A good Apple Tree Book

I'm quite often asked about recommending a good apple tree book. Especially about training and grafting.

There are hundreds out there, some great, some not. One I often recommend is form the 1940's, Fruit Tree Growing by Raymond Bush (if there was ever a name for a fruit tree book). Not everything in there is gold (they're just getting into sprays and stuff), but the chapter on grafting is good. 

Although it's old it written in quite a light and humorous way, with instructions that are easy to follow. There are of course many other techniques out there, but this has a good handle on the basics. Also it shouldn't cost more than about £3 so I'm not recommending to someone to spend a fortune. 

 One thing I will say is that with fruit tree growing, grafting and training, it's just to have a go. You can pick up a cheap supermarket fruit tree for £5 most springs so it's worth buying one and just seeing how you can implement the knowledge in these book. Stuff normally grows back and they're surprisingly hard to kill (so long as you keep watering them). It's worth getting a few and having them in pots on the patio, make a framework of bamboo (hazel even better) and then just train them over a few summers into different shapes. 

The same with grafting, make some family trees, try budding in late summer, cut a branch off an older tree and try to cleft graft. Invest a few pounds and buy some rootstocks on the internet and create your own trees, if they take you can sell them easily and cover your costs and you will have learnt far more than if you just read about it. 

In fact after writing this I think I will get a few cheap apple trees and train them in pots on the patio to show how to do this. Should be fun. 

Do you have  fruit tree book you recommend or turn to?

This Years Grafts Looking Good

It's still too early to see what has taken and what hasn't, but early signs are looking good for this years apple trees. 

There's over hundred and fifty trees in this section and most have new growth on the grafted on scion wood. Long furrows seems the perfect plot for them and all this rain lately has helped keep them looking healthy. 

Who else did any grafting this year and how are your trees looking?

125 Grafted Apple Trees So Far

Over the last few weeks I've been steadily grafting apple trees in any spare time I have. I tend to do ten or a dozen at a time so I don't get too bored with the job, either in the greenhouse or in the workshop for an hour at night. 

Long trench dug to heel in the apple trees

 I haven't got huge numbers left now and I can see the end in sight, I hope to get a good percentage take this year. I've tried to be careful at every stage, I've store the scion wood correctly, I've been careful and accurate with my cuts and I've sealed all my grafts with tape and wax.

Apple tree heeled in ready for planting

There's still along way to go with these trees. I've got to now plant them in a nursery bed and grow them on for a year or two (depending on how much growth they put on), during this time I need to look after them, keep them weeded, prune them to get them growing straight and regraft any trees that don't take. Hopefully I'll eb able to sell some of the trees out of this lot and I'll give blog readers first chance to purchase them when the time is right!

Anyone else have a small cottage industry in the making?

Orchard Trees Mulched

I've managed to put some muck around the base of my trees this week. Some people don't like to do this too much as it can encourage leafy growth at the expense of fruit, but while the trees are young and establishing I think it's a good thing.  I might add a final mulch of wood chip on top to help keep the weeds at bay around the base of the tree.

Half a barrow of muck a tree

How the bridge graft I did in 3013 looks now

I also looked at the bridge graft I did a couple of years ago when I had a tree ringed barked by rabbits. The tree is still growing well and both of my "bridges" are alive and looking healthy, they've gotten thicker and grown with the tree and the wounds have callused over nicely. Hopefully as the tree grows it will engulf this and in a few years time you won't be able to tell. 

Does anyone else mulch their fruit trees with well rotted muck? Do you think it makes any difference?

Inarching A Damaged Apple Tree

They say you learn more through your mistakes than your successes, if that's true then I'm learning a lot. One important thing I learnt last year was not to mulch young apple trees with straw, although it stopped the weeds it also provided a perfect little haven for mice to chew at the bark of some of my trees.

