The problem with most backyard fruit trees, according to Ingels, is that the older they get the higher the fruit grows. Beyond reach, except by ladder, and most gardeners aren't going to risk a fall for some extra fruit. Even semi-dwarf trees get from 12 to 15 feet tall. So some people cut way back in one year and then end up having sun-burned branches followed by borer infestations and eventual collapse and death of the tree. The fair, open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., will be held next to the Fair Oaks Library at Fair Oaks Boulevard and Madison Avenue.
Admission is free.
There will be a tasting of five varieties of midseason tomatoes from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and tours of the Fair Oaks Community Garden, a UC Master Gardener clinic, fitness demonstrations and children's activities throughout the day. The project, funded by Elvinia J. Slosson Foundation at UC Davis, California Association of Nurserymen and the California Rare Fruit Growers Association, and using trees donated by Dave Wilson Nursery and Four Winds Growers, is to provide a setting for training for such things as budding and grafting, pest management, pruning, drip irrigation and high-density planting in a backyard orchard. In two years we'll plant four more just like them over where the tomato trials are, so we demonstrate what the pruning on young trees will look like two years later. All of the fruiting shoots grow from them. As the scaffold limbs grow, they'll continue to be stubbed back, sending energy into the fruiting limbs.