Orchard People

[00:00:00] Introduction and the Best Fruit Tree Question
Susan: People often ask me
"what's the best fruit tree to grow?"
And it's a question that I explore in a new book
I'm writing on fruit tree garden design.
The problem is there isn't one simple answer. It really depends on what your needs are and where you live, because a great fruit tree for a warm climate could be very different from a great fruit tree cultivar for a colder climate.
[00:00:25] Meet James Kaechele from the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation
Susan: So that's why I'm really so excited about today's guest. It's James Kaechele.
He's a program arborist with the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, and this is a nonprofit that plants orchards across the United States and around the world.
That's why he's the perfect person to help us think about this question in an empowering way.
So James, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
James: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:53] Understanding the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation
Susan: Can you give me a little bit of background about the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation? What is it?
James: Sure. So
the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation is a nonprofit organization that really wants to plant orchards in communities where the fruit is going to be put best to use feeding people.
Susan: So essentially it's community orchards. It's not for professional organizations or home growers, or people pay who pay for your services.
James: That's right.
We plant fruit tree orchards in all sorts of locations.
It could be at a food pantry,
could be at a school,
could be at a community garden.
Susan: And so how do people apply? How do they get your attention?
James: So we have been around now, for a little over 20 years.
And we have on our website an application.
And folks can apply for an orchard in their community.

Susan: How many orchards would you plant in any given year, and how many have you planted in the past 20?
James: We, on average, have about a hundred planting events a year. So that is at least a couple a week moving through the whole year, and over 20 years, it's a lot.
Susan: Do you just have a number of trees that you always use? Oh, I always do Liberty apple trees and Reliance peaches everywhere I go. How do you decide which are the best fruit trees for any given location?
James: I do have my personal favorites. But, I always start off by asking people what is the fruit that your community enjoys eating?
Because we could grow the most beautiful peach, and if nobody's familiar with that, it's not gonna be helpful to them. So I always start with what do you want to eat? What is your community familiar with? And what can't you get maybe at the grocery store or what's hard to get?
These are the sort of probing questions even before I get to site evaluation, just to take the temperature on folks and see where are your interests. Maybe is there some cultural connection? Do you have a bunch of folks who really use lime a lot in their cuisine? Do you have other things like that? Is there a history of pecans being grown and harvested?
We love to work within those existing systems.
Susan: It's so interesting that you say that because in our park, the community orchard that I'm involved in, we have beautiful plum trees and they can be very productive. But there is somebody who comes and harvests all the plums while they're still unripe, while they're green.
James: Wow.
Susan: And we could not figure this out.
What are they doing with these green plums? We found out that there is a community that uses them for some sort of fermented plum dish. And this is a cultural delicacy. So one day, we caught them actually harvesting the fruit and we tried to explain. We said, Hey, this is a community orchard and please leave some fruit for the community so we can do a harvest and share it with the children.
And they said, oh, but you don't understand. Getting these green plums, it's very expensive if we go to the store. So they would rather get them for free in our orchard park. Anyways, it's a problem that we haven't yet solved, but it does reflect on what you're saying that there are different preferences.
I take it nobody, yet, has said that they're interested in unripe green plums.
James: I haven't gotten that one yet.
Susan: Not yet. Okay. So how wildly different are the needs of different communities? I would think there's only a small selection, but do you get very different answers from different communities?
[00:04:55] The Importance of Staggering the Harvest
James: I think people's motivations sometimes are different even though they end up at the same point.
So for example,
at schools, often we hear, We wanna make sure that in our orchard it's something that is going to be harvested while the school is in session, right?
So maybe that's looking at something early in the season and something late in the season, very early spring before school lets out, or, boom, September.
So maybe that skews us to an apple that's coming later on in the fall.
Susan: That is such a good insight and that's a mistake that many people could make so easily if you don't have the experience of doing a planting. I call that staggering the harvest, right?
James: Yeah.
Susan: Where you're really thinking in advance.
I know that there's an organization here in Toronto called, Not Far From the Tree, and they harvest fruit trees in the community and they talk about this term fruit fatigue. Because sometimes there's one month, let's say you planted three apple trees in your backyard and they're big trees and they all produce in the same month.
They all produce in September. So in September you're running around trying to figure out to give away the apples, can them, or do something with them. After that and before that, there's nothing. So with staggering the harvest, you'll be thinking, okay, is there an early season apple? If you're thinking in advance, what's the best tree for me to get for my backyard?
You can have an early apple that maybe ripens in late August, and then an a September apple and then an October apple, and therefore you're not throwing away a lot of good fruit or giving it away. You're pre-planning and thinking ahead. And I think that's such an important thing. But definitely with schools.
Yeah. If all the fruit is ripening in July and August, who's gonna enjoy it?
James: Yeah, the kids aren't gonna be there to see it.
Susan: Yeah.
James: The only thing they're gonna see is a tree with leaves.
Susan: They don't get the fun part.
James: Yeah.
Susan: Oh my goodness.
