California Rare Fruit Growers – West LA Chapter
because the best things in life do grow on trees
Despite being booted out of our regular meeting room and sent into exile across Culver Blvd at the last minute, we had a major turn out last Saturday and Arny Bernstein, sharing his vast experience with grafting citrus, was just fantastic. Because of many many requests, he has made his Power Point presentation available to us and you can see it here. We are now talking with Arny about doing a hands-on grafting class at next February’s scion exchange. Wahoo.
We have just been informed that the entire Culver City Veterans Memorial Building is being pre-empted for city training on Saturday. As a result, we are being moved across Culver Boulevard to the Culver City Senior Center which has ample parking and a room virtually the same size (though not our nifty patio, sniff). We will be in Suite C, 4095 Overland Avenue Culver City, CA 90232.
There is a parking lot entrance on the southbound side of Overland north of Culver Boulevard. If you are coming north on Overland, make the left on Culver and then right into the parking lot. If you are going east on Culver, you will have to make the U-turn at Overland and go into the lot from the north side of Culver.
We have been told that Suite C is on your right as you enter the Center.
Five things you should know:
One: Arny has over 80 different varieties grafted onto his 20 to 25 citrus trees, so clearly the man knows what he is doing.
Second: if you glance at the photo above, you will see Arny demonstrating cleft grafting at our scion exchange in 2017 ; so you know he has long been an excellent teacher as well. (He also supervised our graft-your-own session in 2019 and zero blood was shed.) As if this isn’t enough, he has been running the Grafting Program at UC Berkeley for the past two years and is also establishing a grafting program at Lotusland in Montecito. With Bill Brandt, he teaches grafting throughout the LAUSD high school system. Having joined CRFG in the early 70s, he is perhaps its oldest member and fondly remembers being taught grafting back then by Wilbur Wood, one of the grand old men of our organization.
Third: February was deciduous grafting season; but this is citrus grafting season. It is time to strike while the iron is hot and the bark is slipping.
Fourth: since the arrival of Citrus Greening disease, it is illegal for us to exchange citrus scion wood. The only legal source in California is the Citrus Clonal Protection Program at UC Riverside. You can order some truly amazing varieties here. Registration is free. The budwood, alas, is not.
This page has links to a video explaining the order process along with some grafting demos from the talented Fruitmentor. Note that cutting is only done once a month. If you want your scion wood in your fridge ready to use after Arny’s class, you should have your order in by June 2nd. It will ship June 5th.
And Fifth: We will be back in our regular MultiPurpose Room in Culver City. Your favorite snacks and/or fruit to share will be most welcome.