To sing . on . ...........a string. A lesson in grafting.

Green String Farm, Petaluma, CA

My traveling companion belts something out, never once deterred at Tassajara by the rules, but now encouraged by the cohort holding hoes, walking fields. Strawberry Fields. Not so easy with eyes closed.

An apprentice is stoked about my experience with Zen practice and interest in Green String's program. He makes a reference to the book on non-violent communication he's reading.

I want to kill a chicken and I still want to kill a chicken.
Only chickens bleed.

Turns out the broth we eat for lunch is made from a chicken just harvested here last night. I missed my chance by ONE DAY.

I'm told it's not good to feed chickens tomatoes from the compost, but I look it up later and find no reason not to.

Maybe it's just ketchup.

After lunch we have a lesson on grafting from Bob Cannard. Bob's grafted more fruit trees than Father Abraham's got great-grandchildren. Two kinds of grafting: slip grafting (winter) and bud grafting (summer). We're bud grafting because this is the time of year when the bark slips.

Green String Owner/Teacher Bob Cannard

Grafting involves a host plant (you want it to provide energy to another kind of fruit tree) and a scion (part of a tree that you want to grow on the host for fruit). The scion should be in the stage of bearing fruit, but not yet ripe.

steps:
1) prune the host plant, including everything beneath where you're making the graft and let some leaves remain at the top to draw sap up through the bark
2) make a cut shaped like a T on the bark of the host plant
3) remove a leaf bud from the scion, ideally these cuts are made with a pruning knife (hella expensive...can we say more $$ than an ipod?), the leaf is removed and you cut the bud like you would cut the eye off of a potato (the part of the bud that is growing from the stem is the called the eye). The bud will also have a "shield" which is the section of the stem you've cut off.
 
\  //     <-------bud //
|//
|/ 
/

^
|
shield  }

4) peel back the corners of your host plant 'T' with said knife
5) slip the bud "shield" into the flaps
6) tie off with a rubber band, making sure to cover the part where the scion bud's shield meets the host plant

If your bud is still green (hasn't died) in 2 weeks time, you're doing good.

I'm not sure what happens after this part. Pray for fruit?

B