White sapote collection

[harveyc]

My first encounter with white sapote, Casimiroa edlus, was in December 2007 when visiting some nurseries in southern California (Papaya Tree Nursery, which had the 'McDill' cultivar, and Ben Porier, who grows 'Vernon'). I bought a tree from Papaya Tree ($$$$) and had it survive my first winter okay. The following year I learned of other varieties and bought some seedling trees from Exotica and started grafting. Similar to my history of growing bananas, once I got started, collecting varieties became an obsession. Four the past two years I've had six trees in the ground and some more in pots, with eight varieties on hand.

I've been hoping to visit the collection of Bob Chambers near Fallbrook, California for a few years. A group of us finally organized a trip to his groves on May 24th, the day after Bob's 88th birthday. Bob came to visit with us and share his thoughts. He began planting white sapote in 1975. The late Paul Thomson, co-founder of the California Rare Fruit Growers, did most of the grafting for Bob in the early years. Bob and his late wife Clytia, had approximately 45 varieties on their property, though some might no longer exist. Our visit was a "work party" that included clearing invasive plants that were competing with white sapote, identifying and marking trees, and collecting scions for ourselves and others to help preserve this germplasm. Our group has distributed hundreds of scions to a few dozen folks (I'm tapped out!).

I've added some photos to this little web site of mine: WhiteSapote.com and will be adding more over the next several days.

I also recorded this video of some grafting done with some of the scions at my place:

YouTube - ‪WhiteSapoteGrafting.m4v‬‏

[Bob3]

Interesting... The white sapote is next on my list of goodies to start messing with.
(just as soon as I get done with my figs).

[Greenie]

Thanks for sharing!

[Patty in Wisc]

Oh-sure-fine Harvey...trying to get me hooked on another plant that I don't have room for LOL.
Hey, thanks for the time to show this...very well done - like "How Harvey Packs a Banana Plant". I watched it twice ... nice w/ the details. I learned more. I bet Michael filmed this (?) He's getting very good! Thanks again.
(Hi Michael)

[harveyc]

Hi, Patty, and Michael says "hi".

No, my wife Linda recorded that video. It was shot with a Panasonic point and shoot camera and the unfortunate thing is that it has no way to shut off the auto-focus so it sometimes was focusing on the ground instead of my grafting.

I made a couple of other attempts using my DSLR (Canon 7D), mounted on a tripod, using manual focus. The videos came out very sharp! But, alas, there are periods of time that I was working and preparing the scion above the frame being shot and my tripod didn't have the sense to adjust itself. I'm going to try again (probably on chestnuts next time), and will include a whip and tongue graft.

White sapote are very nice and can be very productive (one person is recorded as picking about half of an annual crop from one tree and had 3,000 pounds of fruit). Go for it! lol