0:00Greetings Urban Farmers Gardners and Healthy Food Visionaries. Farmer Greg here and welcome to the 1,000 and fifth episode of the Urban Farm Podcast where every day we work together to educate and inspire you to become part of your food revolution. Today we have Tom Spelman, a longtime fruit tree friend of mine. Tom has been involved in the nursery industry since 1973. At that time he was a freshman in high school and wrote his skateboard to work. Since then he has worked for several different nurseries including Le Verne Nursery where he was General Manager for 20 years and Dave Wilson Nursery where he was the Southwestern Sales Manager for over 20 years. Since retiring he is an Urban Farm fruit tree and orchard consultant. Most of all he is the person that knows more about fruit trees than anyone else I know. Enjoy. Welcome, welcome Tom. Thank you

1:00for joining us today. Greg it's always a pleasure to be with you. Absolutely and we've been working together for 20 plus years and yes you've been I love the story you tell about writing your skateboard to the first nursery you worked at. You've been in the business a long time. Can you tell us a little bit about your backstory? I started when I was a teenager when I was 13 years old. I was offered a job by a neighbor of mine that ran a small retail nursery and Roland Heights California where I grew up and she said come down you can water plants and load cars and pull weeds whatever so just general nursery work and at the time I was 13 years old I didn't have a car I didn't have a driver's license. I wrote my skateboard down to work was about a mile and a half and I loved it. The opportunity to work with people and talk with people and the green industry was where I knew from a very young age that I wanted to land. So after I graduated

2:02high school I had an opportunity to work for a local landscape contractor that had a small nursery so he allowed me to run his nursery and grow material on for his landscape jobs. He also taught me landscape design which has been very helpful over the years and using things for ornamental appeal as much as edibles and tree trees so that was a big plus for me. After that I worked for Armstrong Nurseries which was a big wholesale grower of fruit trees and roses and they had two divisions actually they had a retail division and a wholesale division and there were about five miles apart here in Ontario, California. And when I first started to work for them I met some of the propagators and the hybridizers of the times and I thought hey this is cool isn't it great houses that they're running and what they're doing I just I fell in love with plant hybridization and propagation so the upper management didn't want me to

3:04work in wholesale they wanted me to work in retail. I said how about this I said working five days a week how about if I do Saturday Sunday which are your big retail days at the retail garden center and then let me do three days during the week working with the wholesale division so they agreed to that and nice. I got to work with some very competent growers of the time and some people that had been around for many many many years before me and it was a wonderful experience. After Armstrong nurseries I met a gentleman by the name of Deeter Water and Deeter and his wife ran a company called LeBurn Nursery. It was local as well here in LeBurn and San Demas and they specialized in citrus avocados, tropical fruits and grafted hybrid ornamental material. That to me was very intriguing and I went in and visited with Deeter several times and he offered me a position and I worked for him for 20 years. Wow. From 1981 until

4:092001 and Deeter was probably my most important mentor of my career. He taught me a lot and he gave me a lot of leeway. He liked what I brought to the company and he liked my ideas. We changed a lot of things added a lot of product line to work together on numbers and production and I'll tell you what 20 years with Deeter Water is an education that you can't buy. You can't go to any school and pay for that education but I earned every bit of it. I will say that and after that and one I was offered the Southwestern Sales Manager position with Dave Wilson Nursery and I accepted that and worked for them for almost 24 years. I've been in fruit trees for virtually my entire career and that's at this point about just under 54 years. Wow. And I'm loving it. I'm still doing some consulting. I'm still doing repping for a couple of smaller growers

5:11and I didn't want to retire. I just wanted to make a change in my life so I felt that I needed to move on and do something different so I'm certainly not working the schedule that I used to work but I'm still seeing all my friends and people that I've worked with over the years for decades. No thoughts on hanging it up. I just I need to keep active and I need to keep busy and I love this business so I'm going to continue moving forward and not not ready to head out the pasture yet. Right. Well we have so much to contribute still. I agree. I agree. I think it's it's a wonderful opportunity to give people the information that they need to be successful in their urban landscape situations and still be able to grow good quality fruit and know exactly how it's grown. There you go. But so let's talk about growing fruit trees in the city. We like to call it urban fruit tree culture and it's different than commercial

