Some Sitka residents may remember a Sitka Health Summit project from 2010 to plant dozens of apple, crabapple, and cherry trees around town. One learning experience from that project is it takes a bit of work to make these trees produce fruit.

Brad Smith will host an apple-tree grafting workshop from 1-3 p.m. on Sunday, March 19, in the smokestack building on the Sitka Fine Arts Camp campus.

The class requires an RSVP, and is by donation. Half of any proceeds go to Sitka Fine Arts Camp. It’s an introductory class. If there is enough interest, Brad will host another class later in the week.

Participants will learn about rootstock, scion, how to practice at grafting, and if you have a good place for it, you can take home a baby apple tree.

Also I will have scion wood available the rest of that week for free to take. There will be a few different varieties of apple and pear. I want to encourage you to graft apple varieties onto local crabapples, and try putting pear wood onto mountain ash. If you are interested in any of this, email Brad Smith at scion@fastmail.com.

The class is brought to you by the Agrarian Sharing Network, an Oregon-based group focused on hosting events to distribute high-quality and rare fruit-tree genetics and seeds freely to the public.