AZRFG Board

Doug Jones 

President

I started out growing things at a very young age. My dad was a farmer, and it carried over to me with me helping him in the garden from the time I was very young.  But I didn't really get into growing rare tropical fruit until I served a two year mission in Thailand. Thailand has so many great tropical fruits and they were so tasty to eat right directly off the tree. When I came back to the states I tried to find the same tasty fruits and could not find any. Even bananas from the grocery store tasted like chalk! And mangoes were nowhere to be found at that time. So I decided to grow my own. After failing miserably for a few years I finally came in contact with CRFG and some of the great people, like CT KEnnedy and Eunice Messner. They got me started in the right direction. And then I bought a house on one acre with flood irrigation that floods everything with water 4 inches deep every two weeks so I could really start going things. One thing led to another and now I have about 1000 trees on my one acre. I started out growing peaches, plums, apricots,  and all the other stone fruits, then I branched out to all the tropicals. I have fruited mangoes, papaya, avocados, longan, passion fruit, Monstera deliciosa,  And just about anything else you could imagine.

In 1995 I teamed up with Alison and Fred Yerger, and Al Falkenstein and we started the Arizona Chapter of CRFG. I was the first president and Fred was the chairman. I have been president for quite a few of the last 30 years and have immensely enjoyed associating with all the great people at the AZ CRFG.