6:11culture. Can you start by defining urban fruit tree culture? Sure. Urban fruit tree culture is a concept of growing under limited backyard conditions. You don't have an acre or 10 acres or 100 acres that you can grow hundreds or thousands of trees on. So you need to limit yourself on what you're doing. So probably one of the most important concepts of urban fruit tree culture is grow what you like and what you'll use. You want to make sure that to their varieties that fit into your daily culinary lifestyle and varieties that you and your family and your neighbors appreciate. Flavor is number one. Varieties are always important so you just want to grow what you like and what you use and also taking into consideration what's adaptable to my climate. What's adaptable to my geography, my soil type. I don't want to try and grow something that is way out of bounds as far as my zone is concerned. So doing a little homework and

7:16understanding varieties that work in your climate and your soil type is very important to that. That's probably the first couple of concepts that are important to consider. So the next thing that I think is most important is size control. You're not a commercial grow. Commercial grow of peaches in the San Joaquin Valley is expecting somewhere between 250 and 350 pounds of free off of a commercial size peach tree. So peaches ripen up in about two weeks. I don't have a big family. I have a son and a daughter and three grand daughters and some neighbors and friends but I can't use 250 pounds of peaches in two weeks. It doesn't make any sense. I don't want all that fruit. So that's a commercial expectation. It's not a backyard expectation especially on fruit varieties that ripen up in a short period of time. Exactly. Well and the footprint of a tree that'll give us 250 pounds of peaches is much bigger than the

8:23smaller version and I like to plant two or three or four in that same space and we can get them in there, right? Absolutely. So that commercial size tree would take up approximately four to five hundred square feet. So if I took three or four varieties and planted them in that same four to five hundred square feet, now I can harvest three or four varieties that would successive ripen in the same space where a commercial grower would get one crop of tree. Now I can get three or four successive harvest and growing varieties on close spacing is important. And everybody says a commercial farmer would never do that. Of course not. Of course not. They don't want successive ripening varieties to together, planted together. They want to make sure that they're harvesting everything out of one area. So they're going to grow single varieties or commercial use and they want to come in and harvest all that fruit at one time. They want a lot of

9:27fruit at one time where a backyard grower wants just the opposite. A backyard grower wants a little bit of fruit all the time. So by growing successive ripening varieties you can pick over an extended period of time and by limiting that tree size by keeping those trees compact and manageable. A stone fruit tree for me I don't want any higher than about seven to eight feet. I want to be able to reach all that fruit from the ground. I want to be able to trim harvest then do all the work that I need to do to the tree from standing on the ground next to it. I don't want to climb up on a ladder or climb up in the tree to have to pick plants. I'm not climbing 15 feet to pick my Santa Rosa plants. Plus those fruits at the top of that tree in a lot of cases in an urban yard that's bird food. Absolutely. So you're feeding the birds, you're feeding the squirrels, the fruit. When it's ripe it starts dropping off and it's an intimidating amount of fruit that you have to deal with. So that 15 foot pluntry as opposed to a seven-foot

10:32pluntry when you're talking again, 253-air pounds worth of free as opposed to maybe 50 to 100 pounds. And that's even a lot. A hundred pounds of plums? That's a lot of plums. I don't think I need to go into detail and explain what happens if you eat too many plums in too short a period of time. I would rather have Santa Rosa's for a week or two weeks and then go into burgundy for a week or two weeks and then go into a flavor grenade pluot for a couple of weeks after that in the same amount of space where that one big tree was. Instead of two weeks worth of free, I have a month and a half worth of free. Makes perfect sense. So I'm going to have management. It's important. We're going to talk about that in the last segment today on successive ripening as well. In detail. Yeah. So controlling the size of a tree, that starts the day you plant it. Does it not? Absolutely. Can you tell us about how to? Because I get a

