Thursday Grafting Tour

The grafting tour will leave Charlotte, North Carolina and include several stops beginning in the fertile mountain valley of Mills River, North Carolina. The first stop will be at a new grafting facility, Tri-Hishtil, which opened in Fall 2015 with its first production starting in the 2016 growing season. The stages of grafting from sowing to finished product will be showcased. The second stop will be FLAVOR 1st Growers & Packers which packs 31 different varieties of produce for sale, all of which are tracked from the field to fork using sophisticated distribution programs and procedures. Produce acquisition, washing, sorting, packing and final product for shipment will be featured for tomatoes. The Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center will be the lunch stop where its core research crops are tomatoes, apples and ornamental landscape crops. Other research efforts at the Center are given to vegetable and a variety of specialty crops. The tomato breeding program and a field demonstration of grafted tomato and watermelon plants will be planted at the Center. The next stop will be Banner Greenhouses as travel will be through the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Banner Greenhouses produces a variety of transplants which includes, flowers, vegetables, hemp and grafted tomato. A tomato grafting machine will be featured at this stop. Travel after this stop will be to the home base hotel in Charlotte, NC.

Mountain Crops Research and Extension Center