Spring | Habitate - Edible Habitats

Fruit tree grafting workshop with Jason Ross, Sutherland Nursery

Would you like to learn how to graft a fruit tree (apple or pear) at a hands on workshop?

The workshop is planned for Sunday Sept 1st – 2013 – from 1-4pm.

Prior to the workshop, participants will receive instructions on how to take cuttings suitable for
grafting. The cuttings need to be taken at the beginning of July, when the trees are fully dormant.

If you don’t have a favourite fruit tree to take cuttings, we may be able to help. During the recent
community fruit harvest, we identified some trees with delicious fruit that appear to do very well in
our area, which we would like to graft.

The cost of the workshop is $30 to graft an apple or $40 for a pear. This covers the cost of rootstock,
potting mix, demonstration and tuition from Jason, and venue hire. If you’d really like to come, but
the cost is a barrier, let me know and we will try to sort out something. Venue will be confirmed
once we know we have viable numbers.

Please register by 10 June, supplying the information below to Kristen Bracey (North East Valley Transition Towns 473).
Her contact details are:

473 9535 or 027 779 5481

bracey-browns@clear.net.nz

Payment is required in
advance. Places are limited so register as soon as possible.

Name:

Email:

phone:

Will you bring own cutting (therefore which rootstock do you require)?

Yes Type:

Type of cutting you would like supplied: (apple or pear)

Would you like to graft more than one tree? Extra rootstock are $10 per extra apple rootstock (please choose dwarf or standard size) and $20 per pear rootstock. Please include this in your registration payment as we need to order the rootstock.

I just adore this time of year in the edible garden. I especially enjoy the food forest (edible forest garden) parts of the garden where all the work of weeding, mulching, transplanting and pruning was done in the winter and now is just a time for observing the fresh new growth, flowering and insects doing their pollination (and parisitising!).

This picture is taken in Waitati at a garden where I work. In it are apple and plum trees, redcurrants, perennial vegetables/ herbs / multifunctional dynamic accumulators: sorrel, lovage, globe artichoke, lemon balm, sweet cicily, russian and evergreen comfrey.

I am extra excited to be thinking about food forests as I am co-tutoring a workshop on them later in the month, with Robina McCurdy and Jon Foote as part of the LOCALISING FOOD TOUR, look out for an upcoming post with detals.

Fennel, sweet cicely and lemon balm. These are planted under fruit trees for a range of benefits. For the trees they provide a ground cover, excluding weeds and mining up minerals from deep in the soil they deposit them on the soil surface for the fruit trees to feed on. For us they provide herbal tea, salad crops, rhubarb sweetening and delicious seeds.

Here Russian and evergreen comfrey growing under berry fruits has been slashed and dropped to feed the soil. This really enjoyable job is done two or three times during the summer.

Gooseberries with comfrey underneath, autumn raspberry rows, an apricot and hazel nuts behind, in a well sheltered sun trap.

Fruit trees we planted very closely in rows with companion plants, in order to trial many varieties in a small space. Sunflowers are planted as a cash crop in between the rows while the trees are small.

Fruit tree grafting workshop – September 2013

Spring Food Forests / Edible Forest Gardens