¿Jhonny Appleseed?

Or any type of seed, for that matter.

Tree nurseries.

I don’t know too much about them now. But I better learn fast.

In my first couple days at my new office and talking with the staff, I will spend most of my time with the municipal nursery.

The nursery serves several purposes.

It provides trees to towns within the county for municipal purposes, gives trees to schools to help with environmental education, and uses the trees as parts of reforestation projects. The nursery also sells trees to private landowners.

(A picture would look really nice here. I should’ve brought my camera to the nursery today. Maybe I’ll bring it tomorrow. Just know that the picture below is a Google Image picture of a tree nursery to give you and idea of what’s going on)



Deforestation is a big problem in this county, and I think the nursery can really help with the reforestation.

I think they produce 20,000 trees per year. But I might have misheard this number. It’s a big operation.

The nursery is a cooperatively operated by the municipality, the military, and the neighborhood where the nursery is located. The neighborhood provides the space. The military and the municipality provide the labor, while the municipality does the managing.

Right now, the nursery works almost exclusively with ornamental plants and trees, and I don’t think it’s an organic operation (I can’t be sure but I don’t think I saw green label products in the storage shed). A large portion of the land is currently occupied by plantain crops that the neighborhood shares.

For now, I will work with my coworkers from the municipality to learn the lay of the land in the nursery. I will talk to the current employees about what they do, what they think could be done better, what they think management could do better, where they see an opportunity for growth, etc.

I have a few ideas I want to implement, but I want to make sure that the staff is receptive to them. They would be to make the place more organic — they already do some composting but I want to increase that. I also want to expand into fruits and vegetables, maybe work with some schools and communities on gardens to promote better nutrition and some environmental education. I also want to focus on native species.

But these will take some time. It’s only been two days.

I know this post was light on hilarious details. Explaining nursery management isn’t exactly the best source for entertainment. In the future, you might see pictures of Ian with a machete or a map of the nursery and a week-by-week feature on the life of a tree. But for now, I’m just explaining the nursery, in general.

Something I learned about growing apples in Ecuador (in relation to the title of this post). It is difficult to grow apples in Ecuador because they don’t have four seasons here. Apple trees need to have a “winter” in order to have a “summer.” To simulate winter for apple trees in Ecuador, you have to climb up in the tree and take all the leaves (they don’t have an autumn when they all fall off naturally).

Because the house I am living at now doesn’t have space for a garden, I might be able to use a plot in the garden for my personal garden.