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.
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.
Those of us who order scion wood from the wonderful Fruitwood Nursery up in Orleans, California can’t help being struck by the amazing number of persimmon varieties on offer (69 by today’s count!) and the grafting knowledge – not to mention kindness & helpfulness – of Fruitwood’s owners Corrina Cohen and Marc Robbi. So when chapter members started clamoring for a speaker on persimmons, thoughts immediately turned to Fruitwood. And now, despite the terror of the over-9000-acre Pearch Creek fire that has threatened Corrina and Marc for more than a month, Marc has agreed (the fire gods willing) to speak to us via Zoom on October 14th.
A little background from the Fruitwood website: “We have been propagating and growing perennial plants for over 40 years and are the former owners of Rolling River Nursery.com, which is now under the new ownership of Planting Justice in Oakland, CA. We are now offering nursery wood and divisions of all the same great plants we sold previously, taken from our mother plantings here at Rolling River Farm in Orleans, CA. Our huge selection of cuttings wood, scionwood, liners, seeds, rootstocks and divisions are available and shipped throughout the lower 48 states, and by special request beyond. We supply everything the do-it- your- selfer needs to grow your own true to type quality starts of many popular fruiting plants. Growing your own is both fun and also an economical way to create your own edible landscape, orchards and other plantings large or small.
We are also offering custom propagation services such as bench grafting varieties of your choice for growing on by you, and contracting for the production of larger lots of certain varieties that we grow to size for commercial and other plantings. Let us know your needs and we will see how we may help. We can grow starts of most fruiting plants and also contract out to produce many native plants for restoration projects.
As always our growing practices are organic and sustainability oriented, motivated by the desire to contribute to a healthy, diverse and beautiful world for the future generations. We maintain our diverse collection of varieties as an effort to keep the rich genetic heritage inherited from humanity’s past fruit explorers and breeders available to the public and safe from extinction. All sales help to keep these plantings maintained, enlarged and going strong.”
Obviously we could have as easily asked Marc to speak on Apples (of which he sells 251 varieties of scion wood!) or figs (63 varieties!) or pomegranates (59!). Persimmons however are among the fussiest fruit trees to graft not to mention the most beautiful and most reliable fruiters for us in Southern California, so we are just thrilled to have an expert guide us through the selection of varieties, rootstock, and grafting technique.
So tune in on October 14th at 10 am. Zoom links will be sent out with member’s newsletters. If you are not a member but wish to participate, please Contact Us.
BTW, do not be deterred by the fact that almost all scion wood is currently listed as Out of Stock on the Fruitwood site. They have not yet begun cutting which – per the website – will begin in November.
Photo by Yoonbae Cho on Unsplash
Those of us who order scion wood from the wonderful Fruitwood Nursery up in Orleans, California can’t help being struck by the amazing number of persimmon varieties on offer (69 by today’s count!) and the grafting knowledge – not to mention kindness & helpfulness – of Fruitwood’s owners Corrina Cohen and Marc Robbi. So when chapter members started clamoring for a speaker on persimmons, thoughts immediately turned to Fruitwood. And now, despite the terror of the over-9000-acre Pearch Creek fire that has threatened Corrina and Marc for more than a month, Marc has agreed (the fire gods willing) to speak to us via Zoom on October 14th.
A little background from the Fruitwood website: “We have been propagating and growing perennial plants for over 40 years and are the former owners of Rolling River Nursery.com, which is now under the new ownership of Planting Justice in Oakland, CA. We are now offering nursery wood and divisions of all the same great plants we sold previously, taken from our mother plantings here at Rolling River Farm in Orleans, CA. Our huge selection of cuttings wood, scionwood, liners, seeds, rootstocks and divisions are available and shipped throughout the lower 48 states, and by special request beyond. We supply everything the do-it- your- selfer needs to grow your own true to type quality starts of many popular fruiting plants. Growing your own is both fun and also an economical way to create your own edible landscape, orchards and other plantings large or small.
