I'm in the middle of grafting apples here. Adding another 20 varieties this year (a lot of big apples). I have 5 Franken trees but I'm going to add to my 4 year olds this year. I have 20 of them plus seedlings from the last few years. I had Cider apples first then red fleshed, now I'm adding large apples and one's with great taste. Your grafts look great!
They are in the ground, except for the seedlings. I leave them in pots for 2 years to see if they can survive the winter and the diseases here, before planting out.
I planted Fuji apples when I moved here (a complete novice) They would get cedar rust so bad they had few leaves left in August. Tried controlling it with little success so I was going to cut them down and start new trees that could resist it, by chance I ran across a video on grafting and the rest is history. I started grafting in 2018 last year I got a few Wickson apples which are awesome. Now I have begun the war with the tree rats (squirrels) They stripped most trees of apples last year.
I did some grafting for the first time last year and had horrible luck. I did all chip budding onto some rootstocks early in the spring. They all dried out and fell off and by that time so did the scions I had leftover. As another experiment I in-arch grafted a second rootstock into my trees to see if it would do anything cool like make them grow faster or make the semi-dwarfs fruit sooner with a dwarf stock attached. All three of my young apple trees accepted the secondary rootstocks but my cherries and plums all rejected them. Three weeks ago I grafted all my apple scion wood onto rootstocks using the cleft graft and about 6 weeks ago I did the same on some cherry rootstocks and one of them completely died when I checked on it last week. The other two cherry grafts have not bloomed yet but also haven’t shriveled up so I am hopeful I get at least 2/3. 🤷♂️
@@growtolearn4545 I planted the dwarf rootstocks right next to the semi-dwarf trees and cut a 1/4” wide slit in the bark of the tree and cut the side of the rootstock flat and tied them together really tight with some wire and then loosened it a bit every few weeks until they fused together enough on their own. My thought was that whatever makes the dwarf bloom sooner than the semi-dwarf might somehow transfer to the fruiting stock as if it were a normal dwarf tree but also have the sturdiness of the semi-dwarf. 🤔😎
so will both of them be growing on their own roots as one or at one point you will cut off the semi-dwarf from its roots and leave it growing on the dwarf rootstock?
@@growtolearn4545 I have no idea what the end results will be but because both rootstocks have their own graft to the fruit stock I am hoping it behaves as if two trees conjoined through inosculation.
I see, what about twisting them together for better connection, also because one is a dwarf and the other a semi-dwarf, they will have a different speed or growth rate because of the difference in root size, do you think that that might rip them apart?
Nice
I'm in the middle of grafting apples here. Adding another 20 varieties this year (a lot of big apples). I have 5 Franken trees but I'm going to add to my 4 year olds this year. I have 20 of them plus seedlings from the last few years. I had Cider apples first then red fleshed, now I'm adding large apples and one's with great taste. Your grafts look great!
Very nice! Are all these in ground trees, or you have them in pots? I always liked those red fleshed apples. so good!
how did you get started with all this grafting?
They are in the ground, except for the seedlings. I leave them in pots for 2 years to see if they can survive the winter and the diseases here, before planting out.
I planted Fuji apples when I moved here (a complete novice) They would get cedar rust so bad they had few leaves left in August. Tried controlling it with little success so I was going to cut them down and start new trees that could resist it, by chance I ran across a video on grafting and the rest is history. I started grafting in 2018 last year I got a few Wickson apples which are awesome. Now I have begun the war with the tree rats (squirrels) They stripped most trees of apples last year.
Oh that is so cool, did you get any 🍎 from your grafts yet, besides the "tree rats" getting them?
I did some grafting for the first time last year and had horrible luck. I did all chip budding onto some rootstocks early in the spring. They all dried out and fell off and by that time so did the scions I had leftover. As another experiment I in-arch grafted a second rootstock into my trees to see if it would do anything cool like make them grow faster or make the semi-dwarfs fruit sooner with a dwarf stock attached. All three of my young apple trees accepted the secondary rootstocks but my cherries and plums all rejected them.
Three weeks ago I grafted all my apple scion wood onto rootstocks using the cleft graft and about 6 weeks ago I did the same on some cherry rootstocks and one of them completely died when I checked on it last week. The other two cherry grafts have not bloomed yet but also haven’t shriveled up so I am hopeful I get at least 2/3. 🤷♂️
oh that's interesting to hear, what did you graft on to the secondary rootstock?
@@growtolearn4545 I planted the dwarf rootstocks right next to the semi-dwarf trees and cut a 1/4” wide slit in the bark of the tree and cut the side of the rootstock flat and tied them together really tight with some wire and then loosened it a bit every few weeks until they fused together enough on their own. My thought was that whatever makes the dwarf bloom sooner than the semi-dwarf might somehow transfer to the fruiting stock as if it were a normal dwarf tree but also have the sturdiness of the semi-dwarf. 🤔😎
so will both of them be growing on their own roots as one or at one point you will cut off the semi-dwarf from its roots and leave it growing on the dwarf rootstock?
@@growtolearn4545 I have no idea what the end results will be but because both rootstocks have their own graft to the fruit stock I am hoping it behaves as if two trees conjoined through inosculation.
I see, what about twisting them together for better connection, also because one is a dwarf and the other a semi-dwarf, they will have a different speed or growth rate because of the difference in root size, do you think that that might rip them apart?