In his experience, the first three, using a scion, either take or don't take, but at least you know. The bud grafts, which happen in the summer, taking only a little leaf bud off the parent tree (so, so small!), will sometimes live, but not do much of anything. So in his experience, the larger scions are better than the small buds; grafting in April and May is better than trying to graft in summer.
The information was very helpful, and one of the attendees had pawpaw seeds, which I have been searching for for months now (I bought forty): very cool. I learned that some fruit seeds, like persimmon, pawpaw, and maybe jujube, send down taproots, and they do better with a tall, slender pot, rather than a wide flat one. I'll need to find a good source for tall tree pots. It sounds like a fairly reasonable business venture, though: take a $.25 seed and grow it for a year in a $.50 tree pot, then sell it for $10.
For blueberries, too, the teacher had some great advice. No plant likes to be in a pot, he said, but blueberries are the exception. They would rather grow (slowly) in a pot for a few years, then be planted, rather than planted small. I would never (never!) have thought of keeping plants in pots, so even that tip was really helpful.
We skipped the hands' on grafting workshop part. There were many too many attendees for much supervision, and the slightly managed chaos overwhelmed Phil, who hadn't slept very well the night before.
So we headed out to pick up my emergency beehive. An hour from us is a man I found on Craigslist: he builds beehives to support his beekeeping habit. His shed was stacked with beehive pieces. We had a great time talking to him; rollicking good humor and funny anecdotes.
As we were checking out, I noticed that he had several bee feeders that I had noticed in a catalog and longed for. The dimension of the hive, it rests on top. The bees crawl up the center, and the rectangles on the ends can hold a gallon or two of syrup, with ingenious little floats for the bees to stand on so they don't drown. The little pint jar feeders seemed like no where near enough: I was thrilled to get a large feeder for each of my three (!) hives.
Then we went to the Doug Bushes, where the boys had spent an active day (Doug had them play soccer in the yard as soon as breakfast was done; at one point they did croquet, and caught tadpoles in the little pond). Doug had taken them to his daughter's house, so we walked around and saw Denise's flowers, vegetables, trees, and goats. Her brown turkey fig tree is an enormous bush: I need to find the right spot on our land to plant ours.
We didn't pull in to our driveway until 8pm, at which point the light had almost failed. I dashed about: got the new hive set up, grabbed my bee hat, and got the swarm. I cut the tape around the top, and realized that all the bees were balled in the top corner. When I opened the box, I had bees on the lid and in the box itself.
The light was fading by the minute, so I thunked the bees as carefully as I could. They dropped into the box—and that was it. There was no flight up; no crawling to find a better place. The hundred or so that fell outside the hive simply sat outside the hive. I tried to scoop them near the door, but they didn't move.
It was extremely surreal. Insects that should fly just dropped. Plop.
Fun day, yes?!
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