Category: meetings

Reflections on the Spanish and California Industries by Dr. Ben Faber.

The village of Jete is in the far back of this valley near Almunecar.  It’s all cherimoyas with olives on the hillsides. And nearly all of the cherimoyas are Fino de Jete with lots of seeds, smooth skin, and they all come ripe at the same time with no hand pollination!

Pruning and pollination practices vary considerably both here and in Spain. This is partly due to differences in the “Mediterranean Climates” that are found in the two areas.  We’ll look at those factors, as well as how pruning and pollination are affected by differences in the two “cultural climates”.

Our speaker will be Dr. Ben Faber.  Ben is an advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension in Ventura, where he specializes in soils, water, and subtropical horticulture.  He has a Ph.D. in Soil Fertility, and he maintains a blog and a newsletter that the bulk of our commercial citrus and avocado growers learn from.  Dr. Faber was going to give his presentation on “Cherimoyas in Spain” at the recent Festival of Fruit   However, unfortunately, he was so sick he couldn’t make it.  Please join us for this very special presentation!  We will be in the MultiPurpose  Room at the Culver City Veteran’s Memorial Complex.

(Description courtesy of Alan Caramatti, our brand-new Program Chair)

Dr. Gorlitsky is a Senior Researcher at UCLA’s Center for Tropical Research as well as a lecturer in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (whose mantra is Moving Science to Action) As such, she is intimately engaged in efforts to combat everything from invasive species to mass extinctions. Her specialty of Tropical Ecology, however, intersects with our interest in exactly what is going on in our back forties. She will be lecturing to us on Coevolution, focusing on the interaction between the fig and the wasp.

Margaret’s friend Britten is currently a student in one of Dr. Gorlitsky’s UCLA classes and reports she is both an engaging and incredibly knowledgeable lecturer. This is definitely a meeting not to be missed.

We fruit growers need to know about bees:  how to encourage them in  our orchards,  how to protect them on our shared planet and, if nothing else, how to appreciate their  marvelously democratic society.  Bottom line, after all our planting, grafting, pruning, fertilizing and elaborate irrigation systems, without the girls we would have very little to eat.

At the enthusiastic recommendation of the Orange County chapter, we are thrilled to have snared Ray Teurman to speak to us about bees at our next meeting on April 13^th.  Eight years a beekeeper and seven years a bee rescuer, Ray maintains 70 hives at homes in LA, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties  plus over 40 hives in apiaries in Long Beach, Hacienda Heights and Compton.  A member of the Bee Keepers Association of Southern Calfornia, Long Beach Beekeepers and Honey Love,  among other apis-centric organizations, he has been termed one of the unsung heroes of SoCal bee keeping and volunteerism. This is how he is described on the Bee Keepers Association of Southern California site:

Ray has recently begun his retired life.  That doesn’t mean sitting under an umbrella enjoying ice tea!  No!  He’s busy rescuing bees every single day.  He does cutouts, swarms, most jobs that other rescuers don’t have time for.  He does charge a fee, but it’s well worth it, as he charges a fair price  He does best by texting.  Please include your name, address where the bees are located, where the bees are (in a wall, in a tree, under the shed, etc.), how long they have been there, and a contact phone number.  Please be patient, as he could be busy in a tree.  Ray does enjoy help.  You can learn while helping!

Please call Ray by clicking the number. 323-599-6802 or text him.

Yes, our biggest meeting of the year is just about upon us.   And for 2019, we are finally providing what has long been requested:  a chance  for you yourself to take a shot at grafting under the eyes of an expert.

We are also going to provide  intimate, close-up-and-personal  grafting demos by having four different experts each holding down his own table and teaching a variety of different grafts , the Cleft Graft, the Budding Graft, the Veneer Graft, etc.

The meeting will be in the MultiPurpose Room of the Culver City Veterans Memorial  complex.  The schedule will be as follows:

9:30-10 –  Registration, waiver signing, the Bringing In and Arranging of the Scion Wood (Click here to access a .pdf on how to collect and store scion wood from  your orchard)  Please place each variety in its own ziploc bag and label it!  Also, if you intend to collect wood at our exchange, bring more ziplocs, and a Magic Marker to label your precious finds.

NOTE:  Because of huanglongbing disease, NO CITRUS scion wood, fruit or roostock should be brought to the meeting or otherwise moved around the state.

10-10:30 – The Grafting Demos (you are encouraged to watch each of them, but obviously you can camp for the duration in front of Fang Liu, for example, if you are trying to master the veneer graft)

10:30-11 – Members allowed to select scion wood

11-11:30 – Non-members allowed to select scion wood

11:30-noon Hands on Grafting Classes with our Experts

Note:  while we will have knives, parafilm and grafting tape on hand, we will not necessarily  have enough rootstock and matching scion wood for all comers to take home an actual grafted tree.   The classes are designed to teach you the craft, period.  Odds are we will have a lot of avocado rootstock and  a lot of pear scion wood.  Despite the fact that avocados are sometimes referred to as Alligator Pears, this WILL NOT work.  Plus, your beautiful graft may be lopped off and replaced by the next student.

If you have a rootstock and scion wood of your own, however, that you want to learn to “marry” for life, feel free to bring ’em.

Edgar Valdivia is one of the great fruit growers and researchers in the Southland with a specific interest in developing  new varieties of fruit.  Seven years ago he counted 112 different types of fruit in his orchard and he has surely developed even  more by now.  It is the  casual way he imparts a lifetime of fruit growing wisdom, however, that  makes him a living legend and a cherished speaker.  We are extremely lucky to have snared him for our October 13^th meeting.  He will be talking to us about  cherimoyas and figs.  Do not miss him!!