[00:07:06] Disease-Resistant Fruit Trees
Susan: Okay. So what about, for instance, easier to grow fruit trees?
When I was a new grower, it was quite a discovery to learn that there are easier to grow fruit trees that are actually resistant to the most common diseases that fruit trees get. Is that a priority for you in those plantings?
James: Absolutely. We're really encouraging folks to manage these trees organically, right?
Not bombing them with synthetic sprays year round. And us selecting, really me, using experience and expertise here to choose cultivars that are really disease resistant. That can just set us up for success later on. This past spring, actually, we had a really wet spring in the northeast.
I think every weekend, for five weekends in a row, it was raining. And the result in Pittsburgh,
huge amount of fire blight, huge amount. And you could see in the same orchard trees planted at the same time. You could see, for instance, a Liberty or an Enterprise that's super resistant to fire blight not getting that. Whereas next to it, two trees over, is something else that's just riddled with fire blight.
So choosing the cultivars, right off the bat, is really helpful and that really happens when you can take the time to dive in. Because if what you do is just buy whatever's available at the box store, you're really rolling the dice.
Susan: I love that. I always say choose the right tree and everything gets easier.
And you talk about the shooting from the hip, going to the garden center and thinking, okay, this year I'm going to plant a fruit tree and look what they have. Okay. They have Honeycrisp. Wow. Yummy. I love that. Not realizing that Honeycrisp can be very difficult to grow.
James: Really hard.
Susan: Really hard to grow.
Or other favorites that they've seen in the supermarket that are grown with harsh pesticides and fungicides and not realizing that there is another way. I really encourage people to spend a weekend, some time, to just learn about how to choose a tree to research what's out there and to get the right tree for the right location.
Yes. Alright. So disease resistant trees are important to you. Let's get to some concrete situations because I think people will only really understand when they look at some case studies.
James: Sure.
Susan: So you and I have decided on a few different case studies, haven't we?
James: Yeah.
[00:10:04] Case Study: Warm Climate Planting
Susan: So one is for a warm climate.
James: Yeah.
Susan: And one is for a cool climate and one is for a different country altogether.
James: Yeah.
Susan: Which should we start with?
James: Let's go warm, cold, and then tropical.
Susan: Okay. Let's start with warm then.
James: Yeah.
Susan: Tell me about one of your warm climate plantings and tell me about the whole process, and then what trees you chose and why.
James: So I kicked off planting this year, 2025, in the end of February. As a New Yorker, that's early, but I kicked it off in Mississippi. So way warmer than where I'm living every day. We planted about 400 trees in Jackson, Mississippi, which is just south of the middle of Mississippi. And then, about two thirds of the way up Mississippi, in Cleveland, Mississippi.
Those two places, you can actually grow quite different things just within a couple hours of each other. It really straddles the line of extremely warm and oh, we actually get some cold. So I had to go back to the books on this.
First things I'm doing is taking a look at that USDA Hardiness Zone. But second, really more important,
is looking at the chill hours for each one of these places.
there are a number of maps and resources online where you can type in your zip code and find your average chill hours.
Think of that as the reset button for a fruit tree. This is gonna say, okay, I've gotten cold enough and now I can start my cycle over again. Too few chill hours, And that tree will come out of dormancy really early and get zapped by a late frost. Too many chill hours, that tree's not gonna know when to start.
It's gonna get warm, it's gonna get more sun, but it's not gonna start that flowering and fruiting cycle uniformly. So I had to go back to the books on this.
[00:12:11] Selecting Trees Based on Hardiness Zones and Chill Hours
Susan: So first we're looking at plant hardiness zone, and in this one state, you can have different zones.
So what was the difference in the zones in the two locations? What is the coldest temperature that you can get in any particular climate? So how different was it?
James: So south to north you could have a full zone difference which, in Mississippi, is the difference between being able to grow citrus and not.
Susan: Oh, wow. So what zone numbers are they?
James: We're at like the top end of nine and then the top end of eight.
Susan: Wow, okay. Yeah. Big difference. So first you're gonna be looking for trees that can actually survive.
James: Yeah.
Susan: To survive in the climate. Okay. That's the first filter you're gonna take people through.
Then, we've got chill hours and you're explaining that most of the deciduous fruit trees that we grow need a minimum number of hours in the winter of cold weather. They need cold weather. Like we humans, I'll speak for myself, I would prefer not to have the winter in some ways. Snow is nice and everything, but it's not so fun because it's really cold where I live.
But fruit trees need it in order to produce fruit. So you're going back to the books and you're researching what is the minimum number of chill hours. So what kind of difference in chill hours would it be from that one location? The warmer location to the cooler of the two warm locations?
James: Southern Mississippi could be like 200 hours. Northern Mississippi could be 1,000 or 1,200 hours.
Susan: Wow.
James: Huge difference.
Susan: That's a huge difference. So a 200 chill hour necessity could be something like the Anna apple tree.
James: Or like a Florida Tropic peach. Something like that.
