Air Layering & Grafting Workshop

Join Nat Bletter, PhD (founder of Madre Chocolate and a Chocolate Flavormeister) in this exciting workshop on air-layering and grafting techniques. You’ll learn which techniques are appropriate for which plant species and their differences. This event is sponsored by FECH and Grow Good Hawaii.

BACKGROUND:

Dr. Nat Bletter has 25 years of experience in botany, documenting exotic fruits and vegetables, gathering food in the wild, herbal and traditional medicine, and exploring Asia, South America, Central America, and Africa. He has a Ph.D. in Ethnobotany from the City University of New York and New York Botanical Garden, where he researched medicinal plants of Peru, Mali, and the Guatemalan Mayans, ethnobotany, taste-modifying plants, and stimulant plants such as cacao, which has spurred him to start a traditional-ingredient, high-antioxidant, artisanal chocolate company Madre Chocolate. He did a post doc at University of Hawai’i Manoa researching plants and migration in Thailand and Laos, and now runs the edible landscaping company Natty by Nature where he makes fruit cocktail trees for people by grafting many varieties onto one tree to squeeze higher diversity into small Honolulu gardens.

Grow Good Hawaii

Grow Good Hawaii is a nonprofit organization founded by Paul Arinaga. Its mission is to strengthen Hawaii’s food security and restore nature from mauka to makai by implementing agroecological solutions in urban areas. The Go Native Project is now under the umbrella of the Hawai’i Forest Institute (HFI) and Grow Good Hawaii, a nonprofit organization that Arinaga recently founded to focus on urban forestry.