This class is part of the ‘Grafting’ series, including ‘Scions: Selecting Fruit Tree Varietals for Successive Ripening’ (this class) and ‘Early Spring Fruit Tree Grafting’ (2/4/2017) Purchase tickets for both together and save over 15%! This class will get you ready to graft onto your own fruit tree, which is included in the price of the 2/4 class.
Join Jesse Imbach and James Lalikos for a wide-ranging survey class on how to select different varietals of your favorite fruits so that they ripen throughout the year. Here is a preview of the class from the teachers:
The climate of the Bay Area is very unusual. According to codeminders, there are three spots in Portugal, two in France, and one each in Spain and China that share similar conditions. Our long, dry summers and short, moderate winters allow we residents of “The Valley of the Hearts Delight” to grow a huge variety of fruits throughout the year.
Fruit from all over the world can be grown here. In many instances, we’re on the edge of what the plant prefers climatically – most cherry varietals need a little more chill than we have, while bananas will need protection from the frost – but with a little care and some careful selection, we can grow both!
Varietals of the most popular types of fruit have been developed to take advantage of our extended growing season. For example, there are apples, peaches, and plum hybrids that ripen from the end of May through November. If you love peaches, why not graft together a tree that will give you a few peaches a week over five months? Many fig varieties, as well as Dorsett and Gravenstein apples, can produce two crops per year. Citrus varieties provide fruit year-round in our climate.
This class will include five sections:
Jesse Imbach is a member of the California and Santa Clara Valley Rare Fruit Growers Associations. His modest home is taken over with experimental grafted trees and rare fruit varieties from around the world.
James Lalikos is a member of the California Rare Fruit Growers Association, a mechanical engineer, and prototype designer, who has been whittling twigs and splicing plants together since he was a child. He’s currently working on converting a collection of old flowering pear trees into every-variety-pear trees using scions from the germplasm collection at Filoli and planning out a large aquaponic installation in his front yard.
The two of them are also working to plant a fruit forest in the hills above Los Gatos. The goal is to have several hundred varieties of fruit available for hybridizing across twenty-eight acres.