By Don A. Wright
There are foundational inputs to agriculture: soil, sunshine, water, labor, plants and animals. But even the animal portion of agriculture depends on plants. I think of farms as where plants grow and ranches as where livestock is raised. The American Heritage Dictionary agrees with me a little as its first definition of ranch is, “An extensive farm, especially in the western United States, on which large herds of cattle, sheep, or horses are raised.” Its second definition is, “A large farm on which a particular crop or kind of animal is raised, ‘a mink ranch.’”
Who am I to argue with AHD? But mink ranch? I don’t know. Hog farm, dairy farm, mink farm sounds right. A potato ranch or a chicken ranch just doesn’t sound – and I’ve read the chicken one closed. Ignoring that and moving on.
Farms, in my mind anyway, grow plants. Where do these plants come from? Nurseries. Who’s got a big, bad nursery right here in the San Joaquin Valley? Duarte. Yes, Duarte Nursery is a client of WaterWrights.net, that’s no secret, just look at the ad above. But that won’t stop us from sharing the excitement about Duarte Friends Day.
Friday May 3rd from 9am to 2pm will be the 26th annual Friends Day at Duarte Nursery located at 1555 Baldwin Road in Hughson California, 95326 east of Modesto. I can personally recommend you attend. I’ve gone the past years now, ever since I learned of it and it is fun. Imagine a combination of a fair and a farm show that feeds you. Like a massive pipe organ yearning to be heard the Duarte bunch pull out all the stops.
Back in 1988 Jim and his wife Anita Duarte founded the nursery with their sons John and Jeff. There are now three generations involved in operating one of the largest permanent crop nurseries in the world.
For those of you who don’t regularly farm permanent crops or you’re the former mayor of New York City, one doesn’t poke a hole in the ground, plant a seed, kick dirt over it and wait for a tree or vine to grow. At least not on a commercial scale. You let a nursery minister to the young plant’s needs until its ready to transplant to your field. This greatly reduces the risk of your investment not sprouting or dying after it does rise from the ground.
Duarte Nursery claims much of its success to innovation, research and providing industry needs. They have a state of the art laboratory with scientists who lead in the study and application of tissue culture protocol for fruit and nut trees. One of the things you can do on Friends Day is tour the facilities. Whether you’re an old hand at husbandry or just curious about how agriculture has been able to increase productivity by breeding better plants the tour is worthwhile.
I thought the term rootstock meant the original parent trees where the seeds came from. The root or origin of the variety. A bit green and un-cultivated of me. Turns out trees come from two pieces. One is the rootstock – the part of the plant made up of the roots and the base. And the other part which is a graft of the branches where the fruit and nuts grow. Duarte Nursery has figured out how to combine the best of both tree functions – a better root system and a better bearing branch system on the same tree.
The website states, “Duarte Nursery has had industry leadership with containerized grape vines in the 90’s, the “clean plant” program with testing and transparency in the grapevine industry, containerized orchard nut trees, exploring new crops including golden kiwis, GMO fruit crops, and working with breeders on new varieties of nuts and fruits.”
An example of this innovation is clonal rootstock. The folks in the lab are able to clone several identical plants from one mother plant. The mother tree is selected based on, “. . . higher production, suitability to a specific soil type, resistance to nematodes and root pathogens, or the increasingly important characteristic of salt tolerance.”
Duarte Nursery has recently introduced the Yorizane almond. It’s called The Gold Nut because the kernel is, well, golden in color. The Almond Board of California has evaluated Yorizane next to other commercial varieties and it has held up as equal or better in almost every evaluation. The Gold Nut provides for an early, clean harvest. It’s self-fertile, high yield and there is no royalty. I never knew, there are instances when you have to pay a
royalty on a tree’s production. In addition to almonds Duarte produces walnuts, pistachios and wine grapes.
Friends Day has more than 1,000 people show up to look at the farm show like portion. Dozens of vendors are on hand to show off the latest in equipment, products and services. If it has to do with orchards and vineyards it’s most likely at the Friends Day.
And they feed you. Ever since Jesus fed a multitude with five loaves of bread and two fish, eating brings people together. The food at Friends Day is as much a part of the springtime celebration as a blossom or a maypole. This is not rubber chicken. I’ve had two of my favorites, BBQ and nature’s perfect food – the taco.
I intend to be at the Duarte Nursery Friends Day again this year and hope to see you there. Come up and say hi to me or you’ll hurt my feelings. God bless.
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