Susan: Okay. Florida Tropic. Okay. So there's a few that say all you need is 200 hours. Then 1,000 hours. What are some examples of cultivars?
James: It could be something like a Redhaven peach that probably would be closer to you.
Susan: Yeah.
James: You could have something like that. You could have like a Moonglow pear that's gonna be something like 700 hours.
So that's a big difference. And just within one state you think, this isn't gonna be a one size fits all. We really need to think beyond these political or geographic boundaries and think ecologically.
Susan: Wow. Okay. So you are taking out all your books, all your fruit tree catalogs, looking through, and you need to choose the right trees.
So you're looking at plant hardiness zones and chill hours. What's next? What else are you looking at?
James: And then if it's a state that I'm not familiar with or I haven't done work there in a while, I have no problem going to a state extension service.
Mississippi State University has an extension program where they're putting out publications. Almost every state in the US, and I'm sure there's equivalent in other places, that is giving recommendations to home gardeners or to even professional orchardists.
These are the recommended things. These are the disease pressures. These are the climate challenges we have. Start off with these 'cause we know they work.
Susan: Gotcha.
James: And I was really excited by the extension service in Mississippi. They actually provided, in some cases, a sort of tried and true list.
And then below that, they said, these are things we're considering for trial. And so it gave me some guidance where I was not totally confident.
Susan: Great. And I think anybody, certainly in the United States where you have these amazing resources, you can reach out. You can look for what works in your community. Okay. So you're starting to look at recommended trees.
When does disease resistance come in? Do you do a little research as to, in each of these locations, what are the diseases that fruit trees get? Is there any way you can research that?
James: This is where I rely on some of my basic knowledge and my experience here in New York.
I can look on the map and look at how much rain you get. What's your average temperature?
I know Mississippi is gonna be hot and humid, so every foliar disease, there's gonna be extra pressure from pests 'cause there's maybe gonna be more generations per year. Whereas if I were in like Arizona, in a place where it's dry, maybe I don't have those foliar diseases or so many generations of those pests, but I have more like abiotic challenges of heat and drought.
Susan: Oh wow. That is so smart. Yeah, I've been told and by looking, 80% of all fruit tree diseases are actually fungal diseases that spread in that warm, damp, muggy kind of climate.
James: Yep.
Susan: So that makes sense. So you wanna get a tree, you want to choose trees that will be resistant to the major fungal diseases.
Can you give us a few examples?
James: Sure. So I know plums are a thing that people love to eat and people are asking, I want some plums, I want some plums. So many of the commercial available plums, you gotta just spray the heck out of 'em if you want to get really good fruit on some of these, in those hot, humid places.
So I'm gonna look back to nature and really embrace some of our natives in the hedge rows. I'm looking at Chickasaw Plum, I'm looking at Mexican plum. These are things that are growing already in those kinds of environments. Buy some and plant them yourself so you don't have to go forage, right where they are.
They want to grow. They've been growing there for thousands of years, certainly before we were spraying them with anything. Embrace them.
Susan: Wow, what a fantastic idea. And every community and every area has their native trees and plums are so interesting, aren't they? Because there are a lot of native North American plum trees, but each one has its own little area of North America that it thrives, like beach plums.
James: Love those.
Susan: Delicious. And yet, you may only wanna grow them if in your maritime, a more maritime kind of climate.
James: Yeah. Prunus maritima. Sandy, salty. Gosh, that sounds like Long Island to me.
Susan: Ah interesting. Okay, all right, so this is a creative project.
[00:19:22] Implementing the Planting Plan
Susan: I see you at the table with your books spread out in front of you. So what's the next step? How do you then put together, how many trees, which trees. Where do you go from there?
James: So that's when you start to really think about what you were talking about, staggering the harvest.
Okay, of the things that won't freeze to death here, of the things that will have enough chill hours so that they hit reset every year, of the things that we know will be more disease resistant. Okay? Now, of this condensed list, how can we spread out the harvest? So you end up with like three different kinds of peaches, Harvester, Redhaven, and Ruston Red.
Okay? You've spread out your, chill hours a little bit. You've got some that are closer to 700, some that are closer to 900. Hedge your bets against any extreme weather. Spread it out. Spread out your risk. And then you can look and say, oh yeah, this one will come earlier. This one will come later.
So you get maybe six weeks of peaches instead of just two. So I can do that each variety as we go through. So ultimately, in these Mississippi projects, we planted some blackberries 'cause I love a thornless blackberry. They're totally happy down there.
Figs 'cause those pop fruit off for a long period of time.
Some peaches, some pears even, some Asian pears even, which are really expensive. I saw in the grocery store yesterday. $10 for three fruits. Some persimmons, some pecans, some apples, elderberries, and some of those plums. So of this neighborhood, midtown, we ended up with 400 trees saturating this neighborhood of a huge diversity of plants that are gonna give fruit at different times.
Susan: Planting the 400 trees in one neighborhood. Sorry, was this in front of a school, a church, a central square? Where was it?
