Tags: 2018, Bill Brandt, Fruit Trees, Meeting, Season 2018-2019

For our December event, Bill Brandt presented Tropical Fruit Trees.

Bill Brandt had an Agriculture class at 12 years old and a wonderful home garden that summer with corn, pumpkin and sweet potato fun!

Buying his first home was his next opportunity to garden in 1972. Fruit trees and vegetables were his mainstays until cymbidium and alstromaria added color to his garden.

Around Y2K he joined California Rare Fruit Growers, and added rare fruit growing with avocados, litchi, cherimoya, and mangos etc. … and an infatuation with apples: pink-fleshed, russeted, heirloom etc. (50 varieties and growing: Spitzenberg, Cox Orange Pippin, Orleans Reinette, Pink Pearl, etc.).

From 1973 on, Bill has enjoyed grafting “scions” of different varieties on to most of his fruit trees. Since 2011, his team from CRFG has visited seven high schools each year from Carpenteria to Sylmar where we teach high school students how to build apple trees by grafting named variety apple “scions” onto rootstock. They each then take home the apple tree they built!