Fruitwise apple tree grafting, the saddle graft

Demonstration of one of the simplest and most useful techniques for grafting fruit trees. A 'pencil' of the scion wood, variety Queen Cox in this case, is used from storage, these need to be cut while the wood is winter-dormant e.g. February to early March, and stored cool and not too dry. I usually put them in a plastic bag in the fridge. LABEL carefully. The right time to graft is bud burst to early green leaf, roughly April. This was done on the last day of a warm southern English March.

Any very sharp knife with a thin blade will do, my favourite is the Opinel 'inoxidable'(stainless) number 6 (number refers to size, Opinel make a range of knives.) My one has a walnut handle and I bought it in Bayeux, which is completely irrelevant! it must feel comfortable in your hand. The knife must be sharp enough to cut you badly or it is not sharp enough for purpose, so be careful. Note the trick of locking thumbs together and levering the knife through the wood, it reduces the risk of slipping and cutting yourself. Practice with waste wood (e.g. prunings) to get the fit right. This technique really works well, the follow up video proves it!

NB the rootstocks here are MM106, and are growing in a row where I cut down some unwanted and over-large rootstocks and allowed new growths to shoot up from the stump. I then earthed these up and selected the best growths to make my own vegetatively propagated rootstocks. This is a good way to produce new trees, but the saddle graft can be used equally well to top work over an established tree to a different variety. I will show other grafting techniques in a forthcoming video.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• fruitwise
• apple
• tree
• grafting
• fruit
• orchard
• saddle
• graft
• MM106
• root
• stock
• rootstock

[firstbasmen12]

hey stephen im a young inspired apple grower but i have a few questions.

1)my seeds are just sprouting this spring, how old will they need to be to graft them?

2)what graft would i use

and thats it for now...please reply

[stephenhayesuk]

@firstbasmen12 I discourage people from sowing apple pips, they usually will not be true to the parent. The pip may grow into a new variety but the chances of it being an improvement on the parent are very slim, and by the time you discover what the quality of the fruit is going to be like (usually average minus to inedible), years have gone by when you could have been growing a known variety from a nursery.

If you want to grow a fruit tree, best to buy from a nursery.

[deadreck024]

does it have to be an apple tree root system or can it be any tree's root system?

Can you take a cutting and add rooting gel to the cut and clone it like that?

[stephenhayesuk]

@deadreck024 No, you can only graft apple on to apple. You can grow apple on its own roots, but experience over a couple of centuries or more is that grafting gives more predictable and useful results, and this is what almost everyone does.

[muc0rmuc3do]

can I do this in March?

[stephenhayesuk]

@muc0rmuc3do I graft in late March and early April using scion wood I cut and stored in February. NOW is the time to cut teh wod you want top graft. cut clean 'pencils' of last year's growth and store them in the fridge in a polythene bag with a bit of damp paper or cloth to stop them drying out.

[deadkenny64]

He looks homeless

[5043ellis]

Hi Stephen, I know of an apple tree in a hedge row growing wild, The fruit are exceptionally delicious. The tree is very large and looks fully grown. I would like to take scion cuttings in Feb but there is no new wood from last year or previous recent years that I can tell. How important is the age of the scion. If the diameter were to match that of the root stock would older scion wood be viable.

[ec123456789able]

really informative video, i would love to try grafting someday.

[jamesryanphoto]

If I have an Apple tree suffering from fire blight and I cut it down to about 3 ft tall and graft disease resistant shoots onto it will the tree then become disease resistant or dose the rootstock need to be disease resistant.

[firstbasmen12]

alright stephen what is the diffrence between the saddle and cleft graft and when would you use both? also if you put 4 diffrent varieties of apple on one tree and the all bloom at the same time then will the tree essentially self polinate?