James: This was five orchards, and then a whole bunch distributed to people who live in the neighborhood. So actually we planted some in front of a community center, two schools each got an orchard. I think each orchard was about 40 trees each. We planted some trees at an environmental center in the neighborhood. We planted some trees at a skate park.
And there was this empty lot in the middle of the neighborhood with a dumpster in the middle. People called it the dumpster lot. And if you frame, where you live as a place next to a dumpster, that doesn't feel great. But by the end of the week actually that was an orchard lot. It wasn't a dumpster lot anymore. So really changing how people talk about where they live makes a huge difference.
Susan: Oh, that is so lovely. Now, you've planted the trees, you've done a lot of hard work researching what is going to be successful. Who's gonna take care of the trees? Who's gonna water them?
James: So in this neighborhood, this awesome local group, Midtown Partners, they do a bunch of education with kids about growing food, gardening, taking care of trees.
So they're connected already in doing some of this work, mostly with vegetables. I think it's real easy to include fruit trees as part of that.
Also, we don't just plant the trees. We wanna make ourselves available as a resource afterwards. I can tell you, I get so many photos and texts and emails of stuff like, does this look all right? Is this good?
But before we leave, we really like to get a tree guard around the trunk of each one of those trees, protect against the rabbits. Any other critters, including people with string trimmers, protect the trunk of that tree. And, in a place like Mississippi, putting an irrigation system, it makes a big difference.
Makes it so much easier for people to just open up the spigot and water the tree, rather than carrying 40 times five gallons of water from a spigot across. That's like impossible.
Susan: Yeah, we used to have to do that with our orchard. And then I had to raise a lot of money for an irrigation system for our park, but you do this more affordably.
So how would you set up an irrigation system?
James: So I like to keep it as simple as possible. I love that 500 foot long roll of half inch tubing. Black plastic, flexible, simple. You cap it off at the end, you punch a hole next to each tree, put in a little drip emitter that can be adjusted. You can have an irrigation system that's gonna last for quite a while for under $200 for 40 or 50 trees.
That's a game changer. That's hours of work that people can put elsewhere.
Susan: Fabulous. But it also means that, when you are choosing your sites, you need to choose a site where there is some sort of tap to hook into.
James: Totally. Yeah. Absolutely.
And sometimes that's like a big IBC tote that somebody has filled up. Rain water, and it's just gravity helping you. And sometimes it's talk to the custodian at the school and make sure that the ag teacher has one of those keys to open up the spigot once a week or twice a week.
Susan: Fantastic so that's the southern. Jackson, Mississippi.
James: And then we planted up in Cleveland, another 150 trees. Those were exclusively at schools.
That was four different schools and then we distributed some trees. Of course, volunteers come to plant trees. It feels good to send them home with a tree too.
Susan: Oh, that's fabulous. Oh, that's so wonderful. Okay. There's our warm climate. You've said the species that you go for.
[00:26:06] Recommended Cultivars for Warm Climates
Susan: Of these warm climate species, are there any cultivars that you find are just real winners?
I know that my listeners in warm climates will be like, okay, give us the name of one or two that you just find really do well. It could be a fig, it could be something else.
James: So I think there's three figs that are, at least in the southern US, almost universally available.
Brown Turkey and Celeste.
Those are two that are like everywhere, just in the industry, propagated by rooted cuttings, grab a stick from a friend, stick it in the ground, take care of it, it grows.
Those are awesome, delicious fruit.
LSU purple, if you're like into celebrating Louisiana. LSU purple is a delicious one.
I would like to be able to grow it in New York, but it's just a little too cold. So those are go-tos.
And then I would say pears because they're tough. They give a lot of fruit.
There's, for better or for worse, a lot of pear pollen flying around from ornamental pears, so rarely do you have to worry about cross pollination.
I think, really, my go-to is Moonglow, Ayers, and Le Conte. They're tough. Tough as hell.
Susan: Tough as hell. So does that mean that they are fire blight resistant and rust really resistant. What about rust?
James: Yeah. Yeah.
Susan: Pear trellis rust is a nasty one.
James: Yeah.
Susan: Now, you mentioned cross pollination.
As you are stretching out your fruit tree catalogs in front of you and making your decisions, you are planting a lot of trees. So I guess it's not your top priority to consider what will cross pollinate with what ,and what is self pollinating?
Is this something that you even think about?
James: It is something that I think about when I'm planting fewer trees, in more spread out places. In this project, putting so many trees in such a close proximity to one another, it's easy to get your sort of diversity quotient, right? To get the right pollen flying around.
But if you are a home orchardist or have a small space, and you really want that Arkansas Black apple, you've gotta commit to at least two others that you know are gonna pollinate it.
And that can be a lot of real estate. As a city dweller, I feel that. So maybe that's when you lean into a persimmon. Many of these varieties, they'll produce a fruit without being pollinated, and actually, that fruit will be seedless.
[00:28:54] Self-Pollinating Persimmons
James: So even easier.
Susan: Okay. Hang on one second. So you're saying persimmons are not just self pollinating, like self pollinating means one tree. You plant one tree, and somehow the bees go from blossom to blossom and it doesn't need a partner tree.
James: Yeah.
Susan: But you're saying it doesn't even need to be pollinated.
James: Yeah. Some of these Fuyus, man, it's pretty cool.
You'll get the sort of harder gelatin where a seed would be that would've been growing around the seed, and there's just no seed. It's wild.
Susan: Oh my goodness, I have to learn why this even happens. How can it produce fruit?
James: Yeah. Yeah. And why, from a plant sort of fitness perspective, why would it wanna spend the energy on fruit that has no seeds.
Susan: Oh yeah.
James: I guess we've done enough time selecting the ones that are, I don't know, the genetic oddballs.
Susan: Amazing.
Okay, so there's our warm climate Mississippi, two different locations, quite different zones, different chill hour needs.
[00:30:06] Cold Hardy Apples in Wisconsin
Susan: Let's go north to Wisconsin.
Tell me about Wisconsin.
James: Fall 2023, I did this epic trip. In September, I went out from New York and up to Oshkosh and Fond du Lac in Wisconsin. And it's pretty darn cold up that way. And September, I was already feeling fall and fall color.
So I just leaned into cold hardy apples. There's a couple plums that are more cold hardy as you know, and then I really embraced some of those natives, like serviceberry, American hazelnut. These are things that I just know are gonna be happy up there.
So that's Oshkosh. There was a bunch of trees that we planted on a college campus there, and they had a sort of a historic main drive through campus that, at graduation every year, the trees are blooming full of flowers and over years some of those trees had died.
So they wanted to reinvigorate that as this memory that people have at graduation. Taking pictures in front of the trees in flower. Perfect. Apple trees. I love it. Freedom. Frostbite, Haralson, Enterprise, Liberty. These are all probably familiar to you. All good, standby apples that are just cold hardy that are really disease resistant, particularly in this area.
I know there's other apples around. I know there's ornamental crab apples. I'm not worried about pollen. There's plenty of it flying around. But there's plenty of opportunity for disease.
Susan: Right.
James: So many other individuals of the same type.
Susan: Uhhuh. So I'm guessing, is Oshkosh quite dry and cold, or?
James: Yeah.
Susan: It's my impression that, rightly or wrongly, I feel like, oh, if you're far enough north, then you're not gonna have the diseases. Maybe it'll be more dry, but you're saying that it can be a problem there too.
James: With that density of the same crop. Yeah. It would be one thing if it was five trees in your backyard, but this whole main drive where, in time, practically every tree touches the next, this is probably 200 or 300 trees altogether in what I would call it a linear arboretum or a linear orchard. There's opportunity for plenty of disease to go around.
Susan: So most of those varieties, if not all, they're all disease resistant. One thing that I found it interesting, early on, was I imagined there was this thing. A disease resistant fruit tree that was resistant to all the diseases and I had to learn, no.
It's not quite like that, is it?
James: Yeah. Yeah. You've really gotta figure out what your biggest problems could be, and sometimes you gotta compromise on other things.
Susan: In terms of those cultivars, like Frostbite, for instance. I have never tasted. Have you tasted all those different, yummy, hearty trees?
James: I think, at this point, I probably have. There's a great grower actually just in Pennsylvania, only about an hour and a half from me, who's growing a lot of these and grow bags, and I'm able to get over there frequently enough to just taste this one, in the course of a three or four hour visit. I probably had maybe 12 or 14 different kinds of apples.
And at the end, it's just like apple overload.
Susan: Oh, I love it. I'll meet you there next time. That is one of my joys, but the only problem with tasting apples is you can only do maybe seven or eight at a time, like thoughtfully and really get the flavors, and then after that, your taste buds just go weird.
James: Yeah.
Susan: You just don't get anything out of it. Okay. So that sounds like a beautiful planting, and what a lovely idea to have this sort of, like you say, linear arboretum and blossom time would be at graduation. That's very beautiful. So was there anything else that you learned from that Wisconsin Oshkosh orchard planting?
Any lessons you learned there?
[00:35:06] Challenges of Urban Planting
James: That was a great sort of example of planting in, Oshkosh is not an urban place. I wouldn't call it a super urban place, but it's a college campus where there's been construction and reconstruction and roads have moved. It was a great reminder for me that, even though you feel like you're in the country, you don't know what you're gonna find when you start digging.
And sure enough, some old asphalt pieces, some places where, oh, maybe there was an informal road where vehicles went across and there's really compact soil. Things that I maybe hadn't fully anticipated going into it.
Me thinking, oh yeah, this is like beautiful idyllic country.
Oh no. Where there's people, there's gonna be these same constraints, maybe just more or less.
Susan: Oh yeah, definitely.
[00:36:02] Preparing for Tree Planting
Susan: I always say to people, before you even consider planting a tree, dig a hole. Just go in the backyard where you think you want it. Dig a hole at least, would you say like a foot deep at least?
James: Yeah.
Susan: Nice, wide.
