"K" wrote in message
Farm1 writes
"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).

It matters in this case because the size of the tree is important -
most
grafting of apple trees is done to govern the size of the tree,
using
'dwarfing' stock.

Thanks for clarifying that. Stupidly I had assumed that the OP would
have the sense to find a suitable rootstock tree on which to do his
grafts. I had assumed that since the OP wrote with some appearance of
knowledge on the subject he would understand from what I wrote that
any apple stock he could find would work given that I/we had used so
many differnt scions to graft to two absolutely indiffernt trees.
I'll try to be more careful in future.