"David W.E. Roberts" wrote in message ...

"David W.E. Roberts" wrote in message
...

snip
Virtually all domestic fruit trees are grafted onto a wild root stock.

So growing cutting from a favourite fruit tree will probably not produce
what you expect or want.

If you really want to propogate a favourite tree then you would need a
suitable rootstock to graft onto.

HTH
Dave R

Having just said that something has occured to me.
From time to time I remove shoots from various parts of the garden which are
coming from the roots of fruit trees.

So....

If I dig up some of these 'suckers' and grow them on I should have the
rootstock of the tree.

I should then be able to graft from the tree onto the rootstock.

I could even graft onto the rootstock whilst it was still attached to the
parent tree if it came up in a suitable spot.

Sounds almost too easy (apart from the grafting).

Comments?
Dave R

It is as easy as that and your new fruit trees will also send you up a whole new load of rootstocks to play with. The
Plum and Cherry families are particularly adept at this. A lot of the old rootstocks were chosen for the purpose because
they're easy to propagate - sucker all over the place. For anybody that fancies trying, budding isn't at all difficult -
you could probably learn it from a paper description - probably on the www somewhere? but it is a lot easier if a
skilled budder can each you the basics. The mostbasic and important is the knife has to be *sharp* - if it won't easily
and comfortably shave the hairs off your arm it isn't sharp enough.

Rod