On a hot June day, the Grade 7 class from Glenrosa Middle School visited Calissi Farms in Kelowna to learn how fruit trees are grown from the ground up. The farm, owned and operated by James Calissi, is a working nursery that supplies fruit trees to growers throughout the Okanagan Valley.
The land has been in the Calissi family for generations. The forested land was cleared by horses and dynamite when Calissi’s grandfather began farming the property. Today, the 13-acre nursery grows approximately 10,000 trees each year.
“I grew up here and was raised here, and I eventually converted the orchard to a nursery over time,” says Calissi.
“What we do is we grow fruit trees for farmers. So it’s not a nursery like going to a garden center where you find trees and shrubs. Growing fruit trees is all we do and we sell them to orchards in the valley here, all the way from Osoyoos to Vernon.”
The tour began with a look at rootstock—young tree bases that will eventually support grafted fruit varieties. Some of the rootstock comes from Oregon and Germany.
“With apples, there are about 20 rootstocks to choose from,” Calissi says. “You can plant any variety onto it, and it gives you that size of tree.”
Students learned the difference between budding and grafting. Calissi showed how a bud is placed into the bark of a young tree.
When the class asked about farming challenges, Calissi said cold winters are the biggest risk. “The heat isn’t a problem. We irrigate everything,” he says.
The farm uses about three million gallons of water a year. Before irrigation was developed in the 1920s, orchards couldn’t have grown here at all.
