Quest for Perfect Sapling – Continues

There is a quiet disappointment for people like us that only those who work with the soil can truly understand. It begins with the vision of planting a new tree, of filling an empty corner of the orchard with something that will one day bear fruit and shade. But that excitement fades quickly when I start looking for good-quality cultivars.

Most nurseries are simply shops that sell whatever they can. Labels are vague, sometimes misleading, and often no one can tell me the exact rootstock used. For a naturalist who believes in diversity, resilience, and the quiet art of matching the right tree to the right soil, this lack of precision feels disheartening.

Recently, I was informed by a friend who heard from another of his friends, that a nursery about two hours away by car had some good variety of blackberry plants. I had been searching for healthy brambles for a long time and thought they would make a fine addition to my orchard. Acting as a lower layer in my food forest, they would provide delicious berries for breakfast and for preserves. I called up the owner of the nursery, who confirmed that they had some large-fruited, air-layered blackberry saplings in good health. My confidence rose at the prospect of growing juicy berries in the years to come. While imagining them, I could picture a bowl of fresh blackberries for breakfast, or canned into a preserve to be enjoyed under winter sun with toast and butter.

After a couple of wrong turns, and with help from some kind children, I reached the small village where the nursery was located. In the hills, popular map apps don’t always work well, but the journey itself felt promising. Excited and happy to see the size of the saplings in the nursery, I asked for the blackberries. To my astonishment, the owner pointed out a group of saplings that did not resemble blackberries in any way. They were Jamun, the Java plum (Syzygium cumini). When I questioned him, he insisted that these were indeed “black berries”, spelled with a space in between, fruits that were black in colour. I had to explain, somewhat wearily, that just because a fruit is black doesn’t make it a black berry and this one was not even a berry in a true sense.

Disheartened, I still ended up buying a few other fruit trees as consolation, feeling that the long trip, time, and fuel needed some justification. On the drive back, I couldn’t help thinking about how common this confusion has become.

There seems to be a vast misunderstanding when it comes to fruits in India. Mandarins and Tangerines are called oranges, oranges themselves are called malta, and clementines – few seem to know them at all. Raspberries are confused with cape gooseberries, which are called rasbhari in Hindi, meaning “filled with juice”. Blackcurrants are passed off as everything from falsa (Grewia asiatica) to black mulberries, and even the black mulberries themselves are frequently sold as blackberries. Lime is sold as lemon, and lemons are advertised as “big lemons”. Gooseberries are mostly unheard of, and some knowledgeable chaps mention amla, the Indian Gooseberry instead.

The nursery owners usually have no idea about the rootstocks or scions used. Ask them which cultivar of apple it is, and you’ll get a blank stare, followed by a confident answer by some nursery manager or owner naming a popular apple variety that looks nothing like the plant in front of you.

Online nurseries are an even bigger pain. Most of them cater to city dwellers who are content growing anything green on their balconies. The nurseries earn well from them. It doesn’t matter which variety is sent, as long as the plant looks good. Out of my desperation for good verities, I sometimes end up ordering online too, only to be reminded not to do it again. Recently, I ordered a pomelo and some kumquats. Instead of pomelo, a plumeria arrived, and instead of sweet kumquats, I received narangi plants, the sour chinese ornamental mandarins often sold as decorative plants.

Another incident comes to mind. I had been searching for sour cherry trees for my orchard and finally found a nursery that claimed to have them. After several days of messages and photo exchanges, I travelled there only to find that the owner, a businessman from NCR who ran the nursery as a side business, was not present. His gardener, more of a watchman, showed me the trees. Thankfully, they looked healthy and well-grafted. I asked if they were the sour variety. He replied that they were sour when raw and sweet when ripe, which, in a literal sense, was true, though it missed the point entirely. I wanted the true sour cherries for preserves, the Prunus cerasus, not sweet cherries picked early for eating raw. A horticulturist or a nature fellow would know the difference.

No one seems to know about pollination requirements either. It is always better to do one’s own research or take along someone who truly understands the plants. Not every fruit tree is self-fertile and many need cross-pollination, And to top it not all varieties are compatible. A Japanese plum cannot pollinate a European one. An oriental citrus fruit cannot pollinate a European citrus. These small details make all the difference between success and failure in an orchard. Blossoming times of various fruits also matter when it comes to cross-pollination.

When I walk through my own orchard, I realise how much patience this search demands. Each tree here has its own story. Some were grafted by local hands and have adapted beautifully to the mountain climate. Others were bought with hope but failed to thrive. The older varieties – pears with a pink blush, apples scented faintly of wildflowers (like hara pichola and rhymer), apricots with a taste of honey, green small plums that tasted like mini sugar filled truffles are vanishing fast. Perhaps the true cultivars worth preserving are not the ones displayed in glossy nursery catalogues but the ones that have survived neglect, storms, and time. Those that continue to bear fruit quietly in old courtyards and forgotten terraces. An orchard with a mix of modern cultivars and old heirloom varieties is a dream that I have been chasing.

Lack of good-quality saplings continues to be one of the biggest challenges I face year after year. It has been almost a decade since I have been searching for good brambles like gooseberries, currants, and some delicious cold hardy fruits.

Despite the challenges, every time I manage to graft a cutting from an old, hardy tree, it feels like reclaiming a bit of what’s being lost. A small act of hope, rooted in the belief that the orchard, like nature itself, rewards patience and care far more than convenience.

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