Fruitwise guide to grafting over an apple tree

Grafting is easy, it can enable you to change the variety of fruit a tree bears. This technique, also known as top working enables you to replace a tree with fruit you don't like with a preferable fruit. Since posting this I have put up videos showing several techniques of grafting -saddle graft, rind graft and cleft graft. You are now (mid April) too late to graft trees for 2007/2008, but you can practice on spare wood and think and research about what if any grafting you would like to do next season.

PS one useful aplpication of grafting is pollination. If you have a tree which is infertile due to lack of a pollination partner, you can graft a few bits of wood from a compatible pollen partner in to it.

This is a video of an apple tree which was successfully top worked over to a better variety a year ago to show the usefulness of the technique.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• fruitwise
• apple
• orchard
• tree
• graft
• top
• work
• scion

[murchie5]

stephenhayesuk

hey great video's i think you do a great job but as a grafter my self you are a very messy grafter nothing against you if it works good on you but to me its very messy work

[stephenhayesuk]

I hear what you're saying murchie.

I am an enthuisiastic amateur sharing his interest rather than a professional-there are some good professional sites out there-but there is a difference between working on a production line, graftng 100 trees on to a regular batch of stocks, and top working over an individual tree to a new variety.

grafting over an established tree in the way I show here is an inherently untidy process, as is so much of our lives. No worries.

[firstbasmen12]

alright stephen i have a silly question. if i take the rootstock from a standerd full size apple tree and graft dwarf apple scions on to it at a young age will the tree become a dwarf apple tree? ben, from washington

[MegaJim79]

Also, I wanted to mention.....

why are all the MM111's leaning in this block?

[MegaJim79]

MM111....nice to see!

This rootstock should be planted deeper to discourage it's tendency to form burrknots. Looks like you have it about right...2 inches above ground level.

[markdadude1]

you're collection of videos are excellent. The wonders of internet video, it beats penciled drawings hands down - thankyou so much for the advice. I am going to give this a go!

[stephenhayesuk]

I can't do that very realistically since we are looking at different varieties, different years of planting and other vagaries. Please accept my overall impression that all things being equal MM111 grows bigger than MM106, like the books say, but not as dramatically bigger as you might think. I have not done any controlled experiments, just a little cut and paste anmd patch, for example where a sunset on 106 died I replanted with a Kidd's Orange Red on 111 as that was what I had.

[agrotis79]

Can you show us an M111 & MM106 on the same type of "GOOD SOIL" and of the same variety so we can see the difference in size?

[stephenhayesuk]

(2 years later) we had a good crop of apples, varieties Dabinett and Harry Master's jersey, from these top worked trees, which I am glad to say were used to make some very fine cider which we are enjoying right now

[stephenhayesuk]

you're right.

these trees were put into the worst soil on our holding, it is very light and sandy and does not retain moisture well. Also they were forgotten as we were elsewhere looking after our main crop of dessert apples which we sell, whereas this is an orchard of cider aples mainly to make some cider for our own use and to share with friends.

BUT, where we have planted on 111 next to 106 elsewhere on better soil, it has not grown much more than the MM106 anyway