James: At least a foot deep. At least a foot and a half, two feet wide. Set a timer at the beginning and then you'll have a good sense of what you're in for.
Susan: Oh, I like that. You had said to me, what did you say? Set a timer and see how long it takes for you to dig the hole.
James: Yeah. And so I ask people to do that in sites that I haven't seen before that I'll be coming to plant in.
And so I'll say, tell me how long it took you. And if it took them 45 minutes to dig one hole. I'm starting to think oh, maybe there's gonna be a problem here. We need to think of some different ways of getting holes dug. And if they report that it only took them five minutes, I'm also gonna wonder like, okay, what's really going on here?
Is this super loose soil? Did they not actually dig the hole the right size? So that opens me up to ask more probing questions.
Susan: And do you get them to take pictures to send to you? Because obviously you guys don't have the budget to fly you out to look at the site, to dig the hole, to test the soil. So do they send you pictures, and are you talking back and forth before planting day?
James: For sure. It's a big collaboration ahead of time. Phone calls. I love a FaceTime. Show me. Let's walk around the site. What are you concerned about? What do you see?
Almost everywhere there's good aerial maps. Google Maps or whatever. You can at least see the layout, and then I can start asking questions like, is this somewhere that snow gets piled up in the winter? Or there's a really big parking lot next door, where does that water run off to? And so you start to, even though people don't necessarily know, oh yeah, this gets flooded every time it rains and it sits there for a week, you're never looking at it on the phone on a raining day.
You gotta really start asking these questions 'cause you don't wanna rock up to a planting, have 50 volunteers looking at you and you're thinking, if we plant trees here, everyone's gonna die. We're gonna need to figure something out.
Susan: Every tree's gonna die.
Hopefully the people won't die. Yeah. Hopefully the trees won't die either. But yeah, it's a big responsibility, you've gotta be very probing and ask all the good questions so that hopefully there will be no big surprises on planting day. And hopefully it'll just be fun for everybody and exciting.
Yeah.
James: Yeah.
Susan: Okay.
[00:38:55] International Tree Planting Projects
Susan: Now, I know that you just recently came back from Peru.
James: Yep.
Susan: So tell me about that trip again. This was a project from your organization. How many, to what extent do you guys do plantings in other countries?
James: Sure. In the last eight years, we've planted about 500,000 trees in eight countries.
So planting outside the US is a regular thing for us. And so we're planting in, let's see, every July, we're doing some tour in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, some combination thereof. Each December, we're down in Peru. Sometimes we're thrown in some Brazil. Every April, we're planting in Uganda. So there's a pretty regular, international component to what we do.
And those projects are so fun, because often there's a lot of space for a lot of trees.
Susan: Ah, interesting. Less developed, more space.
James: Yeah.
Susan: Okay.
[00:40:05] Fruit Trees in Peru
Susan: So Peru. You've been talking to me about regular, deciduous fruit trees. Now you're in a totally different world.
How does this look different when you went to Peru, and again, figuring out what are the best fruit trees to plant there?
James: We've been doing this work in Peru since 2018, and we've got an amazing nursery partner down there that we're able to work with. This guy, Pedro, he's just incredible. A fantastic plant propagator, but also just a fantastic communicator. And so we've come up together with a list of fruit and some medicinal trees that people are interested in.
People are interested in eating them. People have a history of eating them. Trees that maybe used to be more common, and then are not anymore because
the forest got cut down to grow rubber during the rubber boom, or the forest got cut down to grow sugarcane, or the forest got cut down for animal agriculture. Like maybe there's a different way to use that space and that's to work with some of these native trees, fruit bearing, to give folks food.
So we've got a really good list. It's about 26 species, mostly native. Coconut. Is it really native to South America? When did it float across the ocean and arrive there?
This is well integrated into people's diet.
it's more about what tree is gonna be right for the particular location we're planting at.
Susan: So give me some examples. I'm trying to imagine.
James: Sure. Let's start with something that everyone knows and loves. Chocolate. Cacao. Okay. Theobroma cacao.
This is a tree that grows native in that area. It is part of the forest. This is a tree that requires some shade. And so if somebody is looking at a huge open field, many hectares of space that has been totally cleared and is now grassland, planting cacao is not gonna be appropriate for that location.
So we would need to find either a forest edge or a place that is abandoned agricultural land that has started to regenerate, or maybe a place where people are growing bananas or plantain. This is a classic example. The bananas and plantain grow up in full sun. They provide enough shade for the cacao to get established, and boom, as that cacao grows up and you harvest the bananas, the cacao gets more space.
So that's a common plant that we all know, and especially this time of year, love to eat chocolate.
There's another tree that, so in Peru, we're planting in the Amazon. So into Iquitos, which is in the north, next to the Amazon River. Take the boat with trees up the Amazon River for a few hours, meet up with communities up there.
Another tree that is really valuable is camu camu. And this is a tree that thrives in areas that are flooded periodically, which is the story of living on a big river where water can fluctuate many meters, week to week or month to month, as it rains up river or not.
