most important consideration here is most people don't realize how important whitewashing is until after the damage is done can you tell us about like when you buy a plant or like whip-like when would you whitewash a plant if you if you go to a wholesale grower of trees so I you know I go and look at citrus trees or avocado trees or peach trees at a wholesale nursery they're running rows and rows and rows of trees well those rows usually run north-south and each one of those rows is shading the row behind it or the trees behind it so you've got this this self-shading going on and at the wholesale level a lot of retailers have shade structures there they're doing some protection in the retail nursery so you go to the retail nursery and you buy a 5-gallon avocado tree and you take it home and you plant it out in an area where there's no shade it's out in the middle of your second want to give an avocado tree some room yeah so you're not planning in an area where it's getting shade and now that tree that's been shaded for its entire life is out in the wide open spaces so the first thing that's going to happen and it can happen within a day is you're gonna get sun damage and Sun scald on that tree and that damage is irreparable you're not gonna fix that yeah once the scar is there the scar is gonna be there for the life of the tree and the plants until over it oftentimes it can kill the tree yeah or it's doing physical stress damage that's going to limit the trees ability for uptake of nutrients and in the main trunk yeah so the first thing you want to do when you take a tree home you dig your hole you plant your tree you get it reached ached and resituated and you get it whitewashed that's gonna that's gonna protect against that that physical stress damage from day one that's great another lesson you've discussed over and over and over again and I know that even before all of the thinner is behind us Master Gardeners are thinning these apples you talk about summer pruning mm-hmm and I think that also ties in with whitewashing as well yes yes explain summer pruning when would you do it would you do it while there is fruit on the tree or is it something that follows harvest or is this something you do monthly explain okay so what is summer pruning first of all one one of the main concepts of a backyard orchard culture is size control your trees so they're manageable for you I'm never gonna tell anybody how big their trees should be but for me a deciduous tree like a peach or a plum or a nectarine or an apricot that where the fruit ripens up over a short period of time two weeks to four weeks yeah I'm not climbing 15 feet to pick that fruit anymore I want that tree right here I want it size managed so that I can reach that fruit from the ground I can go out and thin I can go out and harvest I can go out and prune and do everything from standing on the ground I don't want to climb 15 feet to pick fruit anymore so taking that into consideration trees are gonna grow out through the season a nice healthy tree can easily grow out six eight maybe ten feet yeah during the season and I've already chosen my size my first two or three years are dedicated to growing the tree to that manageable size from that point on anything above my chosen size is never going to be production wood on that tree my production structure is always going to be like right here it's gonna be right down here where I can reach it so that growth that comes out in the spring and early summer and goes well beyond the manage size for me I can come in in in August I can come in in September I can come in in the 1st of October and I can remove all that growth and then allow the tree to put out one more little flush of growth and go dormant naturally so it's almost a monthly process of pruning it can be done several times through the summer it can be done a little bit at a time good to know there are certainly varieties that I don't do much summer pruning on but in general the varieties that ripen earlier in the season that have a short hang time on the tree those are all being maintained at 7 to 8 feet and anything above that gets cut out but there's a risk of also burn right like we're going into 117 degree day let's say or even 100 whatever absolutely but now that you've thinned it you've now allowed more light into what was a shady canopy that's right so Debbie ceases sun damage and in those situations yes absolutely so what you want to do at that point is you want to consider whitewash again okay you want it you want to stand back and look at that tree from the southwest and you want to see where you've opened up exposure to some of those branches yeah and with some things it's more important than others you know if you've got a big peach tree that's pretty dense headed you're probably not going to open up much growth to sun damage but if you have an avocado tree or something that were where it's very susceptible to sunburn damage and you've exposed some of that fresh green bark you want to get that whitewash right away so race so I remember from my biology days back at University of California Irvine and before that even in high school mm-hmm learning about the father of genetics Gregor Mendel and he did a variety of experiments hybridizing for example peas yellow and green peas and and watching to see the blended learning dominant recessive genes but there's an individual