Event Series:
VA – Inoculations at Sky Meadows State Park
VA – Inoculations at Sky Meadows State Park
June 6 @ 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Event will take place Friday and Saturday from 9am-3pm.
Testing our orchard trees for blight resistance requires inoculating them with the blight. We do this by boring a hole in the bark, removing a plug of bark, and replacing it with a disk of agar and mycelium, the chestnut blight fungus. The agar and mycelium are cut from a culture of the fungus in a Petri plate. Our experience has been that a crew of three people can inoculate two plots of 180 planted nuts per day, from 9am to 3 pm. The work is low to the ground and requires you to follow a set protocol. Reasonable agility and attention to detail are all that is required. Training is relatively quick. You will learn to recognize naturally occurring blight and gain general knowledge of the selection and testing process.
Prepare to get dirty and protect yourself from possible poison ivy. Long pants, long sleeves, gloves, and a hat are recommended. Bring water and lunch.