Denise  “Deni” Friese of Custom Landscapes (whose services include eco-friendly design, consultation and installation) will speak to us on August 11th about composting and mulching in the orchard.   If you heard her at our last field trip/workshop, you know she is incredibly knowledgeable.  This time she will have the floor mostly to herself (though I’m sure our membership will be contributing their voices and experience as well.)

[Deni adds: “I am an Eco-Friendly Landscaper, own business since 1995, I do design, consultation, installation, specialty maintenance and irrigation. Love putting in edible gardens. My specialty is knowing plants and what they need to thrive. I try to help my clients design their own “dream yard”. I have been a Plant-a-holic for many years and have way too many plants. Joined CRFG a few years ago and love it]

Also the renowned Charles Portney will be describing rare  fruit trees he has propagated and will be generously donating to the day’s plant raffle.  These raffles seem to be shaping up as only semiannual  events so don’t miss this one!  The next one probably won’t be until our Holiday Party in December.

On the same note, if you have plants of your own to donate, this is the time.   And if you happen to have any treepots (the tall skinny pots used for rooting plants with long taproots, they come between 8” and 14” deep) Charles desperately needs them to continue his generous work.  They look like this.

And per usual, snacks to share will always be welcome. Now that Jane has donated a lovely glass beverage holder, we will be having something to drink at most meetings, so either homegrown fruit or hand-held crunchy things will be appreciated by one and all.

With some misgivings, I am throwing open my yard for our July field trip/workshop.  The topic will be Wise Watering for the Hot Months Ahead.  I have 6 different watering systems in use, ranging from the laundry-to-landscape greywater our April speaker Sergio Scabuzzo  installed in front , to basic inline drip from Smiths Plumbing, individual drippers on a solid hose from various sources, hand watering from 10 gallon buckets where I store shower water not yet heated up (and I just got the niftiest watering can!), and a small rotary sprinkler system on the tiny lawn. If the rest of you could bring samples of whatever you are using to water your gardens, we could answer one of the biggest recurring questions members have here in Drought City.

Members should enter through the big driveway gate and head to the backyard where I will put fences around anything I am concerned about people trampling.  As is true of all field trips, please do not pick, poke or otherwise molest the green-age.

The driveway is in perpetual shade but I have no chairs there so if any of you have portable ones, it would be great to bring them.  There are a (very) few chairs on the back deck plus steps where the younger folk can sit, so if it is not too hot,  we can have our workshop there.

The backyard has some mature trees: a Black Mission fig, 2 Satsuma tangerines, Moro blood orange, Meyer and Eureka lemons, Bearss and Mexican lime, Big Jim Loquat with a Champagne graft from Marjane, Black Persian Mulberry (plus a new little Pakistani from Hal), Saijo persimmon plus half a dozen cherimoyas from seed (and one transplanted from Gary Richwald’s yard), 2 passionflower vines from Jorge Ochoa, a new little Sweetheart Lychee, four apple trees, two ridiculously huge Laurus Nobilis (an object lesson in why they shouldn’t be planted here especially on the south side of our yards) a couple of Cherry of Rio Grande, one Surinam cherry and probably other stuff I’m forgetting (oh yeah, papayas from seed and a Babaco from Charles Portney, plus a new Stewart avocado–ed. the Stewart just ended up in the front yard). The tiny lawn is the UC Verde drought tolerant stuff developed by, right, UC Riverside.

The front yard is not to be entered and will be rung with Home Depot’s best DANGER tape. It is full of bee and butterfly plants, an extremely fragile drip system and an even more fragile graft of Yang Mei onto Pacific Wax Myrtle.  Fang Liu did approximately 15 such grafts and only the one took. Needless to say, I am extremely protective of it.

Nonetheless most of the front yard’s residents are visible from the front sidewalk or the driveway, including two Gros Michel bananas, a Janice Kadota fig and some seedlings from Marjane’s Panache, the Cotton Candy tree some of you have cuttings from, a lot of Pomegranates from sticks stuck in the ground after scion exchanges, three pears (well, only one is really visible from sidewalk), two apple trees (and two more which never really took and are probably coming out for avocados!) a new and struggling Hachiya Persimmon — struggling because the sunflowers and borage tend to crowd it out. Half a dozen roses.  And my rose apple seedling from Marjane which is NOT bearing and is asking to be chopped down. The Burgundy plum next to it may be gone soon too.  It has two plums on it after three years. Not  especially visible are the blueberries and self-sown strawberries.  Please do not walk in my neighbors’ driveway on that side.  They are extremely hostile to Rare Fruit Growers, including me.  Sofia will be monitoring with a machete

There is also a native California garden on the parkway (and a lot in  the front yard too) which is a whole other topic we discussed at Hal’s but people can see in action.

There will be cookies.  Please don’t feed them to the extremely large but friendly dog.

David King runs the Learning Garden at Venice High and also teaches the Plant Propagation class at UCLA extension.  Each year he brings students to our Scion Exchange, and this  year, they sent us a lovely note of thanks!  And photos!  Thank you, kids,  for being a great part of our group.  And thank you, volunteer grafter/speakers.  The depicted grafter is our pineapple guava expert, Glen Woodmansee.

Julie Frink and Denny Luby will present “All About The Avocado.” Julie is the Curator of the Avocado Collection at the U.C. Field Station in Orange. Denny – a 20 year member of CRFG – volunteered with Julie at the South Coast Research Center and they have done talks and demonstrations together ever since. Between them, they know LOTS about the avocado; the different botanical races, the named and research varieties, the question of poisonous or non-poisonous, growth habits, grafting, seed size, hybridization, propagation, diseases, etc. Come, learn and bring your questions!