you've been working with an interviewing from what I see about ten years but maybe it digs deeper but there's an individual who is the most prolific stone fruit breeder of the modern era and that is Floyd Zagar or and also known as Ziggler genetics yes absolutely explain a little bit about Floyd and his accomplishments well Floyd Zagar is an amazing man and Floyd Zagar is now in his 90s oh wow he still is out in his orchard pretty much every day for part of the day and it's his passion he's been a been a tree breeder for sixty plus years so he's working with sixty years worth of genetic material his family's all involved in the business and and what they really are I think genetics genetics is really kind of the wrong word they call theirselves ager genetics but what they are is hybridize errs yeah they and they actually you know Floyd's agar goes back just a couple of generations from Luther Burbank who was one of the early California hybridize errs a man by the name of Floyd Anderson worked with Luther Burbank and then Floyd's agar worked with Floyd Anders I'm assuming when you look at things like the Santa Rosa plum or the russet potato yeah those are things that were developed by Luther Burbank oh wow and and there are literally dozens if not hundreds of varieties out there that have attribute back to Luther Burbank so Floyd's agar had you know direct contact with a man that worked with and working directly with them and learning from him and taking that passion and second generation away from Luther Burbank and what Floyd's ager decided 60 plus years ago to concentrate on was the prunus family so peach plum nectarine apricot almonds cherries and cherries and he's come up with inner specifics using all of those those varieties over the years and like I said he's a hybridize er so what he does is he looks for a maternal tree this is going to be a parent where I'm gonna grow seed and he will put that tree in isolation and he will take pollen from another variety that has an attribute he's looking to breed in maybe it's an early ripening maybe it's a strong bloom character maybe it's a open branch structure a disease resistance any one of a number of different things and he'll take pollen from that tree and pollen eyes the maternal tree so from from a father to a mother yeah and then he grows on that seed or that fruit to maturity harvest the seed and then the seed is lined out and germinated and evaluated over the next decade or more to come up with varieties so he'll he'll he'll let those varieties come into fruit and he'll evaluate that fruit does it have the flower character that I want does it have the the late season or the early season or the color or the freestone character and and he'll evaluate hundreds of these crosses in fact he does he and his family do about 60 to 70 thousand interspecific crosses every year so I bird izing between plum and apricot hybridizing between plum and cherry plum and nectarine all these different things sixty thousand crosses a year Wow and those all go into at least a four year evaluation program so at any time he's got a quarter of a million trees in the ground that he's able to pull material from for re-evaluation so it goes into a secondary evaluation program where it's evaluated for eight or ten more years to make sure that it's what he wants they can do pollenization trials they can do fruit evaluations they can try it in different areas around the country to see what its adaptability czar yeah and at that point they'll they'll name it they'll patent it and they'll release it so when you when you buy an apron or you buy a pluot or you buy a nectar plum those are all progeny that have come out of zagraz program yeah you're mentioning I mentioned Cameron with the busy gardener YouTube channel when I want to on his property the first tree that caught my eye was a Zager fruit tree known as the you know want to make sure I pronounce this right the spice Zee nectar plum not so and I'm guessing it kind of has the characteristics of a purple plum yes and a nectarine and it the fruit looks more nectarine ish but the leaves are all purple reddish and it just stands out above and beyond any and every other tree in his property it's it's a spectacular specimen both ornamentally and an immense reproduction yeah I heard it's spectacular delicious amazing piece of fruit it's a beautiful semi double pink bloom that lasts for at least a month it's a bright red foliage although it's not a plum foliage it looks more like a peach nectarine type foliage that elongated foliage but it's a bright red color it's just a spectacular tree and the fruit is second to none it's a big fruit it's a dark red exterior it's a modeled white and red interior it's a free stone and it has an absolutely delicious flavor in my opinion and a lot of people agree with me it's one of the most important interspecific varieties that's been established and developed and introduced in the last 30 years well I just love it I think it's so imagine that of all of the Ziegler fruit trees we're talking about thousands and thousands like quarter-million half-a-million like whatever number of trees that they've grown this is one of his prides and joys absolutely yeah that's great so the Spy's e nectar plum another one I found that was quite unique and just I'm gonna put the name of this on the screen it's called a pea column which is if you