 I was gutted when I spotted this a month or so ago, a few trees had been completely ringed by the little sods. But the damage was done so I just had to think how to get over it and prevent it in future. I will be adding tree guards to all of these even though they're protected by a rabbit fence, hopefully that'll stop it happening again. 

The trees in question happen to be part of my row of cordons, and they were growing nicely. It would be a shame to loose any, but the damage extends down to ground level, not enough bark left to do a bridge graft like I have done on a previously damaged tree in the orchard. 

I decided to try some inarching, this is where I basically graft a new rootstock on to the tree whilst it's still insitu and this should keep the sap flowing next year. The process is quite simple but in practice it's fiddly, although I have a few trees to do to so I should get better at it!

New rootstock added along side the old one

The end of the new rootstock cut into a wedge shape. It should go to a point without a flat bit shown on the picture.
The side against the tree is cut slightly longer to give a larger area for cambium contact.

The wedge of the new rootstock being inserted in to the scion of the old tree. This should hopefully keep it alive.  It's essential to make sure that the cambium layers are touching (the layer just under the bark) as this is where the sap flows.

Different tree but showing the grafting tape holding it all tight.

I need to do this to about 8 trees in a row of thirty, luckily I have a lot of rootstocks to use as I haven't started this years grafting yet. They seem to have only gone for some trees and not others, they didn't touch my nursery of over 150 trees luckily - otherwise I might be weeping! My plan is to keep these trees alive for another season and then take some scion wood from them so I don;t loose that variety and maybe replace the trees when I have new ones grown depending on how they do. 

The more grafting I do and the more I practice it, the bigger asset having this skill becomes. If your a keen gardener then I urge you to try it. I might do a little video on this if anyone is interested? 

Anyone else been grafting this year yet?

Grafting Success and Failures

I grafted more fruit trees this year than the year before and I had a fair few more failures.

This years tree nursery - a little weedy maybe...

 The apples did relatively well although I only had a success rate of around 75%, I think this is down to a number of factors: I used some "grafting pliers" for some for the grafts and the majority of these ones failed compared to the ones I did traditionally with a knife. I also stored the scion wood differently, some in the fridge (this all took well) and some in the shed, as it was much more mild than the year before, I don't think the shed was cold enough and so some of the wood wasn't alive enough to be grafted.

One of the many failed cherry grafts

 Some for the other fruit didn't do so well. Only two cherry grafts took and much the same with the plums and pears, although the two apricots I did as an experiment are both doing well. 

A successful graft with apricot wood

In total I've still got over a hundred fruit trees growing in the nursery with successful grafts and the root stocks that had failed grafts on can be used this next spring so no money lost. Next year I will trying budding some trees in the summer (although there never seems time in August) as I think stone fruit like the cherries and plums do better that way.

Has anyone else been propagating fruit trees or tried their hand at grafting?

Stone Fruit & Pear Grafted

I feel much better now I've started to do this years grafting.

Today I managed to graft all my cherry, plum and pear rootstock's.

Some of the completed grafts

The cherries have been grafted with a few older varieties  like "Van" and "morrollo" then some more modern ones like "Summers Sun" and "penny". I only did ten trees as the dwarfing rootstock's I wanted weer quite expensive. I plan to plant all of these, when they've left the nursery bed, in the orchard, quite close together so they can be netted easily.

The 15 pears were a good selection of what I could find locally, from the basic but lovely "Conference" to the more unusual "Court du Lame" (I've just googled this one and found nothing so maybe I've written it down wrong) and I also grafted a medlar on one as well.

The plum rootstock's were used for 4 different varieties of plum and also an apricot "Novi Sad" and nectarine "Lord Napier". These more warm climate fruit should give me a bit of a challenge in years to come (anyone have any luck with apricots over here or am I just dreaming?)!

I set myself up in the greenhouse just in case it rains...

Turned out to be a good plan - shame I put the washing out to dry first thing!

All the grafted trees waiting for their nursery bed to be dug over ready.

