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Heirloom Fruit and Nut Explorers

Scroll to the bottom of the page to order Amigo’s book Know Your Soil.

FYI, There is a ghost in our website.  If you see the Dr. Van Fleet Rose for sale, it is the ghost. We can’t see it on our end, but some folks do and have tried to order it.  Until the rest of our plants go live, it is not available. So, consider yourself special if you do see it.  Sorry for any inconvenience. 

All of your purchases fund our Non Profit, and your your tax-deductible donations help keep us going! Thank you for whatever ways you support us!

We should be back on track with our bareroot sales starting November 1, 2023. Be sure we have you on our email list for notifications about when our plants are available.

We will repost all variety information and  pictures soon 

We have about 262 varieties of 21 species and offer around 150 of those varieties each year.  Fortunately, we discovered that the trees that we experimentally chip budded last year, withstood the late freezes and hailstorm of 2022. Needless to say, we are changing over to that grafting method, but it is a two-year process.

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We are not your average nursery!

We have passionately searched to re-discover the living, historic plants still scattered across Northern California, left over from the Gold Rush. We have personally found these trees and have taken cuttings directly from the ancient, 100+ year old grandmother trees that are still alive in these ghostly orchards. We are a very small nursery and offer very rare and exclusive plants, some we may have only just found. So, there are a limited supply of some varieties. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

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Plant Pickups are pre-scheduled at
Sweetland Garden and Mercantile
North San Juan, CA or Weiss Brother’s Nursery in Grass Valley, CA

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We urge you to sign up for our email list and like our Facebook for early notification of when our plants will be available. 

Email us at thefgi@gmail.com and request to be added to the email list. 

 

Note on Shipping

Shipping costs to the East Coast are $80-$140. If you just get one tree it is quite expensive, but if you get a few trees it’s not so bad. We make no money on shipping as these are UPS Shipping costs.

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THANK YOU FOR ALL THE SUPPORT!

Thank you Everyone for supporting this project!  While the nursery sales normally provide approximately 50% of our operating budget, we rely on donors and occasional grants. In the past we have received generous grants from UNFI, the Gaia Foundation, the Bill Graham Foundation and the Latrobe Fund. With the pandemic there has been a drop off in grants and donations. So, we are grateful for your purchases and generous donations.
In the face of modern industrial agriculture we have lost 95% of our genetic diversity, and with your help all of us are saving the very best gems still growing throughout California’s Gold Rush Countrysides.

If you feel our work is important, please consider a donation to help save these endangered varieties. Thank you!

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Happy Planting!

 

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If you have questions, please contact us at   (530) 292-3619 or thefgi@gmail.com


We accept orders only via the website

 

Click on the pictures to view the varieties

 

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20 Oz. Pippin Apple

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$37.00
Out of stock
1
Product Details

American heirloom from the 1700s New York. Felix had the Twenty Ounce listed in his catalogs during the1880s. This large apple gets its name from the size of it's fruit, with many exceeding 12 ounces. The bright yellow-green skin has red stripes. The delicious subacid flesh is creamy white, coarse, firm and very juicy. One of the most renowned baking heirlooms, it makes great juice and cider, good fresh or dried. The tree comes into bearing young, is vigorous and crops heavily nearly every year. Ripens in September at 4100'.

The grandmother tree grows at Bucks Ranch, Nevada County near Orleans Flat mining camp at 4100 feet on the San Juan Ridge overlooking the Middle Fork of the Yuba River. The Buck brothers homesteaded this property in the late 1870’s, in part to provide fruit for the thriving mining camp. Amigo’s odyssey with Felix Gillet began in 1970 when he stumbled on this abandoned homestead with more than 75 thriving ancient fruit and nut trees, planted by the Bucks’ from stock purchased from Felix Gillet, the “local” nursery guy, a days horse ride away in Nevada City. The only thing tending those trees in the 70s were the bears! We began harvesting the fruit and nuts, and discovered their amazing quality, and the trees were healthy despite annual onslaughts from the bears and heavy snows. Now cared for once again by the current owner, the trees get no irrigation, fertilization or pest management, just occasional pruning. And they still produce great crops, 140 years after they were planted!

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