break down the words the pea is the peach and the cod is the apricot and the UM is the plums yeah we've got three flavours are fruit they can enjoy on one fruit absolutely how amazing is that so most of his hybrids that he's done over the years when we say inner specific it just means that they're a combination of at least two different species same genus Prunus different species within that genus but oftentimes if you if I were to go back to Luther Burbank and I can look at say Luther Burbank Splunk on Luther Burbank was the first one that actually accomplished a hybrid between plum and apricot and at that time nobody thought he could actually do it in fact there were people that said it was a was a fraud and that he never actually did it but you know genetic evaluation over the years approved that he absolutely did yeah so Zagar has has taken the plumcot and he's he's an enhanced it again so he might come in with apricot he might come in with cherry you might come in with something else and and hybridize again so the plumcot just a cross between an apricot and a plum is what we would call an f1 hybrid it's been hybridized one time well some of the varieties that zagar's releasing now our f5 f6 f7 f10 so I kinda generation a generation so to me that's that's where the that's where time comes into play you know you can't it's gonna take you if you did it every year for ten years that's that's a pretty big investment and what he's doing is he's doing across evaluating that cross and then crossing again so he some of these varieties that are if it's an f6 hybrid it may have taken him 30 years or 40 years to come up with different hybrids that are in that cross that's amazing something I want to emphasize as well and you use the word hybridization and I want people to understand that hybridization is as natural as taking a red apple and a green apple and just affected 30 together in the orchard the seeds within it will cross pollinate each other creating seeds that are now genetically different than the parents yeah and when you plant those seeds you may still have red apples and green apples just like Gregor Mendel when you did those peas with the yellow and green peas to create other variations in color now you can have an apple that maybe pink taking on the characteristics of the red and blending it with the green or stripes or who knows what other variations and as we're gonna talk about apples in our second segment there's new varieties of apples being created every single year through the simple process of hybridization being very different and not GMO genetically modified where a scientist is sitting in a lab and pulling genetics out of an animal and inserting those into a plant or doing something you know more radical in nature than something that would otherwise happen naturally by just simply the wind carrying pollen from one tree to the next exactly hybridization is essentially a natural process if I were to find in nature a plum and an apricot growing side-by-side naturally they that the seed of either one of those could be a hybrid of both because they're related I mean back in time there was just one tree but all of these varieties exist so zagar's philosophy is to do calculated crosses you know they're looking for improving a strain so they're looking for breeding the best characteristics of one into the best characteristics of another and then evaluating the the the progeny for those characteristics so they do they have time and they have numbers a lot of time a lot of stuff I saw your videos when you've tortoise properties and it's mind-boggling yeah the time energy effort that goes into creating exactly one of simply all they're doing is taking pollen from one pollen izing another not allowing anything else to taint that that pollenization so not allowing other bee activity or other varieties to come in contact with it and then growing on the seeds from that pollen ice tree to make sure that the the characteristics they were looking for were achieved so I know we talked about a few Ziglar varieties of these hybridized fruits of the thousands that exist which ones are your personal favorite Wow for what month you know I mean I I have you want to give a review all the time I mean you know some of the some of the early varieties that that were using now are some of his early peach crosses may pride Eva's pride mid pride wonderful low chill adaptable peaches for Southern California great Cuomo's so hybridized those are actually hybrids between peach and peach peach and peach okay some of my favorites would actually be the cherry plumps the new cherry plum hybrids that they call blue airy for such a cherry are their small plum type fruits that have a cherry characteristic and his original intent in breeding plum and cherry together was to extend out the cherry season we have lots of early cherry varieties but by putting some plum parentage in there we can now extend the cherry season to later in the season that's fantastic and and some of the the hybrids that have come out of that program one variety in particular that's very early in the season in fact they're ripe right now there's a variety called sweet tree and it's about the size of a ping-pong ball it's a beautiful pinkish red color with a with an Amber blushed pink interior and it's just like eating a little piece of candy it's absolutely delicious but you know good