"How to Turn Dirt into Green-Gold"

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Is it 14,300.00 Km or just ZERO Km?

Looking Nor-East in Tehran, Auckland is 14,300.00 km to your right! It’s seven and a half time-zones away and takes around twenty hours to fly.

“But one can make that journey instantaneously in one’s mind. Amazingly imagination is even more exciting than the real one”.

“Dreams Are Real”.

As a child in Iran, on the southern Caspian coast, Hooshang Hasan did that. Day- dreaming quite often, as kids do. In his frequent Thought-Trips he would go far, far away to unknown places. One of his favourites was landing on a Pacific island! He tells you, ‘’Thoughts Become Things’’ and he’s happy that most of his dreams have come true. Now, middle aged, he lives in Auckland and can even claim to be a Kiwi!

Another dream was finding ways of voyaging to the Moon and the stars. “These dreams invariably ended in beating both the Americans and the Soviets at the Moon Race” (1960s)

“I often landed an Iranian mouse or even a cockroach on the moon, all in my imagination of course” laughs Hooshang.

Following Arnold Glasow’s wise counsel; “An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied”, he studied aeronautics at Manchester University, England, and years later headed a team designing and building a liquid propellant rocket engine in Iran.

It was not easy and took seven years to manifest. The last version of the engine worked for couple of minutes. That’s a lot for a rocket engine, and he can still hear it roaring in his mind’s ear.

“That bliss is unforgettable”. He adds that he owes it to a great team who truly dedicated themselves to its success and that’s as far as he got with the dream of landing insects and vermin on the moon!

He also had a love of living things. In his “laboratory” -his dad provided one by giving him the chicken shed- he used to experiment with everything he could imagine, or lay his hands on.

Another major influence on him was his grandfather, who was the Shah’s gardener. His father later inherited this job. As a boy, Hooshang used to watch dad propagate citrus varieties and after a while was allowed to practice. This all came to his help after he immigrated to New Zealand.

For immigrants, finding a job in their trained and chosen calling can be a challenge, so he worked as a gardener to scrape a living. But he always wanted to run his own business, and by following his inner hunches he started growing avocado trees.

Avocados are astonishing plants. The word Avocado originates from the Aztec name “ahuacatl” meaning "Testicle Tree"! Aztecs also nicknamed it “Fertility Fruit”, strongly believing it to be a potent aphrodisiac. Fearing its magical powers, they locked up all virgins during the harvest season! Even today, Latin Americans wrap up avocados and give it as wedding gifts.

Avocado flowers are unique. They act as female one day, and male the next. So, self pollination is unlikely. There are two types of A and B varieties. In any given day, type A flowers are in female-phase and type B in male phase. Next day, trees will reverse roles.

“Thank goodness we don’t have to be like that”, says Hooshang, but it works for the avocado, and it works well.

Herein lays the secret to harvesting abundant fruit from your YOUNG TREES. Use this method and keep your trees like a shrub, and get huge yields, year after year.

Inter-planting of varieties helps more fruit-set and gives consistent and increased yields (see picture below.). The truth is; the more varieties planted close to each other, the better the results.

He’s the only one propagating 40+ varieties in NZ and likes to preserve a gene pool of avocados for Godzone!

“I’m humbled by many Kiwis who helped me in this. It has also taught me to be of true service to my fellow citizens”.

Most of North Island is favourable to avocados and growing them is not rocket science. Hooshang says; “you can actually grow up to four plants in ONE square metre”!

You can have a mini orchard of 25 trees in as little as 100m and it’ll pay your rates, telephone bills, and other expenses. If that’s not turning dirt in to gold what is?

“Whatever you wish, you can have, do or be”.

“Rocket-boost your life by taking action on your hunches and dreams”

Go for it. Do it!

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