Growing apple trees, grafting scions

[barnbc76]

As I have taken up making maple syrup as a hobby, I also have grown equally interested in growing apple trees as well. I have noticed many on this message board list apple orchard as an interest of their's. I have a small number of rootstocks I would like to graft onto, and was wondering if anyone here would be interested in exchanging or selling apple scions. I only have one apple tree of a known variety (McIntosh) and another unknown but very good eating apple.

I am a part of a Facebook group called the apple scion exchange group but I have been on this message board longer and was curious to see if others here had an interest too.

[buckeye gold]

I worked for a large nursery in the 70s and ran a grafting crew. I literally have been involved in tens of thousands of grafts. We never bought scion wood, ever. We made deals with orchards to pick up their pruning s in exchange for some started trees. This is pruning season, I bet if you visited an orchard and explained you were only a hobby guy that they would let you pick up some prunings and you would have your scion wood. Heck offer them some Maple syrup in trade. You'd have to sort through it but there is always a fair amount of new growth within the pruned off wood. Have you tried bud grafting on peaches yet? I hope you got good strong root stock, commercially as a lot of the stuff floating around may not be as strong and disease resistant. You can grow some by seed if your just playing around though, including crab apple stock.

[johnpma]

Does anyone know of some good books on the topic of growing apple trees?

We put in a "wildlife package" this past spring. It was a dozen or so trees (Liberty, Gold Rush, and Honey Crisp) We though it would be easy HA! I think every deer in a 5 mile radius found the trees and cleaned off all the buds So I fabricated some cages from concrete mesh and encapsulated the trees to protect them from the deer. About August I see the leaves on the saplings turning brownish red color. BLIGHT!! Ugh!!! Much easier planting Zucchini

[bigschuss]

Does anyone know of some good books on the topic of growing apple trees?

We put in a "wildlife package" this past spring. It was a dozen or so trees (Liberty, Gold Rush, and Honey Crisp) We though it would be easy HA! I think every deer in a 5 mile radius found the trees and cleaned off all the buds So I fabricated some cages from concrete mesh and encapsulated the trees to protect them from the deer. About August I see the leaves on the saplings turning brownish red color. BLIGHT!! Ugh!!! Much easier planting Zucchini

Yup..then there's apple borer and/or crown rot which you are almost certain to get if you're not careful and diligent with spraying routines. If you do manage to get trees to grow and be healthy and mature and productive, you'll then have black bears to worry about. I have been planting, grafting, caging, pruning, protecting apples on my land for about 15 years now. It's a TON of work and I think to do it with any success involves chemicals and pesticides that I am not too fond of. For my purposes as a means to attract deer...apples are just way too much effort and expensive.

[barnbc76]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will use it, but the local nurserys only have a couple of trees I'm interested in. I would like to find some older varieties and some English varieties as well. I have to be careful as really I would probably take anything I don't already have but I can only fence off so many of them at a time from the deer. I don't have any peaches as I am not certain they would really do well in our climate. But I do plan on planting a couple of pear tree eventually. I look forward to grafting for the first real time this year (I tried last year but the scion wood was not totally dormant when I cut it so it didn't work. Any tips or suggestions you have? My root stocks are transplanted shoots from a McIntosh tree, not sure what it is it a very large tree so maybe a seedling rootstock. I hope to have maybe 20-40 trees in my orchard.

[themoonlighttapper]

Awesome idea! We bought 15 varieties of apples on sale last spring and planted them, hope to be able to use future prunings to start to try some grafting of my own. I have no experience with grafting, probably another year or two away. Seems like such an intimidating topic, one of those where the ability to learn at the elbow of an experienced grafter/grower would be so helpful.

[bigschuss]

AI have no experience with grafting, probably another year or two away. Seems like such an intimidating topic, one of those where the ability to learn at the elbow of an experienced grafter/grower would be so helpful.

Not at all. It's actually fairly rudimentary. Rootstock, scion wood, a knife, and some grafting tape and you're grafting. Watch a Youtuve video or two. I do some grafting as a hobby to propagate apples for deer hunting. I like to find Wolf River scion wood as it seems even during a bad apple year, Wolf Rivers always have apples.

[barnbc76]

Today I started grafting, I did 2 Mcintosh, this is my first time, I am hoping they do well I have another 25 or so left to go. I recieved some scion wood from the NASE, cox's orange pippin, cripps pink (pink lady). 20170401_162715.jpg

[spud]

Buying Root Stock is the best way to go according to the books i have read. Root stock does not cost a bunch but about $1.50-2.00 each for 100. One of my favorite books on apple tree growing is ( The Apple Grower ) by Michael Phillips who happens to live in NH. The Brown/Red leaves that were mentioned might not be a problem if those leave were on Honey Crisp trees. Honey Crisp leaves for the first 5 years with change colors very early and show all sorts of signs of poor health. This is very common and they will change this habit in time. I have seen this on my Honey Crisp trees but my 5 year old trees do not do this anymore. I had 3 year old Honey Crisp trees that browned early this last summer. Your situation could be different and maybe there is something wrong and the trees need to be sprayed more. I spray all my trees every 10 days in the summer. It does not cost a lot of money to do this but the cost will increase as the trees grow bigger. There are many very successful organic apple grower out there but I have no interest in that. The author of the book i mentioned is all organic and I guess he does great. I am trying to get as many blemish free apples as I can and i have been told spraying every 10 days will give you the best chance. Deer can be a very big problem in a apple orchard. I have tried several sprays and nothing seemed to work very well until I was introduced to a deer repellent called Plantskydd. NO deer will touch your trees if you spray it with this product. I have 8 deer in my orchard everyday for the last month and there is no tree damage at all. They bed down in my orchard but will not touch the trees. They will give the trees a sniff and then move on to the next. They are waiting for the spray to wear off ( Three Months in winter )or for me to forget to spray on time. In the summer I spray every three months but each month I will spray just the new growth because the deer will come nibble on that if I don't. In Early April I spray all the trees again because the deer love the swollen buds. I spend about $200 per year on deer repellent and about $300 on Chemicals/Pesticides. One other variety i have that i forgot to mention in Wine Crisp. Out of all my varieties my favorites are Honey Crisp, Snow Sweet and Freedom. These three apples taste great.

Spud

[johnpma]

WOW Spud great info! Thank you very much!! What pesticides do you use? I have hung Irish spring soap to keep deer away but they even get use to that. This year we are adding Christmas trees too so this is going to get really interesting