This spring we were lucky enough to have two grafting
workshops with Wilfried Ring, benefiting from his great expertise and
experience gained over his many years of gardening and propagating on his land
in Monte Seco in the Algarve.
The first workshop, in March, focused on grafting olive
trees, in other words cultivated olives onto wild olives. Wilf talked about the
techniques of grafting, showed us the clay we would need, told us where to find
it and how to prepare it. He showed us how to prepare the twigs to be grafted
and guided us through preparing our own grafts using the knives we had brought with
us, few of which met with his approval. Now we know the best kind of knife to
use and, from our attempts at cutting the exact shape and thickness necessary
in the ends of our twigs, the importance of it being very sharp. We then set
off into the garden, firstly to examine a failed graft from the previous year,
which, we concluded, had probably dried out. For our attempts, Wilf had
selected a suitable wild olive, so he chopped the tops of two young trunks and
we set about inserting our twigs under the bark, slitting the bark gently,
tying the grafts firmly with stretchable tape, covering the whole thing with
clay and paper and tying that on too. Now we just have to wait a year to go
back and see if they have taken.
In the second workshop, in May, we learned a different
grafting technique for grafting plums onto almonds. This time Wilf was
supported by Tissi, his wife, who told us how she and Wilf would cycle past
abandoned plum trees, taste the delicious plums and make a note to go back in
spring for twigs to graft. We saw the results in the garden: large,
flourishing, multi-branched plum branches on the bases of almond trees. The
technique this time involved removing, intact, circles of bark including an
unopened bud from a plum twig, peeling the bark back on a
matching-sized almond twig, slipping the ring of bark and bud over it and then
binding it on with tape. Simple!
Wilf gave us all twigs that he had cut
previously for us to practise on, and we needed the practise! After many failed
attempts and with much-shortened twigs, some of us had managed it. We then once
again set off into the garden to the almond tree Wilf had selected, which had
the right-sized young shoots, and tried again in situ, for some members of the
group, with success. There´s no chance of going back to check on those, though –
Wilf was going to cut them off as he didn´t want them there.
On both occasions, we were impressed by the amount of
knowledge and experience of growing and propagating plants and trees and caring
for his land that Wilf had gained, largely from his Portuguese neighbours, and
also by his warmth and generosity in sharing these with us. He proved to be an
excellent teacher. We were so pleased, too, to have met Tissi and heard her talk
about her and Wilfried´s plant foraging and other stories, and to have benefited
from her warm hospitality.
Tessa Hearn
(If anyone is
interested, I have photos of the various stages of grafting olives, courtesy of
Tamsin Varley, and also my own photos of grafting onto almonds.)
