View Single Post
  #4   Report Post  
Old 10-01-2007, 10:24 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Jim Jackson Jim Jackson is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Aug 2006
Posts: 134
Default Grafting an old apple tree

Chris Potts wrote:
..... 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?


Most of the grafting I've done used the type of scions you describe from
the books. You can encourage a tree to give such scions by very heavy
winter pruning, then summer thinning. But you need a year in hand for
that, it's too late in this case.

I have successfully grafted using 2 year scion wood - though I've not got
fruit yet. So I'd take some spindly stuff and some 2 year wood.

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.


I'd recommend M26 as a root stock. It seems to do pretty well in the North
(I'm near Wakefield). I've bought bare rooted M26 root stock from Rogers
of Pickering

http://www.rvroger.co.uk/

And I've rooted "suckers" from the root stock of my apple trees (M25
mostly).

Sorry I don't know any nearer to Manchester.