11:33lot of people that reach out to me and say, Hey, Greg, do you carry dwarf varieties? And we found that the dwarf variety root stocks don't do great in the low desert. They do not. And so we go a little bit different direction and that's by pruning them. So can you tell us how to manage that? And that's one of the things that I talked about originally. We've grown varieties that are adaptable to your climate. Not only the variety is important, but also the root stock that it's grafted onto is important. You have a root stock that doesn't perform well in your climate or your soil. Then you're never going to have a good quality fruit. You're going to have a poor quality tree. That's never going to look or do. It's very best. So by choosing root stocks that are adaptable to your climate for you and in the desert, you're using Nima Gard for peaches and nectarine. You're using my Roblin and Mariana's for your apricots and your plums. And those are root stocks that are adaptable to keep to sandy soil, to low desert conditions,

12:35to alkalinity. They're great quality root stocks for any desert growing condition. So you're bringing in not only the right varieties, but you're bringing in the right varieties on the right lead stocks. So what you want to do is choose your sides. I've been accused in the past of telling people that they have to keep trees at 7 to 8 feet and I've never done that. I've always said choose a size that works for you and be willing to keep your trees managed to that size for a particularity. You want to make sure that you have a tree that's manageable for you. And if you want a 15 foot pluntry, by all means, you can grow a 15 foot pluntry. But I'm not going to have a 15 foot pluntry. For me, I want to be able to do all that work from the ground. So the very first pruning cuts that you make will determine where the scaffolding structure of that tree begins and how low you can manage that tree. And that goes back to commercial farming. When you look at any commercial fruit tree

13:38orchard, they don't have a big tall tree trunk like a street tree or a parkway tree. They have a canopy that starts branching out at about 18 to 20 born inches off the ground. So they want to pick fruit from a low point up to a managed point. And going back to size control, commercial growers don't grow large trees anymore. Commercial growers have chosen new philosophies where they're planning two or three times as many trees per acre and they're keeping those trees managed so that they can do 90% of their chores and work from a point of standing on the ground. This is not just a backyard philosophy. It's just a management style that helps you make better use of your time in your space. And like I said before, that starts when you plant it. And our trees, when you pick up our bare root trees from us, they come pre-pruned. We're already pruning them. And the important piece of that is that bare root trees, that means that there's no dirt

14:41around the roots. So they've been dug up. And the roots have been pruned. And so it's really important to reflect the root pruning that happens when they get the dug up with the top. Is it not? Absolutely. You want to have balance to that structure. And that's where a lot of people fail with bare root. Some nurseries will offer bare root trees for sale on prune. So you have a tree that's six or seven feet tall that has a branched canopy from 18 inches all the way up to the top. And then you have a root system that's only about 18 inches in diameter, maybe even less than that. So you're expecting that little root system to be able to successfully push out that big top and give you a growing structure that's going to produce fruit right away. That's not what bare root is all about. Bare root is all about bringing that top back to a balance with the root system so that you can allow that root system to function properly and push out that new growth.

15:46And I've done this experiment many times over the years. Plant 10 trees in the same exact conditions. Plant 10 bare root trees in a 15 gallon container. The first one is unpruned. The second one gets a very light pruning. The third one gets a little more pruning all the way down to cutting the tree off at 18 inches from extreme heavy pruning to no pruning at all. And when you come back and look at those 10 trees after about 90 days, you can see the difference is incredible. The amount of bigger and the amount of new growth and new scaffold development that you have on those heavily pruned trees far outweighs anything that's on the trees that were left on the pruning. In fact, oftentimes the first couple of trees that were not pruned or pruned very lightly, they don't even leave out. That root system doesn't have enough stored nutrients or carbohydrates to push that structure out properly. So you end up losing a tree and then you think, all the nursery means only of that tree.

