Grafting for IET

Our 50 grafts await planting in the nursery bed.
Most of them are shown planted out here.
One of my efforts.
I hope they all take.

I'm basically on the IET social inclusion team. We have a set time of two hours on Monday, 11-13 hrs. Most of our work is done at Ferney Lee residential care home where there are raised beds and a greenhouse. I work with Nik Green who runs most things in IET and is its treasurer. If you go to IET web site and then to pictures and then block 2, you'll see me working hard on a very chilly Monday.

Today we had a grafting training session run by Clifford from Northern Fruit Group. The workshop was in the primary school on Ferney Lee Rd. In the morning session Clifford explained what grafting was and why it is the way to propagate fruit trees (true to variety, vigour, predictable and consistent growth). The root stocks were explained and it was interesting to know that the M numbers only referred to the planting row they were in originally at the Malling station. Anyway it basically transpires that the apple trees we planted in our garden two years ago are on the wrong stock for West Yorkshire!

Then we went upstairs in the school into a workroom set out for this kind of practical session. Up to lunch time we practiced grafting. In the afternoon session we grafted real scions onto real MM106 root stock. We all learnt a lot. My ability to do this grafting improved somewhat after several attempts. Between the 12 of us we managed to use our total supply for this session of 50 root stocks.

Clifford had predicted there would be accidents with sharp knives and there were several minor casualties. However, Nik had quite a deep cut. I think he should have been taken to A&E in Halifax, but obviously he wouldn't go.

At the end we put our labours in my Zafira where they'll stay until the inclusion team plant them out in a nursery bed at Ferney Lee tomorrow.