Good morning, {nombre}!
Have you ever eaten an orange so good that you almost cried, and then tried the same variety somewhere else and thought, "this is nothing like it"?
Well, you're not crazy, and you weren't ripped off. That same variety can be a godsend in one plot and a complete disaster four kilometers away. Today I'm going to tell you why.
When farmers decide to plant a new variety, it's not like changing shampoo. It's more like buying a used tractor that, even if you've checked it from top to bottom, you don't know if it will perform well until you put it to work.
And then come the puddles, the hills, the hard ground... and that's when you see if you got it right or if you have to push it.
First, the soil. No two are alike. Some are sandy, others are muddy, others are a kind of crushed rock with aspirations of being soil. There are soils with good drainage where roots live like in a spa, and others that get waterlogged and end up suffocating the plant.
Also influential are pH, salinity, organic matter, and even what critters live below. As you can see, growing good fruit is a complex process...
Then there's the rootstock, also called the "graft." This is what goes beneath the graft, the part of the tree that goes into the ground, the one that has to deal with mud, fungi, drought, rocks, bacteria, and everything that doesn't show up in pictures.
And depending on which rootstock you use, the variety you put on top can be tall, short, strong, whimsical, or simply refuse to speak to you.
I'll give you a real example: here in Valencia, some farmers planted a "Hass" avocado variety on a Mexican rootstock on a sunny hillside and got a textbook yield.
The neighbor, who used the same variety but grafted it onto a different rootstock and in a wetter lowland area, had to replant in the third year. And they were less than ten minutes apart by bike.
That's why every time we try a new variety, we do it with one eye on the plant, another on the sky, and another on the bank account. (Yes, you know farmers develop superpowers over time.)
It's not enough for a variety to be good in general; it has to be good here, in this soil, with this climate, this rootstock, and this patience.
Only then do we know that what we are harvesting and sending to our customers is truly quality:
There is research, of course. Agricultural centers conduct trials with different combinations in various areas, but nothing replaces the real trial in your own field. We, for example, usually test new varieties on a small plot before going all in.
It's like conducting a job interview for a tree, with a performance evaluation, attitude towards life, and stress tolerance (of the tree... and the farmer).
And even if you have everything well organized, you never know how a variety will respond until years pass. Because the climate changes, the soil also changes, and what is a sure bet today, tomorrow can be Russian roulette.
It's a constant trial and error process. A bit like cooking without a recipe, but instead of ruining dinner, you ruin three hectares.
So why do we do it? Because when we get it right, when you find the ideal combination of variety, rootstock, and soil, the result is spectacular. Fruit that's a pleasure to look at, pick, and bite into.
And as stubborn country folks that we are, we love to search for those hidden gems in the earth, as if they were treasure.
So now you know, every time you try a fruit that seems out of this world, behind it are years of testing, errors, trees that don't grow, plots that get waterlogged, and farmers who persevere.
Because as we say around here, “every land has its fruit, and every fruit its story.”
A big hug from the field,
See you next week,
