Texas New Fruit Growers Conference 2026

The Texas New Fruit Growers Conference is a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension event aimed at educating new and prospective fruit growers through classroom instruction, experiential learning, and peer-to-peer networking. This one-and-a-half-day event exposes individuals with no previous farming or food production experience to an understanding of the unique challenges of managing a fruit orchard and vineyard. Participants will learn how to select an appropriate site, choose crops that grow successfully in their area of Texas, establish a vineyard or orchard, and protect it from some of the unique weather and pest challenges that fruit growers encounter. The conference is broken into four instructional components: a four-hour "Intro to Fruit Growing" class with seminars and handouts; a Tree-to-Plate networking session for sharing ideas with other growers and Extension personnel; a Live-Action Laboratory with hands-on demonstrations of tree planting, pruning, irrigation installation, fertilizer methods, weed control, and pesticide considerations; and a Field Trip to a commercial fruit orchard in the greater Rosenberg area.