How To Grow Your Own Pecan Pie

How To Grow Your Own Pecan Pie

- Mark Diacono

MANY Christmases ago, I bought my daughter a globe. We turned it, locating places she knows from films and books. One spring bedtime, spinning and spotting, we found Calgary, Canada, where a friend was working. I’d just read about new pecan planting in the southern end of Canada and, in one of those lightbulb moments that’s fatal to those with space for another plant, I realised we shared a similar latitude.

Within a week, I’d ordered pecan seedlings from Canada; within the month, I’d planted an orchard: two lines of spindly promise, guarded against the rabbits and deer, rather than elk and bison. This winter, a decade later, they stand as an avenue of pleading hands, as beautiful in their pale, deciduous nakedness as in their midsummer finery.

Growing pecans has been an unexpected joy. Their lazy habit, their tapering, saw-edged leaves and the way they sway, full of grace, in the wind have all lifted the soul. They also make me appreciate that largely invisible community of disparate individuals—plantsmen and women improving varieties to adventurous hobbyists—that widen the possibilities for our gardens.