For the grafts I used the whip and tongue graft (Have a look in my blog here, here and here for more information on grafting) but I must confess to using insulation tape to secure them together, as the ones I did with it last year seem to work just as well as the ones done using proper grafting tape and wax, I guess time will tell on that one.

So that's 40 grafts down just 100 apple tree grafts to go! Anyone else grafting this year?

Storing Grafting Wood

In the fridge, above the yogurts and beside the butter, there is a bag of wood.

Keeping this sort of thing in our fridge is not completely unusual in our house.

The bags contain scion wood of 18 different varieties of apple, cherry, apricot, plum and pear trees that I will use for grafting at the end of this month. Each variety is stored with a wet bit of newspaper around it's base and then wrapped in cling film with a label stating what tree it is. I check these every few weeks to make sure they haven't dried out and they are kept so they won't ever freeze.

I found quite a bit of conflicting information about storing scion wood on a small scale so I hope this is the best way. Anyone else storing scion wood at the moment?

Rootstocks Have Arrived

My "big" order of fruit tree rootstocks has arrived.

A big bundle of rootstocks

 For me this is quite a big order of 100 MM106 apple rootstocks, 15 Quince A rootstocks, 10 "gisela 5" cherry rootstocks and 15 plum root stocks. I have heeled them into the veg garden to leave until the end of winter when I'll graft them.

I was pleased with the qualitity of the stock as I took a gamble and ordered online from a supplier I hadn't used before. The plants all have good roots on them and look healthy which is a good sign

All heeled in

The only trouble is I ordered a little scion wood to go with the order (Apricot and a couple of different plums) and I'm not sure the best way to store this until March. Some research needed unless you guys have some advice?

Rootstocks Ordered

Well last Sunday night I ordered 140 rootstocks for grafting fruit trees this spring.

A couple of last years grafts ready to be planted

This is a bit of an investment but I'm hoping to turn this into a small cottage industry in a few years or at least a hobby that covers it's costs.
I ordered Apple, Pear, Plum and Cherry rootstocks, so now I'll be on the look out for scion wood over winter to grow interesting and heritage varieties of fruit. I also ordered some apricot scion wood so that should test me.
Anyone else planing on doing any grafting this coming spring?

Planting A Little Tree Nursery

In a break between April showers today I managed to get my grafted trees planted.

My tree nursery bed

 I dug over a small patch of the veg garden yesterday with the rotovator so planting was fairly easy. I added in some compost and bone meal to give them the best start then set about planting them.
I spaced them one foot a part (300mm) in a row and my rows were about two foot apart. These trees are only going to stay in this bed for one or maybe two years before they are big enough to be up dug up and transplanted somewhere else. I used a short length of bamboo to mark each tree as I know what I'm like when I'm wondering around the garden in the dark!
I plan to keep the weeds down on this bed by mulching with straw as the last thing I want is another area to weed, but having them in the veg garden means they are safe from rabbits!

Thanks to compost woman for this cutting!

I was a little annoyed while planting as I seem to have lost the label off one tree, so now I need to figure out which one it is!
What am I going to do with all these trees? Some I'll keep and grow, some I'll give to friends and family once they're established and hopefully I'll sell one or two (although not the one with the missing label!).

Propagating An Old Apple Tree

One of the grafts I did was to propagate this old apple tree.

Beautiful old tree

This is in my neighbours field where I have been given permission to go shooting. Apparently the field used to all orchards planted up with Newton Wonder, this is the last tree that survives from that orchard and it's seen better days.
I thought it would be nice to take a cutting from this tree and give my neighbours a new tree to plant along side it so they'll keep being able to have the same apples in years to come, and to say thank you for letting me shoot there (although I haven't really had time for that lately).

Nice young, straight and thick growth to take a cutting from

I've grafted this on to an M25 rootstock so it will grow into a full sized tree.

