Grafting Apples- Successes and Failures.
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- čas přidán 4. 01. 2019
- Over the past three years i have done a considerable amount of apple grafting. Starting as a complete novice grafter I've added several varieties to several wild trees and I am also in the process of topworking over some varieties we planted when we originally purchased the farm.
My experience with grafting has entailed some successes and lots of failures. One early mistake I made was not practicing my grafts enough before I started. From my limited experience, the key principle of achieving grafts that take, is getting good cambial contact between the scionwood and the stock. This means for grafts like the whip and tongue graft and the saddle graft, that your cuts be as straight and uniform as possible. The cleaner and more accurate you can match the mating surfaces of the cambium, the better your chances are for making a successful graft.
When I researched grafting, the overwhelmingly most popular recommended graft was the whip and tongue when using dormant scions. When I practiced making this graft though, I did not practice enough grafts to start achieving really tight joining surfaces. So I did not use whip and tongue because I thought I wasn't good enough at the cuts to have success. Instead I used the bark graft/rind graft, in many places where a whip and tongue would have been more appropriate.
The big problem I found with using the bark graft like this is that with such small stock size, you have to thin down your scion at the mating surface to matchstick thin slivers to slip under the bark. This makes a very weak spot where the graft is prone to failure. Normally the bark graft is done on much larger diameter branches where the bark is much thicker, and you can make a much larger wedge with your scion to slip under it. My experience with using mostly small diameter bark grafts has been really frustrating. Mainly because the initial success rate was very high, something like 80% of my first grafts took! So I was very happy with the tree full of live grafts. Then by the middle of summer when the grafts had put on considerable growth, they started snapping off at the cut. The wind was putting so much leverage on the thin wood of the scion at the graft union that it was snapping off. Don't make this mistake. Practice your grafts before you begin so you can make the appropriate graft for every situation instead of forcing a graft to fit because that is the graft you are most comfortable with.
The other interesting grafting technique I've experimented with is bud grafting in the summer. I have had a pretty good success rate with doing this, and the only failures were cause by my on foolishness in unwrapping the grafts before they had fully taken, so they dried out and the buds died.
Obviously I am not an expert at grafting apple trees. For great information on apple grafting I highly recommend two channels in particular.
Stephen Hayes / stephenhayesuk He has a fantastic channel with all kinds of apple growing content and lots of discussion of various types of graftng. The only odd thing about Stephen is he is a big advocate of the saddle graft, which is a really difficult graft to execute even in comparison with the whip-and-tongue.
Skillcult / 1sustainablehedonist The California Steven that breeds his own apples. He's also got lots of great apple content as well as a host of other great stuff you should check out. Good grafting videos, and good apple variety review videos.
I hope this video is useful to other small farmers and homesteaders who are looking to do a small amount of their own grafting, and can learn from my mistakes and not repeat them as they make their homestead orchard. - Jak na to + styl
I`m with you on the Wolf River variety.......there's lots of better apples out there.
But I'll never cut it down or graft it over because it's quite resistant to apple maggot & codling moth damage. (The codling moths go for them, but the the infected apples don't drop early & the apples are still usable. ) Plus they're dual purpose & they're huge even if the tree isn't pruned or thinned.
I have a standard Wolf River that's taken decades of neglect & it still produces decent fruit. So it's a keeper, even though most years, they're just for the cows.
It's my "just in case" tree for when I can't care for my orchard & don't have "better" apples.
I have never grafted. I found this video very informative.
Happy new year. Grafting if lots of fun to play with even when it goes wrong. I have played around with different knives and still have trouble getting the cuts right I have even tried using utility knives as they are really sharp, some work better then others but I have never had consistent results. I like your views on bud grafting which I will try.
I'd like to try a grafting tool like yours too, but I don't know if I can really justify buying one since I don't really need to do a lot of grafting ever.
I have not done a lot of grafting either, but the two types I have had the most reliability with are splice grafts and cleft grafts, but those both require close to the same size scion and branches. I had tried a few whip and tongue grafts, but found that one difficult without having a sharper knife.
I'm interested in doing more on the existing apple trees I have, similar to what are you doing with these trees. I'll have to try bud grafting.
I have to say, the bud graft is by far the easiest graft to accomplish, but the trick is getting fresh bud wood at the right time.
Nice grafts! That's not bad at all.
I tried and all failed. 100% negative result. Not trying that again on my good trees. Might try again on the mealy one though ;) no good for eating but good guineapig.
I also planted some trees from seed 2 years ago to be able to practice on them. They will be ready in a few years. Until then I have enough time to figure out what actually went wrong the last time. They just dried out, no new growth.
I'd take the cider apple ;) ice cold young cider mixed with sparkling water mmmh.
If you want to try again Torp, I'd say bud grafting is the most foolproof graft to make. Stephen Hayes has at least one really good video of doing it on his channel. You have to have a source for fresh bud wood though, which usually means a friend with the right variety.
Hey there!
New subscriber here from the UK.
I do quite a bit of grafting as well and have followed Stephen for some years now.
Nice video and reflective thought on your success and failure.
Happy New Year and nice to see a new video from you! 👍🏻
Your top working/frameworking results are not terribly different from my own. I watched your video on grafting goo some time ago, from that I found Stephen Hayes and Steven Edholm and went down the grafting rabbit hole hard. Watching those guys videos gave me enough confidence to bench graft over 60 apples last year, and to attempt topworking or frameworking 4 large established trees here. Overall my results on the big trees mirrors yours rather closely. I do find bench grafting using bought rootstock much more consistently successful than bark grafting outside big old trees. I’ve never tried budding. This was the first year I ever attempted whip and tongue grafts, they are intimidating and challenging but are excellent when you get them down. I’ve been casually messing around with grafting for at least 10 years, but this past year was the first time I felt truly confident enough to really do grafts in a major way.
Wolf River is the premier apple butter variety according to generations of my Fathers family. It’s the only apple they will use for apple butter. Not a choice variety for fresh eating though!
I’d be happy to trade scionwood sometime!
We should definitely trade. I'll be in touch.
Thanks Tim! Very helpful! As you know, I'm already subed to Steven, but I'm heading over to Stephen's channel now.
He's got a huge number of great apple videos. The one thing I'd say about him, he is a bit of a English apple chauvinist, and is really dismissive of most North American apple varieties (or most modern apple varieties) and he also is a big fan of the saddle graft which I found REALLY hard to make, but the informational content of his grafting videos is really high.
I don't think he's done a merge graft on his channel though. You've got the only merge graft video I've seen on YT.
@@oxbowfarm5803 Woohoo! I are special!
Checked my own apple grafts earlier today on my Frankentree and found mixed results, some cleft grafts took, more double cleft grafts took (guess I'm just doubling the odds) and all my bud grafts took!
I have not tried a cleft graft. It seems like it would be a stronger graft in general than the bark graft, but with less cambial contact.