Day 24

Burge blackberries

I apologize friends, this girl ain't used to working 12 hour days and it was time ta go da bed when I got home! We had to get ready for market today and harvest lots of goodies.
Yesterday, besides harvesting we had an organic orchard expert Jerald Larson of Fort Valley State University out here to look at our blackberries, blueberries, persimmons, quinces, pears etc. He gave some recommendations about how to prune them; it's important to always have a leader branch and cut the right suckers away to help the tree grow and support the fruit. Also, advice on dealing with pests including scale and blight and how to manage weeds in the orchard. The coolest thing ever was the grafting. Did you know you can cut one tree and add branches from another and the trees will become one? Didn't catch that? Let's make it more confusing. You can take an apple tree, cut that dude off then add branches from a pear tree and that tree could grow both! Or you can take a peach tree and graft it with a lemon tree maybe a slice of lime, sounds like a nice drink. But back to grafting, it's easier to graft within the same family, so an apple tree with the same or a different variety of apple attached would graft well. Here's some pictures of the process:

Whittling the branches for grafting
on both sides about an inch

Clipping off the tree for grafting

Use two branches as insurance,
cut into bark and place branches

Seal with beeswax

Damp newspaper in between

Plastic Protection for
Grafting Process

Paper Bag with four slits facing
East to West for sunlight

I feel like I just wrote out a recipe! Recipe for some sweet trees. Grafting is best mid-March to early April, so we barely made the cut