And so just this trip, we visited the community, Lida. The name of this community, Lida, is an acronym. It's the Invincibles of the Amazon. A small community. When I was there just a couple weeks ago, we took our boat all along. What I remembered as a long walkway, there was four or five feet of water on top of that.
And all in that flooded area are these camu camu trees growing up, just ripening fruit, looking totally happy, really beautiful.
Three years ago when I was in that community, I walked through that whole area, probably a quarter of a mile of walking. Rice growing there and these camu camu trees. And so it's great to see these trees thriving in a place that gets this periodic flooding.
And you've gotta think ahead of what could happen here. What do people, who live there, know happens? Let's not plant an avocado there that's going to drown. Let's plant camu camu.
Susan: Amazing.
[00:45:07] Climate Change and Tree Selection
Susan: And are you guys thinking in terms of other types of climate change, either even in North America? Is it changing what you are choosing to plant?
James: I'm always thinking about extremes, which I think is the only constant we can expect in the future. Is it going to be more hot or more dry? Is it going to be more flooding, more drought, hotter, the same? We have to buffer in for these extremes.
Like back in our Mississippi example, I planted peaches that had a range of 250 chill hours, so as things change over time, something's gonna hit. Whether it's an extreme cold or extreme hot year, something's gonna hit.
Susan: So smart. For ordinary growers who are listening to this program, how can they protect themselves when they're doing their plantings? You've suggested that choosing the right tree is great, but are there any other things that you keep in mind, that can help people protect their trees, whether it's some sort of ground cover or windbreak?
What do you consider, would be helpful?
[00:46:35] Mulching and Pollinator Gardens
James: Mulch, mulch, mulch. Mulch is helpful. Everywhere that I've planted a tree, get some old leaves, grass clippings, arborist chips, sawdust, cardboard, whatever it is you can find. Cover that soil and let the biology of the soil do its thing. Feed that biology.
When you feed that biology, you're gonna have more nutrients available to your tree, which means you're gonna have more vigorous tree. And when there's better vigor for a tree, you're gonna have more resilience in the face of these pests. It's not about preventing them all the time, it's about having a resilient vigorous tree that can deal with it when the blows come.
Susan: One thing that I do like to do very much and encourage people to do in any fruit tree planting is to make sure there's some sort of pollinator garden nearby.
James: Yeah.
Susan: We think in terms of disease resistant trees, sadly there is not really, as far as I know, such a thing as a pest resistant tree.
But if you've got a pollinator garden that attracts beneficial insects that might eat and kill and destroy the pests. So is that ever part of your planting plans?
James: It's something that folks can add on as you go. One of our conversations in Peru, in particular, is when the leafcutter ants come, how do we deal with this?
Or, when the monkeys come and eat the fruit, how do we deal with this? And it's a lot of things at once. Maybe it's the, okay, let's plant some lemongrass nearby so that we can use that and use those essential oils as a pest deterrent. Maybe there's like a wild cilantro kind of plant that is just gonna be naturally deterrent to some critters.
The other thing is not planting just a monoculture. The reason that we're planting so many different varieties on these projects is so that Mrs. Morales can have a bunch of uvaia planted on her property. And then her cousin two blocks away is gonna have maybe the same thing, but separated, so that maybe the monkeys eat Mrs. Morales' fruit, but they don't eat her cousin's fruit and they can share some from whoever has some left.
Susan: That's such a realistic approach because, I think, when many of us grew up, and even today, we have this expectation that the fruit is gonna be perfect and that there's something wrong with these animals or these insects that are ruining our fruit for us humans.
And we don't realize that we're just part of the ecosystem and that we get our share, hopefully if we do it right, but we don't necessarily get it all to ourselves.
James: If somebody else isn't trying to take a bite, I start to wonder what's going on.
Susan: And that's a very interesting point. See it as a compliment.
James: Yeah. Yeah.
Susan: They liked the fruit. You're doing it well. That's a brilliant idea. I can't even imagine. You have to worry about squirrels and raccoons here. Monkeys. Oh my gosh. 'cause they're so smart. Actually raccoons can be really smart too.
James: They can all be troublemakers.
Susan: Oh, I bet.
James: I can't blame them. I can't blame 'em for being hungry.
Susan: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I like my fruit too. They like their fruit. So we'll have to share.
James: Yep.
Susan: Amazing. So I would love to know a little bit. You are doing so much. You've learned so much about fruit trees, and yet, your education is not fruit tree based, is it?
James: It's environmental and forest biology, but trees in systems. And so what got me excited, in connecting people with trees, is that trees live in cities. Trees live in communities where people live. And so it wasn't too far of a jump for me to take my traditional training in ecology, and apply it to just a different system.
And we're managing trees for fruit for people and whatever critters are around.
[00:51:08] Community Impact of Fruit Trees
Susan: So what kind of feedback are you getting from people? You mentioned that they do keep in touch.
James: Yeah.
Susan: How are these trees affecting the communities?
James: At least once a year, for all of our domestic projects, we're sending out a survey.
