Wondering if anyone here has grafted their own apple trees. I want to try getting rootstock next spring and graft my own apple trees. At $15-$20 to buy an apple tree, it looks like a guy can graft much cheaper with rootstock being $3-$4 each. Looking for any extra advice if someone has some.
Nut
I’d be interested, too. Where do you get roostocks from?
Legally, there might be some considerations (Most of the newer varieties are patented or whatever), but it would be a very neat thing to try.
I was always wondering if there are any common wild trees that could be pruned back when young, utilized as rootstocks and grafted with apple branches…
grafting is a pretty easy process but you should be able to get bare root trees for under $10 each. not sure how many you were looking to plant, but you could start some with that, then grow your own root stock from seed and start your grafting process pulling the scion wood from your bare root stock thats been established.
I did plant 5 trees last year, and have several people with trees to graft from. Seemed neat to me as well as a money saver. Root stock can be purchased in the spring from several companies on the internet. Definately going to give it a shot this spring.
Nut
it is kind of neat to do stuff like that with plants. I took some courses in plant pathology for a horticulture program and did all sorts of oddball stuff to propogate different plants.
In your grafting ventures, you need to graft a few different apple varieties onto one tree!
Is there a reason to do this outside of the financial benefit or “fun” factor it provides? Curious if there is a biological benefit etc…
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Is there a reason to do this outside of the financial benefit or “fun” factor it provides? Curious if there is a biological benefit etc…
Like stated above, you can graft various types of apples onto the same tree if you want (one branch of red, one of green, etc…)
Otherwise, I don’t think there is much advantage other than cost and personal satisfaction… Ususally the rootstocks that they use from “the factory” are well suited for the tree – dwarfing, semi-dwarf, or standard…
2 cents, could be wrong.
My question is are an apple trees natural root not very strong or what is the reason that all the apple trees I see at nursery’s are grafted on to another trees root? Just always wondered why they do it that way. Would be cool to put a couple diferant kinds on one tree.
If you take a seed from an apple tree (for example, a Honeycrisp apple) and plant it into the ground, you will indeed get an apple tree — but it won’t be a HONEYCRISP apple variety. It will be something else, the product of the parent tree/pollinator tree. Basically, a child of the parents, which certainly isn’t the same as the parents….
BUT, if you graft onto a different rootstock, you can do two things…
1. Control how big the tree will get by controlling the rootstock (dwarf, semi-dwarf, standard) and
2. Get the desired traits (Honeycrisp) since you cut a honeycrisp limb from the “parent” tree and graft it onto the rootstock.
You propagate the original DNA basically, and you aren’t getting interference from Mr. Mendel and genetics.
Anyone know of any common wild varieties of trees that will accept an apple graft? For example, if I find some wild plum –or even non-fruiting trees like aspen or popple or whatever — in the woods, can I graft an apple onto it??? Will it accept the apple graft?
From the information I have found it will not work on common non-fruit trees(popple, aspen, ext.) I am not sure about wild plums and the like. Would be interesting to find out.
Nut
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From the information I have found it will not work on common non-fruit trees(popple, aspen, ext.) I am not sure about wild plums and the like. Would be interesting to find out.
Nut
Sort of what I figured… Wild plum, crabapple, etc… might be worth a shot, though, with this winter’s clippings. 
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