So you’ve got your feet wet with some basic grafting techniques like whip & tongue or cleft graft with apple or pear. Now you’d like to expand your horizons and try some more difficult species like American persimmon, mulberry, pawpaw and more. Maybe you even have some wild pear, apple, persimmon, or mulberry trees in your landscape you want to topwork over to a variety more to your liking? Then this workshop is for you!

This will be an intimate class, more akin to a coaching session. You’ll be guided through the advanced grafting techniques and details, giving you the confidence to move on to propagate some more tricky species as well as transforming wild more mature trees into highly productive select cultivars. We will do live grafting practice and demonstrations—both in a nursery context as well as in the field topworking pears and persimmons of various sizes and context.

There are only 4 spots for this class, so act now if you want to join in on this deep-dive!

WHAT WE’LL COVER

• Advanced techniques and know-how to graft species like mulberry, persimmon and pawpaw.
• The when & how of topworking mature trees, with real-life examples and hands-on demonstration (and participation!).

TYPES OF GRAFTS

• Bark inlay graft
• Bark graft
• Cleft graft on mature stock
• Z-graft

WHAT YOU GET

• 4 trees of your choosing of persimmon or mulberry to graft and take home

REQUIREMENTS

• Must have previous experience grafting
• Your own grafting knife
• Your own pruners
• Willingness to learn and try new things, even if they don’t go as planned! (such is grafting and working with nature)

ABOUT MARK

I’ve been practicing advanced grafting & topworking techniques since 2011 when I started to help reclaim and renovate a wild apple orchard into dozens of topworked cultivar specimen. Since then I have experimented deeply with these principles and approaches to graft persimmon, pear, pawpaw, mulberry & more. I have countless examples of successful topworking of various species to observe and learn from, helping you overcome the uncertainty that presents when attempting to up your grafting game to something with a little more consequence. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned so that you can go on to grow more amazing fruit!