Hippo inadvertently asked about root stocks in my last post so with out wanting to bore everyone with more apple talk here's a bit on what I know.
Apples don't grow true from seed, this is why we graft varieties we know on to root stocks. In doing this we're basically making a clone of that first tree that had those nice apples on it.
But what we graft the tree on to (the rootstock) decides how it vigorous it grows. So a Cox grafted on to an M25 rootstock will produce a tree that will be around 4.5m + in height whereas a cox grafted on to an M9 rootstock will produce a tree that's between 1.8m and 2.5m when fully grown. There are lots of root stocks to choose from but I tend to stick with the semi vigorous MM106 (or half standard) as I don't want to use a ladder to pick the apples and I want them to grow quite fast but still have some control over them.
Other things to take into consideration are things like an M9 will start bearing fruit a lot faster than an M25 and some are better suited to different soil or temperature conditions than others. There's loads on the Internet if you're interested in the subject!
This isn't only for apples but most types of fruit trees (all have there own set of rootstocks). Some even have to be double worked where two grafts are performed, an example would be where the bottom part is to influence the size of the roots and the second part is to influence how big the tree will grow and the third for the variety of fruit.
I'm willing to be corrected on any of this if I'm wrong! Anyone else got any information on rootsotcks to share?

31 Apple Tree Grafts

On Saturday and Sunday I finally got round to grafting my apple trees.

My root stocks heeled in a pot ready to be grafted

 I used the whip and tongue graft on them all, and I even splashed out and brought some grafting tape and wax to seal them with. Lots of different types of apple trees collected from the local area (thanks again compost woman for your two) so if they all take I should have over 50 varieties of apple!


My collection of Scion wood

 The only difficulty I had was when some of my scion stock wasn't very wide. Here I took the advice of the books and just made sure that one side of the cambium layer was touching.

First two done

 Once I grafted up a batch I then heated up the grafting wax in the microwave to seal all my grafts.
To do this I dipped the cut end and painted the wax over the join before dipping them in cold water to set the wax. I would have dipped the whole graft in if I had a jar that was deep enough but doing it in this way seems fine.

Melted grafting wax



Grafted up and sealed waiting to go into the ground

In the end I grafted up 9 M25 trees and 22 MM106 trees. I didn't graft one M25 and two MM106 stocks as I'm going to attempt to grow my own root stocks from these by stooling, but I'll do that in another post.
I've just healed these trees back into the pot for now and at the weekend I'll create a nursery bed for them to grow in for the first year or so.
Lets hope they all take or else I could be learning budding in the summer! 

Saving A Rabbit Damaged Tree

Or at least trying to...

Rabbit Damage

 Walking around my trees the other day I could see that one had been badly damaged by rabbits (or girdled the term is). They had chewed the bark above the rabbit guard and only a tiny strip on the back remains.
As this tree has only been in a year I could easily replace it, but that's a years growth wasted and the cost of a new tree, so I decided to try and repair it.

Make cuts below and above the damage into the cambium layer

The way the tree had been damaged meant that the sap couldn't flow up the tree anymore but I'd read about using "bridge grafts" to solve this problem -I'd just never tried it. Still nothing ventured...
I first took a couple of small branches from the same tree of last years growth. This was soft and flexible. I then cut a long cut on both ends and a small one on the other sides to make a wedge shape.

I bridge the damage using some small branches from last years growth

In the tree itself I made an incision below the damage and one above. These cuts aren't too deep but expose the cambium layer just below the bark. I then inserted the two "bridges" into these cuts. The books said I could just use one for a tree this size but I decided to go with two in case one didn't work. They are cut slightly long so they have to be bent into position helping to maintain cambium contact once the tape is applied.

The graft taped up, only time will tell to see if I did any good.

