Boston Flora

Tag: J. Stephen Casscles

  • Saturday, November 11, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm – Establishing a Vineyard in Your Backyard

    This Berkshire Botanical Garden class with author J. Stephen Casscles on November 11 from 10 – 12 will cover how to establish and maintain a backyard vineyard. Topics covered include: identifying suitable fruit growing land or modifying your current backyard to grow grapes; how to layout and plant a home vineyard; selecting suitable grape varieties, including heritage grape varieties; trellising and training options; how to prune vines; and how to annually maintain a vineyard to produce bountiful amounts of grapes for wine, juice, or fresh consumption. Visit https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/establish-vineyard-your-backyard where you can also register. $25 for BBG members, $40 for nonmembers. At the end of our class, copies of his book Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions of the US and Canada, will be available for sale with the author’s signature.

  • Saturday, August 3, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Small Fruit Culture for the Home Garden

    Growing small fruits, be they blueberries, brambles, strawberries, or currants, can be fun and rewarding. This Massachusetts Horticultural Society class on August 3 from 10 – noon at The Gardens at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley, gives an overview on how to successfully grow these botanically attractive and tasty fruits in your own home garden or small farm. $25 for Mass Hort members, $35 general admission. Register at www.masshort.org.

    J. Stephen Casscles has operated a small fruit farm in the Hudson River Valley for the past 40 years. He is also a winemaker for the Hudson-Chatham Winery, Ghent, NY, which is a member of the Hudson-Berkshire Beverage Trail. Stephen has successfully grown blueberries, brambles, strawberries, and currants in his own home garden and commercially for fresh consumption or to make wines and cordials. In his youth operated a roadside farm stand. As a regional historian, Stephen authored Grapes of the Hudson Valley & Other Cool Climate Regions of the U. S. and Canada, which is now being revised for its second printing to add two new chapters to cover 19th Century heirloom grape varieties that were developed on Boston’s North Shore and the rest of New England.