Grafting Knife Sharpening Workshop and Feijoa Tasting

It’s time to start preparing for spring, isn’t it? Well, maybe that’s a bit premature, but in the meantime we will be holding a workshop November 12 to learn how to sharpen our grafting knives. This will be a hands-on workshop, the purpose of which is to enable all who are interested (not just knife geeks!) to learn principles and practices of knife sharpening and to have a properly sharpened grafting knife blade as we head toward the scion exchange and spring grafting. The skills we learn will also be transferable to kitchen knives, helping all attendees to be more self-sufficient with knife maintenance.

Our workshop leader will be Andy Wilson, who many of you know as a member of our group.

Workshop Details:

November 12, 2022 – Outdoor Event

Location: Santa Cruz Grange, 1900 17th Ave in Santa Cruz

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Bring: Your grafting knife

Materials Needed:

You will need to bring your own grafting stone(s) for this class – this will enable everyone to be hands-on as well as ensure you can continue to keep your grafting knife sharp for years to come. Recommended stones (you are only required to have one of these):

 

If you feel your knife is really dull, an additional stone might be useful, such as: <https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Crystolon-Combination-Oilstone-Coarse/dp/B0001MSA5Y/>. ~$34.  This is a “nice to have” but is not “required” for the workshop.

At the conclusion of the knife sharpening workshop, we will have a feijoa tasting. These can be grown in our area; for more details check out the CRFG Fruit Facts.  Among the varieties we will be tasting are some from Mark Albert’s collection.

Early Winter Fruit Harvests of Santa Cruz and Monterey

On December 1, we held our annual Holiday Potluck at the Santa Cruz Live Oak Grange, one of our most important community-focused events for the membership of the Monterey Bay Chapter of California Rare Fruit Growers.  At this event we meet new and old friends to discuss our year in fruit gardening, share ripe harvests and delicious home cooking, and peer forward to our group’s year to come.

Setting up some festive table centerpieces.

This year’s potluck drew an interesting and illuminating array of winter’s-eve fruit harvests from Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, where some microclimates have already seen their first light frosts.  The images below depict a nice cross-section of what’s ripe right now, though not an exhaustive list.  Please do feel free to comment below with any notable omissions of fruits you’re picking this time of year (fall-winter cusp) from your Monterey Bay garden.

A display of a few of the subtropicals (and other fruits) available for ripe harvest on December 1 around Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay area.

Continue reading “Early Winter Fruit Harvests of Santa Cruz and Monterey”