16:51You just expected that we're going to be able to take advantage of that size and you really don't want to do that. That's not what bare root is all about. Making those first heavy pruning cuts, I know it's very difficult. People are intimidated by that. They don't want to do it. They don't understand it. And that's why your philosophy of tree pruning those trees before you release them for sale, that gives you 99% success. Yeah. And that shows up. We have a guarantee. And the guarantee basically says, if your tree doesn't make it, we'll split the cost of a tree with you next year. And we do that because of the education we offer, like that. And quite honestly, we only replace three to five fruit trees a year. Yeah. And you're bringing in a lot of trees. Hundreds. Yeah. That's a great success story right there. Yeah. Exactly. Thank you. So three big takeaways for urban fruit tree culture. Successive harvest, making the most out of your season, size management. So you're keeping the trees

17:56managed to a size that works for you. And grow what you like and you use. And what is adaptable to your climate and your soil type. If you just do those four things, you'll be much, much more successful backyard garden. This segment's going to be about physical stress. And that is really important, especially in the heat of the summer. And it's not just about heat. Can you tell us how we can successfully grow fruit trees in the desert? Absolutely. And it certainly can be a challenge with desert weather conditions are not getting any milder. So your summers are hot and they're long. And just consider this, walk out into your backyard, first thing in the morning at sunrise and stand there all day long. How would you feel at the end of the day? So you can go back inside and have a drink of water and turn on the air conditioner

18:58and enjoy your afternoon. Your fruit trees don't have that option. Your fruit trees are out there all day long in that hot desert sun. And it can be very, very stressful. So there are several considerations for what we call physical stress. Several different types of physical stress. The worst one by far is sunburn. And that is just simply something that happens when the bark of the tree is exposed to that hot desert sun all day long. And you can always notice sunburn because it manifested itself on the tree in the southwest base. That's the hottest part of the afternoon sun. The morning sun's not bad on the east side. There's not a whole lot of heat stress or sun stress on the north side. It's that southwest face where you're going to notice that damage. So protecting that is the most important consideration for sunscull or sunburn.

19:59And you want to make sure that you're using a product that is not going to be suffocating. If you're using a whitewash type protection, you don't want it to look like you painted your fence or a house. You want to make sure that you have a coating on there or something that can breathe. The system of the tree can still function. So there's several good products out there. I, the organics, the tree trunk white is the one that I really like. And actually comes in several different colors. I want to throw one caveat here. There is putting up physical shade, putting it to shade cover over it. And about two decades ago, I put a shade cover over one of my peach trees. And I cooked it. And the reason I cooked it is because I put the shade on all five sides. I put it on four sides in the top. And the heat gathered in the area where the tree was

21:00at. And it suffocated it. So you created an oven. Exactly. So if you are going to put up a physical shade structure, you need to put it up on the west side and the top. Exactly. Two sides only, west side and top. Yeah. And it should really be no more than about a 55% shade. And even less than that for a 40% shade is good. You don't want it too dense. You don't want to create an area where that growth is just going to be too lush and too fleshy and not have a chance to hardy up at all. But no, I don't have a problem with putting up a temporary shade structure. And that for me would be covering those two sides through the first summer only. Yeah. After that, I want that tree to stand along on its own. And then you're going to have to go back to using some sort of whitewash protection. But you know, there are other physical stresses other than just sunburn. You also have pretty substantial amount of damage from the wind, especially a warm

22:02wind that will draw moisture out of that system. So I've been growing fruit trees in Phoenix since 1975. And that wind stress has just shown up in the past five or six years. And it can be severe. So what do we do about that? Actually, the same product actually works well for wind stress. So what you need to do here at where I'm at in Southern California, we have issues mainly in the fall, October, November, December, sometimes in the winter with what we call the Santa Ana winds. And there are winds that come off the desert or the high desert and come over the mountains and down into Southern California. And sometimes the weather will be fool. Sometimes the weather will be hot. We've had Santa Ana winds in October that were like a blast for us. So that that just draws moisture out of that tree. So what you need to consider is what direction does your damaging wind come in for?

23:04And here from the Santa Ana's always come from the northeast. If I'm worried about protecting my trees from the Santa Ana's, I have number one. I want to create a wind break, which I have around most of my orchard. There's a pretty substantial hedge that goes up to about 10 feet high. And it protects most of my tender material, avocados, some citrus are all just on the west side and the south side of that that hedge. So that hedge does me a really good job of protecting against Santa Ana winds. But you can also use an IV organics product. And then you're going to take into consideration protecting the side where that prevailing damaging wind comes in. So that's different than the sunscull. That's that sunscull is going to be protected on the south, southwest side. Damage from for me from Santa Ana winds. I'm going to protect it on the east side. And you need to take that into consideration as well. Probably a good reason to just consider when you're whitewashing your tree, you might as well

