Sunday 24 May

Autumn Pruning Masterclass with Judy Keats

Kelmarna Community Farm

This workshop with Judy Keats is a seasonal session on how to care for your fruit trees as autumn turns to winter. Make the most of your autumn harvest and sharpen your skills for helping your trees get a jump on the colder months that loom ahead.

Join us for this day of methods and practical in-depth experience in caring for fruit trees. Help at this critical time of year to keep fruit trees in the best shape and continue thriving successfully for seasons to come!

What to expect:

Judy Keats is a permaculture & regenerative agriculture practitioner, and community garden mentor and advisor, with considerable experience establishing, coordinating, and teaching in growing spaces across Auckland. Judy believes that by observing our plants and our changing climate, we can gain insight and a closer connection to the health of our gardens, which is the key to success! In this workshop, we will focus on pruning techniques for stone fruit, pip fruit, citrus, and sub tropical tree varieties. The timing is also 'ripe' to train new wood. Improve the structure, health and hygiene, reducing canopy overcrowding are all important regular fruit tree care tasks.

Our food forest at Kelmarna will be your outdoor laboratory to practise identifying and using appropriate tools as well as understanding tree morphology and the fruiting habits of various trees. Judy will both guide you through demonstrations and you will have the opportunity to get hands-on to try pruning actions and implement strategies for improving tree health and performance according to foliar programmes and in harmony with understory species in your orchard zone.

Tickets include:

• theoretical and practical instruction on autumn pruning

• access to learning material and additional resources

• refreshments provided

What to bring

• appropriate clothing and footwear for outdoor work, sunsmarts

• gloves and eye protection

Due to the requirement of fine weather for pruning, a rain date is set for this workshop. In the case of bad weather, the workshop will be held on Sun 7 June, 10am - 2pm

This workshop has a working bee component and uses a pay-what you can model. Please select your desired ticket price and support Kelmarna by learning through doing.

We look forward to seeing you on the farm soon!
Kelmarna Community Farm Workshops Program.

Please refer to the Kelmarna Community Farm Workshops policy for terms and conditions.