sugar to acid balance and very very small seed and and you know people oh it's so small you know there's not gonna be any commercial interest well you know what I'll eat three or four of them and I'm just as happy with it yeah so yeah maybe there's not a whole lot of commercial interest but from a home growers point of view we're looking for flavor and this is a spectacular variety spicy the one you mentioned I absolutely one of my favorites in that program and now some even later varieties are coming on they're doing a lot of breeding for late character now so we're looking at cherry plums and and plum apricot hybrid varieties and things like that that are that are ripening up well into October Wow so you know again extending the season he's looking for four attributes that'll do something that will benefit not only the home gardener but the produce industry as well that's great so the Zeiger fruit hybrids are available at Dave Wilson nursery yes Dave Dave Wilson right now has let's say first right of refusal for introduction of Zagar varieties then there are very few that we would refuse okay so you know we're looking at at bringing vote in Floyds acres the hybridize er Dave Wilson is the propagate well I know you guys I've seen in some of the education that's out there you guys are out there sampling tasting the food and saying we want this right I think you're the ones that are like firsthand saying America and the world needs this fruit absolutely and and what we do with Zagar is every Wednesday morning through fruit season a group of fruit enthusiasts gather at zagar's whether they're and this is these are people from around the world they come from they come from Europe they come from South Africa they come from Spain they come from Central and South America Wow to meet up in Modesto California and walk the savior's orchard and evaluate what's ripe that week that's fantastic starts in at the end of April or early May and it goes until October Wow every Wednesday morning there may there might be 25 30 40 50 people there that are evaluating these varieties for fruit character and you know some of them may say okay I'm in South Africa I need a variety for the first week in July yeah so first week in July they come and meet up at zagar's and go on the Wednesday tour and you know what I like that one we need to grow this one so you know so they think it's fair buzzing horticulturalists and fruit growers and marketers and packers from all over the world every week during fruit season that's phantoms at for me I've attended hundreds of Xavier tours on Wednesday that's like a trip to Disneyland I mean it is so much fun to be able to go through and sample 25 or 30 or 35 fruit on a Wednesday morning and look at all these different characteristics and all these different colors and sizes and and and fruit types it's really an honor to be able to do that so these Zagar fruit trees in addition to all of the dave wilson fruit trees can be found at Dave Wilson nursery calm and there they have a list of all of the retailers surrounding wherever it is you may be in the country you can find that garden center and have them special order some of these fruit trees that are on you know on that list that you'll find that Dave Lister nursery makes available absolutely are we're really proud of our website you know we've spent a lot of time and effort on our website I personally feel it's the most comprehensive website for for fruit tree information in the world yeah the information is tons of tips and tricks on all the questions you may have that are outlined by categories yeah with all the all the answers you'd want for the specific videos and articles and the websites actually broken up into three sections there's a commercial section for commercial growers there's a nursery section for retail and wholesale nursery professionals and there's what we call the home garden section the home garden section is by far the most important section for home growing or automation yeah all the varieties are there all the videos are posted there all the articles are posted there you can contact the nurseries that that resell our product so if I was in Phoenix Arizona and I wanted a nursery that sold gold kist apricot I can go on the website and put in either Phoenix Arizona or I can put in gold kist apricot a list of everybody that markets it'll come up so it's very user friendly and very informational and and I just couldn't be beer with the amount of time and effort that we put into it for the reward that we're getting from it for sure another topic I want to touch upon is mulch and I know that you've been an advocate of mulch for a very long time yes and as this people you mentioned that come around the world to California to learn all of the products that Dave Wilson makes available in the zeiger genetics you too have got the privilege of traveling the world as well and learning about how do trees grow in their native habitat I remember you sharing a story a couple years ago about avocado trees when you visited somewhere outside the United States where were you and and if you can share that experience about mulch well we uh we did a - or years ago with a group of California avocado nurserymen that went to southern Mexico Panama Canal Zone Costa Rica Guatemala and we were able to tour a couple of natural avocado forests and first of all they were spectacular