24:06whitewash the whole tree. Yeah, especially while they're young. Once a tree is well established, I can't climb up and whitewash my 15 foot tree table. But now they've had the eight or 10 years to grow and establish. And I've protected them while they were young. And they're able to withstand that type of damage now, making sure that you're protecting against the wind stresses. Every good is important. And it can be a winter stress in a pole area. It could be an icy wind. It could be frost damage that comes in a situation like that. The same situation you want to make sure that you're protecting your tree. So another thing that a lot of people don't realize is, oh, I have a timer system for my irrigation. So my irrigation comes on every five days for 30 minutes or every other day for 10 minutes or whatever it's set at. But when you have a weather stress element, it's going to take place. You always want to make sure that you are pre irrigating, regardless of

25:09what your timer system does for you. If you have a very hot summer situation where it's been 85 degrees and 87 degrees and 84 degrees and then all of a sudden it's 105. So that's a weather stress element. That is going to do some severe damage if you are not fully irrigated before that event takes place. Now it's pretty easy. You can get the weather on your phone. You can watch the six o'clock news. They're going to tell you what it's going to do seven or ten days out. So if I see that there's going to be a weather stress element that's going to start on Friday, then on Wednesday and Thursday, I'm irrigating everything. Regardless of what my timer system is set up, I'm going to do supplemental irrigation and make sure that everything has been thoroughly saturated before that weather stress element takes place. So in the low desert, it's not 85. It's

26:15102 and then it jumps up to 117. Exactly. So those are the kinds of things that we need to take into consideration here. No doubt. And I've worked with urban backyard growers. I've worked with commercial growers over the years and we had a couple of years ago. We had just such an event that took place in late July and it had been in the 80s and 90s and then all of a sudden it bumped up to two days of 117. Even closer to the coast, even in Orange County. I had Apple project at the Irvine Field Station at that time. They recorded 115 and 117 in Irvine, California. Fortunately, I preurigated everything and everything was fine. But in going around and consulting with some avocado growers down in San Diego County, it was blatantly obvious who understood it and who did.

27:18You drive by one orchard and it looked like it had been hit by a blowtorch. And the one right next store was beautiful, bright green, no problems because they did exactly that. They went in and they preurigated. And I don't mean seven minutes. I mean, you thoroughly saturate that ground. You want everything to have 100% of your irrigation opportunity. That makes a huge difference on controlling physical stress. And along with that, you know I'm a big advocate of mulching. I was just going to say what about mulch? Mulching is also going to help to prevent against that severe stress element. A good 4 to 6 inch layer of mulch on the ground is going to keep your ground temperatures cooler by 15 to 20 degrees. It's going to make better use of your irrigation water and keep that water in the top of that soil by 50% or better over and above unmulsed soil.

28:21So there's a couple of huge advantages for mulch. On top of that, it increases your bioactivity. Exactly. I always go back to what's the worst shore in the landscape pulling weeds. A good layer of mulch stops about 75 to 85% of weed seed germination. So if I can... And then the ones that do germinate... They're easy to pull. Right. As long as you get them before they go to seed, you're not reproducing your problem. And you have a nice clean orchard with a nice mulch layer on it. The trees are happy. The bioactivity is good. The irrigation is good. The soil is nice and cool during the hottest part of the year. There's four great advantages to mulching. And I always get especially in the desert. I get people that come back and say, well, you know, we have an ant problem or we have a scorpion problem or aren't there going to be termites in the mulch? Number one, termites live in old big dead wood. You know, they'll live in a tree trunk. They're not going to live in a four inch long piece of mulch.

29:23So it does not encourage termites in any way, shape or call. If you have issues with other insects or scorpions or ants or whatever, I'm not going to set aside my mulching program because of another issue. I'm going to control that other issue. Yep. So you just have to make sure you're keeping ahead of it. And so that goes directly to my six six rural six inches of woody mulch six foot diameter basin around every single tree. There's one more piece and you and I have talked about this before, grow something in the basin because I've found that cow peas or sweet potatoes as a ground cover in the basin around the tree that can drop the ground temperature 40 to 50 degrees in the summertime. And that's the difference between that's huge. That's the difference between your trees making it and not. Absolutely, that's huge. And especially on a younger planting, the trees have been in just recently planted or they've been in the ground one or two years.

