Class Five: Fruits and Nuts

Class five was all about fruits and nuts (insert your own joke here), but it really should have been entitled the Wisdom of Experience.

Millions of peaches...

Our emcee for the evening's trip through fruit production for the home gardener was Dr. David Lockwood.  Dr. Lockwood is a fount of knowledge.  He joined the faculty of UT's Department of Plant and Soil Sciences in the same year my father graduated high school.  To say he's an expert on the topic is a gross understatement.

It be came readily apparent as Dr. Lockwood used a set of well-worn bypass pruners to zip through a pruning demonstration on a scaffold he'd cut from a peach tree, the man has amassed the amount of knowledge on fruit production that only comes with a lot of time, a lot of travel, and a lot of listening.

Dr. Lockwood teaches a study abroad class on wine production. In Italy. These kids have no idea how lucky they are.

It was fascinating to hear Dr. Lockwood and absorb some of what he shared.  Based on the reaction of my classmates, I think several backyard orchards have already been planted in Williamson County!  For this gardener, my main lesson was the wisdom of experience.   I know that's why I'm interested in gardening.  It's the ultimate science experiment-- gathering knowledge, setting a trial, watching how it plays out, and then learning your lessons for next year.

While I'll never have 4+ decades of experience in large-scale fruit production, I would like to someday have that kind of knowledge about something to pass down.  Whether it's gardening or working on cars, or just life, that kind of experience has value for us as we gather it and for others as we share it.

I'd like to grow some blueberries or blackberries, but I think that's a project for another year.  There are way too many variables involved (location, plant selection, soil composition, weather, pests, deer) to get a good crop.  Seriously, it's hard.  If the professional grower feature by my friends at the Ag department only gets one crop every five years (above video), it's hard.

But for real, y'all - don't let me go out and buy a bunch of grapevines and act like I'm gonna turn into Charles Shaw on my .20 of an acre in suburbia.