Breathing New Life into Branches, Stems and Vines

The Fruit Tree Grafting Workshop by Dr. Julia Palm-Sinclair

This morning, Julia hosted a fantastic workshop on grafting. It’s clear they know their stuff when it comes to gardening, especially after they showed us a map of their father’s orchard, which features an incredible variety of fruit trees.

Julia demonstrating how to cut a branch

Basic knowledge of grafting is a must for anyone who owns an orchard. Attaching different rootstocks to trees offers massive benefits, enabling them to adapt to environments where they wouldn't normally thrive. In addition, grafting helps control a tree's size. When you successfully connect two different plant tissues, you create what's known as a chimera.

There are several ways to graft, and today Julia demonstrated two techniques (see the pictures below):

Basic Cleft (or V-graft) 

Whip & Tongue graft / Splice graft

 

Making Use of Blackberry Vines

In the afternoon, Susan taught us how to harvest and use blackberry vines. To harvest these vines, first find a large blackberry vine that does not have flowers. The first step is to remove its branches with clippers. Next, carefully remove the spikes on the vine by pushing them to the side. Looking down into the cut vine, you will see a pentagonal shape. Using this shape as a guide, carefully peel the sides of the vine like a banana. Finally, lay out these pieces to dry; once dried, they can be woven into rope. As for the leaves, they can be dried to make tea. What a useful plant!

 

  

Lu cutting a new blackberry vine 

 

Blackberry leaves 

Blackberry skin

 

This type of blackberry that’s commonly seen in BC is called Himalayan blackberry or European blackberry. According to the Invasive Species Council of BC, this plant can crowd out low-growing vegetation and limit the movement of large animals. Himalayan blackberry is designated as a Regional Containment/Control species by the BC Provincial Priority Invasive Species List.

 

Turning Morning Glory Vines Into Beautiful Wreaths

Our team also made several wreaths out of morning glory vines which can be found throughout the garden. We hope the children coming to our workshop absolutely fall in love with them! Take a look at these masterpieces:

 

Wreaths for angels  

Other IMPORTANT Work Today

A group of very green-thumbed UBC planters did an excellent job of planting a nice variety of flowers and plants in a newly created garden bed. It looks fantastic and we are all excited to see it grow:

 

Some of are team's artists did a great job painting this wonderful sign that will help guide all in the garden:

By: Lu and Keegan