30:23I love companion planting. I've planted all kinds of different things around my fruit trees over the years. Different ground covers and companion planting is wonderful, especially if you're using something that isn't a perennial. If you're using an annual crop that you can change out a couple of times a year or something that you can buy annual type crop that you can grow for a year or two years in that spot and then control it. But controlling it is important as trees get larger. Companion plants aren't going to do quite as well. So they're getting too much shade eventually. So companion planting for me is important especially for the first year to five years in the ground for fruit trees. You're already irrigating. You've already got your mulch layer there. You're already taking care of that ground. So you might as well get the most out of that space. If I'm not going to get the peaches on my mid-pride peach tree for the first year in the ground I can certainly get tomatoes. I know. You're getting making tool use of that space. Yeah. The thing that we found with

31:25things other than the cow peas which we give away at our fruit tree program or sweet potatoes, they can be on the same irrigation system and timing as the fruit trees. Whereas tomatoes and watermelons and that kind of stuff have to be watered more often. So it's a little bit in the desert. It's a little bit sketchier about whether you can make sure you don't overwater the tree or I mean water. So you take care of the companion plant. Yeah. Exactly. I think my situation here is a little bit more forgiving. I'm able to grow some of those annual vegetable crops with the same irrigation pattern that I'm using on trees, especially young trees. Because I'm irrigating young trees more frequently than I'm irrigating the established orchard material. Yeah. Excellent. But you know the most important consideration is be ahead of it. Make sure you're not whitewashing after the damage is done. Make sure you're not irrigating after the damage is done. You know the damage is going to come. You know those grass elements will be there. So you need to be

32:29ahead of those and have that done. The day that you whitewash a tree the first time is the day you plant in the ground. I'm end of that. Awesome. Thank you, sir. Absolutely. So Tom, you've mentioned a couple of times already about this thing called successive ripening. And I love successive ripening especially around my peach bundle which is desert gold peach which ripens in the middle of May. Tropic snow peach which ripens at the beginning of June in mid-pride peach which ripens at the end of June. So it spreads out my harvest. But you can do it with other things as well. Can you talk about successive ripening? Sure Greg. And by the way you've been using that three peach combination for many years and then there are all excellent varieties. Those three trees in the footprint of where one orchard tree would be planted instead of that two weeks worth of fruit. Now you have a month and a half worth of fruit out of that same space. That's

33:29the urban fruit tree culture. That's what it's all about. So you can do the same with other varieties. They're plum combinations. They're apricot combinations you can use that will give you that successive ripening. There's also other varieties along with it. Now I'm in a little different situation than the Phoenix desert. I can grow avocados and other subtropicals and I can have something all the time along those lines. But you have a great opportunity out there with citrus. Yes. You've got lemons. You've got lines. You've got mandarins. You have oranges. Grapefruit. Pommelose. Comequats. You've got a list of citrus a mile long and if you look at harvest periods for citrus, they vary. I can plant an oral blanco grapefruit for the winter and a real red or a star ruby for the summer. I can basically have almost 12 months worth of successive ripening grapefruit.

34:30I can put in a Valencia type orange for the summer and a naval type orange for the winter or a Trovita or something that's desert adaptable. With two or three different orange varieties, I can have 12 months worth of oranges. I can put in a Satzuma mandarin or a Kishu mandarin. I can put in a Clementine. I can put in a Goldnugger or a Tango and I have eight or nine or ten months worth of successive ripening mandarin. So I think the opportunity to incorporate citrus in the desert, anybody that's not planting citrus and Phoenix is missing out because that's going to give you that extended season. Your late summer season out there isn't really very forgiving for some of the stone fruit. You don't really want a September variety of peach and Phoenix because it's going to cook on the tree. You're limited to those early season stone fruits but it's unlimited what

