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| kitty! |
Yobo & I attended our first Alaska Pioneer Fruit Growers Association meeting this morning. Who knew that fruit growers were such a feisty bunch?! Well, maybe you kind of have to be, given that one of your hobbies IS performing plastic surgery on plants and helping them get their heal on by taping (or otherwise sealing) their open wounds together thus uniting them as one ;-)
After the meeting, we attended our first grafting workshop (it sounds like they do these at least annually). You buy the root stock ($3 each), pick out your scion wood (free), listen & watch the instructor (free), and graft some trees together! A really nice dude (an APFGA member) helped me out & introduced us to a v-grafting tool. I quite liked it because I'm not yet comfortable with playing with knives in quick, cutting motions. With the grafting tool, you set the stick in the tool & press firmly; done. When we got home, Yobo did some research on them and it looks like they v-grafting tool is great for apples & pears, but you have to replace the blades often... unless you get something super awesome like these, but it's gonna cost you, for sure. There's another version that's good for grapes, but I've forgotten the name :(
Anyhoo, I did 2 apple grafts - one was Ginger Gold, the other a Rescue crabapple. We'll see how they do, we're going to put them in pots. My new gardening end goal is to make an apple or pear tree with multiple varieties on it. Maybe one day, if we have a super awesome greenhouse & the money to run it, I'll bump it up to a stone fruit or citrus fruit cocktail tree!
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| beanie baby (that's smashed red beans on her face) |
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