I then taped it all up and applied grafting wax to make sure it was sealed. And before I finished I added another rabbit guard on top of the first to help to keep the little buggers away.
I'm not sure whether this will work or not but it was interesting to try. Before I started to learn about grafting I would have assumed there wasn't anything I could do to keep this tree alive. It's nice to learn through doing by using the knowledge I've gained through books - because if you don't ever do what you've read about you haven't really learnt anything! .

Visiting A Tree Nursery

The more I've thought about the grafting course the more I've been annoyed about it. I just didn't feel that he taught us the correct method or in a very good way, with little knowledge to back it up. My dad knew how annoyed I was so he spoke to a customer of his and arranged for me to visit a local nursery that is currently on grafting.

Three cordon apple trees

This nursery performs in the region of 300,000 - 400,000 grafts a year (plus summer budding) so they really know what they're on about.
Inside the warm grafting shed they've got a number of production lines set up. The first guy trims the roots and cuts the root stock to size (as the trees they were working on were all going to be potted up), the next guy cuts the graft and then a third man ties it and dips it in wax.

 The man making the grafts did them so perfectly each and every time and I was advised that the best way for me to practise is to go and cut some willow and use that to try out the cuts. The grafts here were much neater than the ones I saw the previous week, and as a whip and tongue graft was used, instead of just a whip, it seemed much stronger (You couldn't even spot the graft on some of them).

A seven level espalier

 I didn't take any pictures in the grafting shed or where they keep their thousands of bits of scion wood (a massive cold store) as I didn't think it was appropriate to at the time. But I did take pictures of their trained trees outside their office, all done by the head manager there! I hope my apple trees will look like this in a few years time.

A fan trained tree

 I was there for a good hour asking question after question and they didn't seem to mind at all, they just seemed pleased I was so keen. They even invited me back at anytime to see what they do next with the trees - I've told them they might regret that offer!

Trained into different shapes

Young trees being trained

An amazing way to spend a morning and I feel that I learnt so much from them. I've ordered 25 root stocks and tonight I went and cut some willow to practise on.
It was a shame that the course I went on last week was so half hearted, but I am very lucky to be able to go and speak to people who are so obviously passionate about what they do and run a thriving local business. It's also so nice to be able to speak to professionals like this who are so open with their knowledge and keen to pass it on.
Anyone local with old or interesting varieties of apple let me know so I can take a cutting, as I need some more varieties for my root stocks when they arrive!

Grafting Course

Today My mother and I went on a tree grafting course.

I've been struggling what to write about the course as, to be honest, it wasn't much good and I'm not really into writing negative reviews.

I just felt that it wasn't very well run or thought out. Although the instructor knew how to graft apple trees he didn't know huge amounts on the subject of apples and the course had a very steady pace to it. Also we were only shown how to do one method of grafting an apple tree and it would have been nice to see how to do things like cleft grafting or an example of budding so we could try that in the summer.

That said the course wasn't expensive and we did go home with two apple trees each and I now know how to graft.

The one year old nursery bed

 I found how they propagated these apples really interesting and how they used a new bed each year to produce more stock to sell. The trees in the nursery beds were spaced about 1ft apart.

A two/three year old nursery bed

 Making a graft:

Cutting the scion

A photo showing the cut and the thin "wispy" end

Cutting the root stock to accept the scion

Holding the two together so that the cambium layers on each piece are touching

beginning to tape up the graft. We just used insulation tape for this

My two grafts completed

Mum still doing hers

I did learn a few key things, like the selection of the scion where and how to make the cuts and the aftercare of the tree.

When I got home I showed my brother how to do it (we had a couple of extra root stocks as he was meant to come along but couldn't) and I taught him in about 10 minutes, by the end we had another two trees ready to go into the ground.

I'm definitely planing to do some more grafting and I might even go and buy some root stocks to graft some more this year, using scions from trees of friends of varieties that I haven't got.

I think the thing I should have done before with grafting was to go out and try it, it's fairly simple and it's not the end of the world if you get it wrong. Not sure I recommend the course but I recommend going out and trying some grafting.