Saying are your trees alive? Are you getting fruit? Tell me more about it. And we're doing similar kind of thing internationally. And I met with this fellow, I remember when we planted the trees five, six years ago, together. These lime trees. And I've got this photo of him with this kid in his hands, and the tree's only a few feet tall.
And now this tree is bigger than me, and it's full of fruit. And he's saying, yeah, I'm able to use these limes. I'm feeding my family and my community in Peru where people are really living a subsistence kind of living.
He's like, I can take some of the extra and sell them in the city, and then I can buy some clothes for my kids, or I can save up some money to send them to school with some better supplies. It's pretty transformative in places.
I love seeing fruit in people's hands.
And so I followed a few orchards. There's one in Brooklyn, down by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and it's really pretty special to see a tree that I was there when it planted. And now there's this beautiful apple and it's fruit and it's just on a city street.
Walking on the sidewalk, you can just see it.
Susan: It's miracle.
James: And you can see it's a, it's so cool.
Susan: I've been doing this also for, I guess 15 years now, and every time there's a harvest, I think this is a total miracle. How is this even possible that these trees can feed so many people? Like they're so generous.
James: And we do all of these things to try to control it and give these trees the best start and all the support that they need.
But there's some piece of it that's out of our hands and that just feels really special.
Susan: Yeah. Yeah. It's like we do our part as the growers and the tree does their part. Yeah. You guys do your part in meticulous planning as much as you can. And I always think about fruit trees. They bring us together really.
James: Our TreeEO of our organization has this saying, once you plant fruit trees together, you're friends for life.
And I have found that more true, than anything else.
Susan: I know in my community orchard, those trees have been very healing for a lot of us through the COVID years. That was the one thing that we got out to do together through health problems, through emotional issues. Those trees are there guarding us and creating a safe space for us to interact together.
It's really very beautiful.
So in terms of the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation. How can people donate, and what difference do the donations make? Where does the money actually go?
90% of all of the money that we bring in goes to actually planting trees. We're running a pretty lean organization. If folks are interested in supporting our work, they can check out our website, ftpf.org or plantfruittrees.com. That's us. You can find us plantfruittrees.com. There's a, donate button there. And gosh, that money will go right to buying some fruit trees to plant them. And I would say if you're giving now, spring is just around the corner. We'll be getting a few more bare root trees or a few more container trees getting them in the ground.
Amazing.
[00:55:23] Farewell and Future Plans
Susan: I'm going to be making an announcement at the end of this program, about this show and its future and how it's evolving. but before I do, I just wanna say what a lovely thing it would be, if
all the listeners to this show could get together and say, we have learned together for 10 years through this Orchard People podcast.
It used to be called the Urban Forestry Radio Show. Wouldn't it be nice if we all made a donation? Because what you guys do is what we all love and care about and stand for, and that's the beauty of fruit trees, what they give to us. It's magical and how they bring us together. James, is there anything that you wanna share with the listeners that you think I might have missed that can help them be successful with their fruit trees?
James: Don't be afraid to ask questions. I think that's a huge take home. There's so many forums online, in your community, places like this, snap a photo. We have the technology. Show us what is going on and gosh, share the success. Because I don't get to see everything, at the five-year mark post planting.
If you share your success, you're gonna inspire somebody else to plant a tree. And it's that sort of multiplication of our efforts. That makes a huge impact.
Susan: So exciting. With the books that I write, I'm writing this new book on fruit tree garden design, and in it, I'm featuring all these different orchards from around the world that have inspired me, and the lessons that they've learned, to help improve their success.
And I think you're right. We inspire each other. It's wow, I could do that, or I could try that. That would be really great. James, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I have learned a lot and I really appreciate it.
James: Thank you Susan. This is great. I could talk about trees for hours.
Susan: Me too. And I have been. Anyways, thank you so much.
James: Thank you.
Susan: So now, that's the end of this episode of the Orchard People Podcast.
And most of you don't realize this, but this has been 10 years I've been doing this podcast. It's a long time and I have learned so much over the course of these 10 years.
It's been amazing. But it's now time for me to step away.
I want to spend my time instead of gathering more information. My goal is to take what I've learned in this podcast and create really wonderful books. I've already written four. I have three more coming out of me, and I need the time and space to do that.
So for the time being, there will not be new episodes of The Orchard People Podcast unless I have something very specific to say. So I just wanna say thank you so much to all the listeners, and I know many of you have been listening to me for 10 years, and some of you who haven't, you can also go back to the old episodes because every single episode is with somebody fabulous, like James, who has shared their wisdom and their knowledge.
So thank you. Thank you for being a listener. Thank you for inspiring me. Thank you for being part of this community. If you want to stay in touch with me, if you wanna know what I'm doing next and be involved in helping me to develop my books, I'd love it if you would sign up,
go to orchard people.com/sign-up, and I'll keep you posted on everything that's new that's happening with me.
I have really enjoyed learning with you guys, and I'm getting a little emotional, so forgive me. But thank you so much. And for now,
I'll say goodbye. Take care. Bye for now.