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Old 06-12-2017, 06:59 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Martin Brown[_2_] Martin Brown[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Mar 2017
Posts: 267
Default Tree of 40 fruit

On 05/12/2017 23:25, wrote:
On Tuesday, 5 December 2017 08:30:55 UTC, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/12/2017 22:47, tabbypurr wrote:
On Thursday, 30 November 2017 11:32:22 UTC, Martin Brown wrote:
On 30/11/2017 00:39, tabbypurr wrote:
Hi everyone.


I'd like to explain in the simplest possible terms how to
grow a grafted tree of 40 different fruit to someone that
knows nothing about gardening. And I don't know all the
details myself! The

40 sounds a bit of a push unless you allow different varieties
of the same fruit. I suppose a multistemmed variety of wild
prunus with as many prunus cultivars bud grafted onto long
supported stems might get you there. Does it have to be 40? You
will spend most of the time just reading out all the names. 3
or 4 is a lot more practical.

audience will include interested children as well as adults.
I don't need to touch on details they can learn for
themselves.

Help!

Family apple trees usually limit themselves to 3 or 4 since you
have to match the vigour of the stock scion pair to the next
tier down and there is a limit to how much top growth the
rootstock can support.

They also need careful watching or one variety will run away -
usually the one directly connected to the rootstock. I have
Sunset on Egremont Russet on M9 and it works very well even
though the russet is dominant.

That's 3 if you allowed a rootstock sucker to fruit as well.

There are trees with 40 on, I just need to explain how to do it
as simply as possible


There are, but they are done by artists and will surely be very
short lived and fragile. Family trees of 4 or 5 fruit varieties are
about the realistic limit for grafting with apples and pears.

You have to pick the order carefully so that each one is
approximately suited to the vigor of the previous stock if they are
grafted as a chain or take one vigourous established rootstock tree
and bud graft a whole load of things onto it and pray. Eventually
you may be rewarded.


http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/...g-fruit-trees/



The grafting step is no different to any other sort of grafting. The
choice of varieties that will cohabit peacefully is much more
tricky. I don't expect the artist who did this really cares about
that so long as it looks absolutely fantastic for one season.


That link's informative but way too complex. If I can't give a set of
instructions in at the outside 10 minutes, preferably 5, that enable
folk to graft with at least some success, then it won't fly. I don't
have the grafting skill to condense those pages into a quick basic
guide.


Even for someone with a steady hand and a very sharp knife grafting is a
bit pot luck since the joint union has to match phloem and xylem across
the graft well enough that the scion survives long enough for the wound
to heal. The cleft graft or its modified form are about the easiest to
do. The whip graft is about the hardest to get right (and will need many
practice attempts to even get close to the right matching shapes).

After using the sharpest possible knife to minimise cellular damage
immobilising it so that the graft takes rather than flaps around in the
breeze and dries out is probably the next most important thing.

Grafting isn't easy. I have had plenty fail including some where as a
result I lost the cultivar I was trying to preserve. Putting a piece of
pear/apple onto a tree that is short of a pollenator may be worth a try.
We used to swap a piece of pear tree with someone at work.

I'd hazard a guess that early success rates will be less than 10% (and
that's assuming you have the necessary dexterity to do it at all).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown