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Winter is the perfect time for pruning fruit trees

Greenways hosting virtual workshop on caring for apple and pear trees
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Instructor Karen Cummins prunes an apple tree in preparation for the workshop. Photo supplied by Greenways Land Trust

Even though it is winter, there is still work to be done in the garden.

That’s the premise behind the upcoming Greenways Land Trust virtual gardening workshop. On Feb. 16, the group will be hosting an apple and pear tree pruning workshop taught by Comox-based arborist Karen Cummins. Cummins has experience working in nurseries, garden centres, golf courses, municipalities and has a sustainable landscape design and garden management company.

The workshop is the start of the 2021 season for Greenways, and is the first of a few planned workshops to follow in the footsteps of last year’s virtual classes.

“We have run the garden series last year on Zoom, and that was very much appreciated by the audience, so after putting everything on Youtube, we still heard from people how great the workshops were. We thought we’d just extend it into this year too and hopefully people are not Zoomed out yet,” said Lydia Stratemann of Greenways.

“We’re still brainstorming ideas. Pruning is going to be the first one. We picked that topic for right now because people will be able to go ahead in their own yards right now in the mid to late winter and copy what they learn from the course.”

Mid- to late-winter is the perfect time to prune pear and apple trees, and it is also the perfect time to hold the first iteration of the new series. Cummins visited Stratemann’s home to film a few demonstrations for the Zoom workshop, which will help make the discussion a bit more clear.

“It was so interesting having her here and looking at our tree. I know it got pruned before, but definitely not professionally. It was kind of mind blowing how she went about it,” Stratemann said. “It’s a science, it’s really interesting.”

The course will be held over Zoom on Feb. 16 at 6:30 p.m.

Tickets are available at the event on Facebook and are $12,proceeds of the event are going to help with Greenways’ food security programming.

“This is just going to be so helpful for everybody,” Stratemann said. “The food focus is so big. Anything we can do to help people grow their own food in a more effective way is just great.”

RELATED: Good Food Box program coming to Campbell River

Greenways Land Trust made it work in a difficult year



marc.kitteringham@campbellrivermirror.com

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