This week, our Edible Plant Nursery continued expanding another delicious project – Avocados. When we first started our Agricultural Training Center (ATC) 12 years ago, we bought some young avocado trees as part of our Edible Plant Nursery. They have now grown large enough to bear fruit for the past few years. We took many of the seeds from that fruit, sprouted them, and planted the seedlings in our nursery to grow a little bigger.

This week, Wilner and the staff used some of the best, sturdiest of those seedlings for grafting. They took freshly cut stems of new growth, called scions, from our known good-quality avocado trees and grafted them onto the hardy rootstock from our own seedlings. The seedlings, if left ungrafted, might or might not produce good fruit, but by grafting scions from a known good “mother tree,” we are assured of getting good quality fruit from the grafted tree. And we will get fruit 2-4 years earlier than waiting to see if the ungrafted tree was any good.

In a few more years, many people will be enjoying delicious nutrition from these new avocado trees. A family with a good avocado tree in their yard will have fruit, friends, and even some money from selling any excess harvest. When you support our “Development for Sustainability” outreaches, you are giving a gift for many years to come.

God bless you.

Rad Hazelip, Assistant Executive Director