I mean these these these trees were just giant I mean they were the trunks some of the trunks were bigger than you and I could reach hands around the trunks and when you walked out into a natural avocado for us you sunk up to your knees and the leaf litter that had come off the horns and you could peel that leaf litter away down to where that where the decomposition met the soil and there was this huge mass of white fleshy roots growing out of the soil and up into that decomposing matter and that's where they were taking their their moisture and that's where they were up taking their nutrients from and you know that that when I saw that and and I started to look at situations here in California forest situations where this happens naturally it only it makes perfect sense you know you know mulch does so many important things for us keeping the ground cooler making better use of our irrigation water bringing back the beneficial bioactivity mycorrhizal activity things that allow trees to grow or any type of plant in a much more natural form so I as soon as I saw that and this is many years ago I became a huge advocate of mulching so you can see this project as well mulch it's about 12 inches thick around these trees leaving a little space around the trunk and we recommend that although this is a big chunky Airy mulch that wood that breathes well it's not like a real fine particulate that would compress and is it a tree they're using this mulch from Morris which is recycled green waste from from the local backyard Orange County refuse people sawed it and the nice thing about that is you've got the biodiversity it's not all redwood it's not all eucalyptus it's not all olive or one product and that's the value it's getting operation of dozens of different organic products in here so you've got some that break down fast some of the break down slow you've got little chunks you've got big chunks so you get all that that benefit and activity on a multi like this for about two years and you've kept the mulch away from the trees I noticed that you've got I don't know how many inches would you say around the trees we have also kept it away if you want explain why well we like to leave about a 12 inch buffer between the mulch and the tree that way you know the graft union isn't covered and you're not promoting a crown rod or a collar rot and you know in a lot of my personal landscape all mulch right up to the trunk of the tree but I'm using the biggest heaviest chunky as mulch I can get so it lays at all different angles and directions and it and it still breathes very well but the predominant reason for keeping them all to off the trunk is to avoid I think a phenomenon known as stem rot right exactly the malt absorbs a lot of water as does bark of the tree and you just don't want those two just being continuously well you're allowing that that bark that graft union that root stock to stay dry and not be wet all the time got it so another important lesson is backyard orchard culture and I know we touched upon it at the beginning but can you share a little bit about more I mean you said it was 30 years ago I guess with this whole concept of growing trees for the backyard home gardener where we've got limited space myself included I've got 700 and most viewers don't know this 700 square feet of dirt in my backyard there's a lot of hardscaping you know and gazebos and truer pathways that all concrete my dirt area again is 700 square feet and within it I've got about 22:25 fruit trees and implementing the concept of hopefully what backyard orchard culture is how would you define backyard orchard culture well first of all 700 square feet in 20 trees you're the perfect example you've done it you've accomplished it you've got a situation where you're you know you're growing small size managed trees in a limited area you've got successive ripening varieties that you're harvesting you're making the most out of your space and that's really what backyard orchard culture is it's it's I could define it as four individual concepts so the first concept is simple size manager trees so they're manageable for you and I'm not again I'm not telling anybody how big their trees should be yeah I'm saying choose a manageable size and be willing to accept the responsibility of keeping your trees managed at that size number two successive ripening you know I don't want to plant four peach trees that all ripen at the same time yeah I want one that ripens in early May I want to run one that ripens in late May I want one that's early June I want one that's late June so that I can have successive ripening fruit all through the season and especially here in Southern California I mean some areas would be limited to four to six months worth of a harvest season yeah but here in Southern California we have a 12 month harvest season between citrus and subtropical zand avocados and stone fruits and palm fruits and and brine fruits and bush fruits we can harvest I can harvest out of my backyard every day of the year that's right and that is an absolutely wonderful concept so successive ripening is a very important concept not too much of anything okay but just enough of a successive group of things okay the third most important concept would be understanding your microclimate you know you want to know what's going to be adaptable to your area you want to know what varieties are