California Rare Fruit Growers – West LA Chapter
because the best things in life do grow on trees
Start getting those recipes out and those pans buttered. Our annual CRFG-WLA holiday party is almost upon us. Potluck as always so please bring your favorite dish to share with your fellow fruit growers.
Yup, forgot it in previous post:
10943 De Soto Avenue,
Chatsworth, CA 91311
This is just south of the DeSoto exit on the 118 at Rinaldi. Entrance is easy to miss, so keep eyes peeled.
Oh, do you guys have a treat in store! We are going to Paradise Nursery in Chatsworth. This is a family-owned nursery that propagates and grows its own beautiful trees (primarily fruit, including many Persian specialties you won’t find elsewhere). Plus many of their trees are ENORMOUS! Walking around the grounds is sort of like walking through a forest, and it gives you a rare chance to see what your trees will look like full grown. Paradise of course also carries trees small enough to fit in the back of my Toyota Corolla, so don’t think you won’t also be able to bring home trophies from the hunt.
Cribbing shamelessly from their website :
“(Owner) Dr. Majid Jahanbin is an Agricultural Engineer with a doctorate from the University of Bologna, Italy. He fell in love with plants at the age of seven, while visiting his father’s farm in Abadan, Iran. He has over 50 years of professional experience and hosts a popular radio show on 670AM KIRN, giving gardening tips and taking questions on air in Farsi.
His son Ashkan Jahanbin now runs the nursery and is a horticulturalist with degrees in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Horticultural from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Ashkan consults and designs edible gardens and home orchards that are beautiful, enjoyable, and environmentally sustainable.”
Ash has kindly agreed to meet with us and answer any questions we have about his trees. There is parking; but on a Saturday morning it might be somewhat limited, so car pooling is highly suggested.
Also fellow chapter member Alex Silber’s Papaya Tree Nursery is only a couple of freeway exits away from Paradise and if you have never been there, it would be well worth your time to arrange with Alex to stop in before or after. Since he operates quite literally out of his family’s backyard, he can’t take all of us but said he would welcome individuals who call him first.
It was left at our October 13th meeting (Edgar Valdivia on Cherimoyas and Figs). Please let me know if it’s yours.
Because many of you have asked about the attractive permanent name badges some of our members wear, we are going to have a sign-up for them at the October 13th meeting.
To order a badge give a check or cash for $15 to our treasurer Andreé at the time of the order, i.e., before the order is placed. The West LA CRFG name badge has the distinctive CRFG logo and two lines of engraved black text (see badges worn by Sofia Ames and Jane Beer). The badge is roughly 2″ x 3″ and has a magnetic clasp, although you may request a pin clip if you prefer.
Cribbed from the excellent newsletter Margaret Frane writes and sends to our members:
“Edgar is well known in the CRFG throughout California for developing great tasting (and beautiful) dragon fruit (pitahaya) varieties. You can purchase his dragon fruit varieties, such as Tricia and Edgar’s Baby, in many specialty nurseries. Edgar grows well over 100 other fruit such as at least 20 varieties of cherimoya, lucuma, mulberry, and figs. You can see a small smaple of them on the CRFG, Inc., “Let’s Find Out” series #12: https://www.crfg.org/piwigo/picture.php?/4733/category/53.
To hear other examples of Edgar speaking, listen and watch him on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZtoyxK-Fqs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR-Zt-c0gu0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqrOkUAxYCE ”
Edgar Valdivia is one of the great fruit growers and researchers in the Southland with a specific interest in developing new varieties of fruit. Seven years ago he counted 112 different types of fruit in his orchard and he has surely developed even more by now. It is the casual way he imparts a lifetime of fruit growing wisdom, however, that makes him a living legend and a cherished speaker. We are extremely lucky to have snared him for our October 13th meeting. He will be talking to us about cherimoyas and figs. Do not miss him!!
From Bruce Blavin, our old Chair: “Our chapter is extraordinarily lucky to be getting this opportunity to tour a truly inspirational home garden. The owner has been growing fruit for more then 30 years and has literally hundreds of successful grafts. He continues to graft and cultivate some of the rarest varieties of fruit trees from around the world. The citrus collection is truly amazing and there is also a wide variety of Cherimoya, and even a rollinia tree. He has researched irrigation systems and has also planted a unique ground cover, which is drought tolerant.
His gardening passions extend beyond rare fruit trees and he has put together a world-class collection of Cycads, which he recently added to from a number of private collectors. There are also chickens, peacocks and other fowl on his property. The home is in a unique micro climate not too far from the beach and therefore spared the extreme heat and/or frost problems some of us occasionally face. If you are fortunate enough to make the cut off, be sure to bring a pad and paper. Our host is extremely knowledgeable and excellent at answering complicated questions. I never left him without having learned something new.”