from stocking to learning how to grow

The Art and Science of Fruit Culture, Day 1
March 21, 2011
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 For the past 3 1/2 years, right up until I came to MUM, I worked in the Produce Department of a vegetarian, non-GMO, worker-owned grocery cooperative called Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, California. The produce section was mostly all organic, with the exception of jicama, and wild cultivated items like chantrelles and huckleberries. When I first began working there, of course I had an interest in produce, but I didn't really know much. I didn't know about kales or chards, and though I knew vaguely that fruits and vegetables had seasons, I was not consciously aware what the seasons were and what produce characterized which season.

I can say a lot more about my experiences at Rainbow (when I began, I could barely lift an apple box; from Day 1, I remained quite accident-prone; and I developed a love of driving forklift machinery), but what I would like to say here is that I left Rainbow with what I feel like a decent knowledge of organic produce, at least on the distribution and retail side of the industry--in California and the West Coast to some degree. I say "decent" knowledge because there is way way way, so so so much to know about produce. I believe that this knowledge comes in time and experience, through lots of practice and repetition. I learned at Rainbow that there is a difference of working with produce for 3 years, versus 15, 25, or 30 years.

Sitting in class on the first day of The Art & Science of Fruit Culture with Jeff Olsen, I did not have any expectations of what I was about to start learning. The first day was an overview of the entire class, and I feel like Jeff had a general sense of what he wanted to say, but when we (the students) would show interest in a topic, Jeff used those points of interest to dive us deeper into the humongous world of horticulture. We began learning the true definition of "seedling" and how pomology is based on vegetative propagation, and not from growing fruit trees directly from seeds.

A fruit tree in Davis, CA, c. 2005

Vegetative propagation of fruit trees is the propagation of fruit trees by grafting hard or soft wood cuttings onto pre-existing rootstock. A seedling is not a baby-tree (but it could be); it is a tree grown directly from a seed. But, for some reason, trees grown directly from seeds produce unreliable results. This is why a grower takes a cutting from a desirable tree and grafts it to a preferred variety of rootstock. Because the whole is contained in the parts, (a principle of the Science of Creative Intelligence), a grafted limb from a desirable tree will produce another desirable tree of same qualities.

We dove right into a lot of information about pruning and training a tree to grow in an optimal formation--a process that begins as the tree grows from its grafted beginning to a juvenile and on as it matures into an adult tree. We learned some pruning terms (heading and thinning) and the degrees of branch crotch angle that facilitates the most strength and best fruiting (45 to 60 degrees). We put our knowledge to immediate use as Jeff took advantage of the beautiful weather to take us outside to give us a hands-on pruning lesson on neighboring Rhodes pear trees outside our classroom in the Sustainable Living building.

I am excited to learn about trees. I loved learning more about them today, and I am excited to learn about the nature of the beings that have provided fruit for me to eat during my life here on Earth. For the past few years, I have taken many pieces of fruit out of boxes and placed them onto shelves for Rainbow's customers in San Francisco to buy and now I get to learn how the fruit got into those boxes. If what we like to talk about here at MUM is 'total knowledge,' the knowledge of pomology is entering my life to create a more complete picture in my own personal understanding of fruit.