We are also offering custom propagation services such as bench grafting varieties of your choice for growing on by you, and contracting for the production of larger lots of certain varieties that we grow to size for commercial and other plantings. Let us know your needs and we will see how we may help. We can grow starts of most fruiting plants and also contract out to produce many native plants for restoration projects.
As always our growing practices are organic and sustainability oriented, motivated by the desire to contribute to a healthy, diverse and beautiful world for the future generations. We maintain our diverse collection of varieties as an effort to keep the rich genetic heritage inherited from humanity’s past fruit explorers and breeders available to the public and safe from extinction. All sales help to keep these plantings maintained, enlarged and going strong.”
Obviously we could have as easily asked Marc to speak on Apples (of which he sells 251 varieties of scion wood!) or figs (63 varieties!) or pomegranates (59!). Persimmons however are among the fussiest fruit trees to graft not to mention the most beautiful and most reliable fruiters for us in Southern California, so we are just thrilled to have an expert guide us through the selection of varieties, rootstock, and grafting technique.
So tune in on October 14th at 10 am. Zoom links will be sent out with member’s newsletters. If you are not a member but wish to participate, please Contact Us.
BTW, do not be deterred by the fact that almost all scion wood is currently listed as Out of Stock on the Fruitwood site. They have not yet begun cutting which – per the website – will begin in November.
Photo by Yoonbae Cho on Unsplash
Those of us who order scion wood from the wonderful Fruitwood Nursery up in Orleans, California can’t help being struck by the amazing number of persimmon varieties on offer (69 by today’s count!) and the grafting knowledge – not to mention kindness & helpfulness – of Fruitwood’s owners Corrina Cohen and Marc Robbi. So when chapter members started clamoring for a speaker on persimmons, thoughts immediately turned to Fruitwood. And now, despite the terror of the over-9000-acre Pearch Creek fire that has threatened Corrina and Marc for more than a month, Marc has agreed (the fire gods willing) to speak to us via Zoom on October 14th.
A little background from the Fruitwood website: “We have been propagating and growing perennial plants for over 40 years and are the former owners of Rolling River Nursery.com, which is now under the new ownership of Planting Justice in Oakland, CA. We are now offering nursery wood and divisions of all the same great plants we sold previously, taken from our mother plantings here at Rolling River Farm in Orleans, CA. Our huge selection of cuttings wood, scionwood, liners, seeds, rootstocks and divisions are available and shipped throughout the lower 48 states, and by special request beyond. We supply everything the do-it- your- selfer needs to grow your own true to type quality starts of many popular fruiting plants. Growing your own is both fun and also an economical way to create your own edible landscape, orchards and other plantings large or small.
We are also offering custom propagation services such as bench grafting varieties of your choice for growing on by you, and contracting for the production of larger lots of certain varieties that we grow to size for commercial and other plantings. Let us know your needs and we will see how we may help. We can grow starts of most fruiting plants and also contract out to produce many native plants for restoration projects.
As always our growing practices are organic and sustainability oriented, motivated by the desire to contribute to a healthy, diverse and beautiful world for the future generations. We maintain our diverse collection of varieties as an effort to keep the rich genetic heritage inherited from humanity’s past fruit explorers and breeders available to the public and safe from extinction. All sales help to keep these plantings maintained, enlarged and going strong.”
Obviously we could have as easily asked Marc to speak on Apples (of which he sells 251 varieties of scion wood!) or figs (63 varieties!) or pomegranates (59!). Persimmons however are among the fussiest fruit trees to graft not to mention the most beautiful and most reliable fruiters for us in Southern California, so we are just thrilled to have an expert guide us through the selection of varieties, rootstock, and grafting technique.
So tune in on October 14th at 10 am. Zoom links will be sent out with member’s newsletters. If you are not a member but wish to participate, please Contact Us.
BTW, do not be deterred by the fact that almost all scion wood is currently listed as Out of Stock on the Fruitwood site. They have not yet begun cutting which – per the website – will begin in November.