gonna are going to grow well for you and that's where you want to concentrate grow what you like and what you'll use so you know it doesn't make any sense to grow something if you don't feel you have a use for it so grow varieties that you like and you'll use understand your microclimate understand your drainage your exposures what your weather is going to be like throughout the season and that allows you the ability to go in and select the right varieties on the right root stocks that are adaptable to your climate that just when you're talking about microclimate learning your plants learning in trees learning what works best I remember in another educational lesson you shared a few years ago you said something about even for some of your successful plantings you sometimes remove them to make way for something you think might be better you threw out a percentage what percent of trees in your garden would you say you toss to make way for the new within your in any given year twenty percent of the trees in my landscape are on the chopping block doesn't mean I'm gonna take out 20 percent but if I have enough new varieties to put in yeah I'll be top grafting some over I'll be taking some out and putting in new things and and I think 20% is a good number to experiment with yeah 20 percent allows me to grow 80 percent tried-and-true varieties varieties that I know I'm gonna be able to I'm gonna be able to get mid pride peach every year I'm gonna be able to get flavor delight a priam every year I'm gonna get red Fuji apple every year so those are tried-and-true varieties that I would never consider removing and not it and and you know again I lose trees I've lost dozens of trees over the last thirty years in in my landscape to two issues I'm you know I'm I'm not perfect I'm not the one that keeps everything maintained and sprayed like I should all the time just like this orchard never been sprayed that's fantastic years so but I'm okay to lose a tree you know people I've had people oh you know I had this I had this apricot tree for ten years and I lost it I'm just heartbroken that's an opportunity it's an opportunity opportunity to put in something else that you like and and try something different if you really like that variety put the same variety back in sure but there you know there's always an opportunity to upgrade try something new and quite frankly I want to try new things all the time so about that twenty percent of the material that rotates through I'm perfectly comfortable now I always teach people keep on trying and the goal with each growing season is to learn from your mistakes last year yep to help make this your but best growing season and I know no matter what your age is and as long as you're continuously involved in growing you're gonna see yourself grow and your achievements around you continuously improve so do keep on adding with the 20% that are on the chopping block that creates an opportunity to now bring more varieties I know with my background that's completely planted out if I see see something I love that means something else that may be fruitful on my property has to come out to make way for you know this new variety that I just want yeah so and it's going to happen I know that we didn't do a hundred and one questions but we did a lot yeah and I know I'm gonna be sitting with Tom Spellman next month so if you have any additional questions feel free to write me in the comments and I'll continue building a curriculum around real questions and other questions hopefully that'll come up in discussions with them if you've enjoyed this educational moment brought to you by every organic be sure to give us a thumbs up and also don't forget to subscribe and hit that push bell notification to get informed of these educational moments as soon as they become made available I'm also going to be putting the links to the Dave Wilson nursery as well so you can like and subscribe and follow the over 100 educational videos that also made available where Tom Spellman is the primary educator you'll find they're covering a lot of the lessons that we just discussed you can see them in practice in the orchard applying a lot of these techniques and concepts as well as always want to encourage you to also keep growing with Aubrey organics and wishing you all happy gardening and just as a teaser about a month from today Charles is going to be up in Northern California with me at the Dave Wilson nursery test site and we're gonna get to review all of the backyard orchard culture procedures that we talked about today plus Charles you're gonna get some to eat some fantastic fruit I'm gonna be losing a lot of sleep until that day and thank you so much Tom thank you for the opportunity [Music] you

Channel: IV Organic

Views: 26,079

Rating: 4.8493152 out of 5

Keywords: ivorganic, IV Organics, Tom Spellman, spellman, Dave wilson nursery, https://www.davewilson.com/, DaveWilson.com, Floyd Zaiger, Zaiger Genetics, luther burbank, hybrid fruit trees, fruit tree care tips, fruit tree care, deciduous fruit tree, nut tree, nut trees, Spice Zee NectaPlum, pluot, peacotum, pluerry, cherry tree, plum tree, apricot tree, container fruit trees, peach tree, backyard orchard culture, the busy gardener, cameron akrami, painting fruit trees, white wash

Id: hK4GE37cxgc

Length: 53min 38sec (3218 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 29 2019