35:31you can do after that with citrus. So you'll be able to take advantage of your different growing conditions out there and make good use of that backyard space. You've got lots of opportunities. Yeah and so the desert's a little bit different than down where you're at. I found that we could harvest citrus regularly off of our trees from November. The naval oranges were in November, December, January. The Trovita oranges were January, February. Arizona sweets were a little later than that. I was actually harvesting citrus from November to well into June. Excellent. At my property. So if you're getting seven or eight months worth of successive ripening citrus. Yeah exactly. That's a great opportunity. I am a huge fan of citrus. So I have a pretty substantial collection of varieties. So I can go out and harvest citrus out of my yard every single day of the

36:33year. And that nice. Yeah. What's cool. And interestingly enough, here in Asheville, this is not a citrus growing space, but I have four citrus trees that I brought with me, three that I brought with me and one that I got here and all four of them are producing. Excellent. I do keep them in the greenhouse during the coldest part of the winter but I'm getting fruit. And one of them that I got here was a root stock. And it makes limes. And the limes are really amazing. Oh, excellent. Yeah. Yeah. I talk to people all the time in the Midwest and on the east coast that have a sunroom or a greenhouse and they'll have three, four, five citrus in containers. And so they roll them out in the spring after danger of frost and roll them on the patio and as soon as it's going to get cold in the fall, they wheel them back into the

37:34sunroom and grow them in there for the winter season. And there are people harvesting all kinds of great citrus. All over this country in climates where it's not adaptable to planted in the ground. But container cultures are great option. And having it portable like that and movable makes that easy to do and makes it all worthwhile. Yeah. And that being said, container culture in the desert is not recommended and it's very hard. Because of the severe heat stress and the sun stress that you get, it's more difficult to grow container material in desert definitely. In fact, a lot of the wholesale growers that I've dealt with out there over the years, they have a growing philosophy they call pot in pot. And what they do is they dig a trench. They set 15 gallon containers down into the ground and bury soil around them. And then when they plant a tree in a 15, they nest it into that container in the ground. So they're not growing it above ground. They're actually growing it

38:34below ground. Oh, that's cool. Keeps that soil temperature much cooler around the the root ball of that tree. Now, the one thing they have to do is they have to go through about every 60 to 90 days and give it a spin. Otherwise, you'll get rooting through the bottom of the container that'll go through the second container and into the ground. And when you want to pull that tree out, it's rooted into the ground. So they just give it a quarter turn about every 60 days or so. And that breaks off any of those little feeder roots that have grown through the primary container. And it allows the trees to be blown over the near. Wow. Okay. So thank you. I never knew that. And that's one of the things I love about our friendship is that I get to learn new things. Even after 25 years. Absolutely. I'll throw this in again. And I know I've already said it. When it comes to successive ripening, you have to consider what your true objectives and everybody says commercial grower does this. A commercial grower does one thing. They grow a lot of avaliyity. They come in

39:40all at one time and do their thinning. They come in all at one time and do their harvest and they get their crop to market and they get their check and they get paid. It's what they do for a living. So commercial grower wants a lot of fruit in a short period of time. Backyard grower wants exactly the opposite. A little bit of fruit all the time. I don't need an over abundance of anything. I don't want 200 pounds of anything at one time. I want varieties where I can get enough fruit for myself, my family and some friends. And then move on to the next variety. So that successive ripening for a backyard grower is extremely important. You want to make sure that you're making good use of your space, multi-planning varieties to give you extended seasons and don't let your trees get too big. They're too hard to manage. It's too hard to make good use of all that fruit. So a little bit of fruit all the time. That's what it's all about. Awesome. Thank you for your time today, Tom. We really appreciate it. Greg, it's always a pleasure. I have so enjoyed working with you over the years

40:45and your friendship is awesome and your program is awesome. I love what you're doing and how you're promoting and the education opportunities that you provide for people are incredible. Awesome, thanks. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Urban Farm Podcast. Remember to listen for tips, advice and resources to help you on your journey with Urban Farm. You can find us on the web at UrbanFarm.org or send us an email to podcastaturbanfarm.org. In the words of Vincent Van Gogh, great things are done by a series of small things brought together. Be encouraged that with each lesson learned and skill developed, you are one step closer in the direction of your dreams.