During the 1930s the spread of pistachio cultivation continued. Professor Panos Anagnostopoulos writes in his book: “The Pistachio Tree in Greece” (1935) of pistachio trees in Attica as well as in Aegina. Nikolis Haimandas, in the early 1930s had planted a large part of his land with pistachio trees, and they were already bearing fruit. At the end of the 1930s he established his first commercial nursery. He took on Dionysis Loukatos, a graduate of the Agricultural College, as his assistant. Haimandas sold saplings produced in Aegina as well as those from other parts of Greece. He also gave away plants to his workers to improve their earnings. He really believed that the pistachio was a potential source of wealth for the island, so much so that in his will he left orders that his heirs should continue his work.
His sons continued with the pistachio tree nursery and as his son Andonis says, more than half the pistachio trees in Aegina came from the Haimanda nursery. The Haimanda family has been working with pistachio trees for over 60 years.
Pistachio tree nurseries were set up also by many other landowners. With the plants they produced, they firstly covered the needs of their own estates and then sold on what they didn’t need.