Grafting Class

Jerome Osentowski gave a grafting workshop on Wednesday, May 28th here at CRMPI. Several grafting techniques were demonstrated by Jerome and the class was given knives and practice material before grafting scion wood that had been collected by Jerome for the class. Each student was given a donor piece of scion wood to graft to one of several selected trees in the CRMPI forest garden that are used for training. The Macintosh apple tree that was used contains over 10 different types of apples grafted throughout the years of training at CRMPI (it's a Frankenstein tree). Jerome gave the class a detailed tour of the property and explained the many guilds contained in the forest garden. These guilds employ several permaculture techniques to support fruit and nut-bearing plants that generally cannot grow at the high altitude and cool climate of the Rocky Mountains. The class distributed mulch over selected guilds and learned the importance of mulch as pest and weed control and insulation and compost for the beds.