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Old 10-01-2007, 12:09 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Farm1 Farm1 is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jul 2006
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Default Grafting an old apple tree

"Chris Potts" wrote in message

I would like to take this apple tree
with us and have a couple of questions about grafting. All the

pictures
that I can find of grafting show the scion as a last years shoot,

about
as thick as or thicker than a pencil with shiny bark. Our tree does

not
have any like this. The new shoots are very spindly, or contorted

with
next years fruit buds. Which would we be best way to take scions

from
such a tree? Does the scion have to be last years wood, or would an
older thicker branch be better?

The garden at our new house is big enough for a small tree (the

parent
is about 5m high with a similar spread which would be too large).

Which
rootstock should I use for grafting, and where can I buy one from?

We
presently live in North Lincolnshire, and are moving to the

Manchester
area, so a supplier nearby either who we could go to talk to would

be
ideal.


The grafting I've done (with supervision from someone who knew what
they were doing) was onto seedling apple trees that grew in spots
where I'd put "compost" (yeah I know "compost" is not supposed to have
viable seds in it but mine does). I/we put on heaps of grafts on 2
such trees (maybe 20-30 grafts??? - around that number anyway) and all
but 1 graft took so I don't think that the source tree is all that
important so long as it's an apple (but maybe seedling apple trees are
tougher - dunno).

All the scions used for this grafting was the pencil sized green stuff
you describe. Since you have no options with your tree, why don't you
take a variety of different scions and if you don't have a tree in the
new place big enough to use all the scions, buy a bigger tree or
perhaps two?