Photo by Yoonbae Cho on Unsplash
This field trip is for WLA and LA chapter members ONLY. The online address per Google Maps is WRONG. The nursery has been without electricity due to wind/fires. Specific directions and actual available plants will be emailed to you as soon as the nursery can get them to us.
We will have a tour of La Verne Nursery at their huge Piru Facility. La Verne is one of the premier sources of tropical and subtropical fruiting plants in our area. We all probably have at least a plant or two from their nursery. Daniel Nelson, Director of Nursery Operations, will be our tour guide. He will discuss such topics as mass propagation, container culture, and specific care instructions for various fruit trees, as well as answer any questions our members may have. This is a rare chance to see how a large nursery goes about producing many thousands of plants a year and to learn from Dann’s professional expertise. We will be able to see their propagation facilities and techniques. Perhaps we will see how their nursery grafts new scion wood to rootstock.
Although La Verne Nursery does not sell retail, as special guests we will be able to purchase trees after the tour at near-wholesale prices. The last time we purchased trees from La Verne Nursery, the plants were large, healthy, and beautiful! Everyone was immensely pleased with the plants purchased.
You can pre-order any plants that you want (before we get to the nursery). Go online to see what plants are available at: http://www.lavernenursery.com/current-availability.html. This list shows what plants the nursery has in abundance and may not include all the possibilities you will find when you are there. As noted above, we will receive a more complete list of available trees by the end of this week and that list will be emailed to you as soon as it is received. Please note that you cannot order online. Select your plants and email Susan Guggenheim to tell her what plants you want to order.
All sales will be cash; buyers will be responsible for paying for and transporting their own purchases at the end of the tour.
The nursery is some distance from West LA, so plan to carpool. Members of the LA Chapter are welcome. Only CRFG members may attend the field trip.
Our famous annual Grafting Demos and Scion Exchange will take place on February 10th in the Multi-Purpose Room and its adjacent Patio at the Culver City Veterans Memorial Building.
We will have demonstrations of three grafting techniques, including the use of the common cleft graft (such as you would use with stone fruit), the side veneer graft (such as you would use for avocados) and the traditional whip-and-tongue graft. You will be able to get up close and observe every detail of these techniques. Our grafters will be available to answer your grafting questions.
With grafting, you can build your own fruit tree, with multiple varieties of apples, peaches, pears, sapotes, cherimoyas, etc. You can even have peaches, nectarines, plums, and pluots on the same tree, or almonds on one side of your tree and plums on the other. You can completely graft over a non-productive variety (called topworking). With grafting, the possibilities are almost unlimited.
We will also have our annual scion wood exchange, so please bring your scion wood to share. If we all bring wood, we should have many different varieties from many different trees. If you have rootstock growing in small pots, please bring them to the meeting and take home a grafted plant or share your rootstock with others. Remember to bring extra bags, labels, and a marker for the scion wood you collect!
At the exchange, please limit your selections to two of any variety until everyone has had an opportunity to collect wood. Then feel free to go back. Please do not collect wood you do not plan to use. By the way, members who have paid for 2018 and who bring in scions to share will get first choice of scion wood that they want to use in their own gardens. So, if you haven’t renewed for 2018 (both WLA and CRFG, Inc.), now might be a good time to send your dues to Andrée.
To minimize chaos and give our speakers the respect they deserve, we are adopting the following schedule.
10:00 – 10:15: Registration and scion wood donation
10:15 to 11:15: Demonstrations of grafting on the patio
11:15 to 11:30: Scion exchange open to members in the Multi-Purpose Room
11:30 to 11:45: Scion exchange open to non-members in the Multi-Purpose Room
No one will be allowed to enter the Multi-Purpose Room during the grafting demonstrations (unless it rains).
Note: There will also be a sale of quite sizable Blue Passionflower vines grown by one of our members, Terry Brockert. These are considered a great pollinator for other passionflower vines. You can read more about them here.