Graft Apple Orchard

8/3/2019 Graft Apple Orchard

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by

Kevin HauserKuffel Creek Apple Nursery

Riverside, Southern California, USAwww.kuffelcreek.com2010 Kuffel Creek Press

Apple Rootstock Grown From Seed

Collecting Scionwood for Grafting

Grafting a Scion on to a Cloned M111 Rootstock

Apple Blossoms
http://www.kuffelcreek.com/http://www.kuffelcreek.com/


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Apples do not reproduce true to seed, as it has two parents. Just like each of your children isdifferent, each apple seed is different, and most make bad-tasting apples. An apple grown from aseed usually has a bad taste or no taste! To make an apple tree like the one that gave the good

tasting apple, you have to CLONE it by grafting. This has been done since Biblical times.

An apple tree is made of two parts, the ROOTSTOCK (roots) and SCION (top part that bears fruit)For many years apples were grown on roots grown from seed; it makes a big tree that can live forhundreds of years in a cold climate. But for the tree to live in a tropic climate, the leaves must be

stripped by hand each year. Without this, the tree will die as it cannot live outside of cultivation.

Cloned rootstocks have been used since ancient times because of certain properties they may havesuch as resistance to insects and disease, or making a smaller tree. The cloned rootstock we supp

is M111 EMLA and is a vigorous grower. It tolerates wet ground and drought, is resistant to woolyaphid, and bears apples much sooner in its lifetime than a seedling-rootstock tree. We will show yo

how to propagate more of both kinds of rootstocks and graft new trees.

You can sprout apple seeds to make ROOTS

for grafting a good variety on it (p. 13). Anapple tree on roots grown from seed can livethrough drought and does well in wet heavy

clay, sand, and soil that has been worn-out orwashed of nutrients.

But it will not get nearly this big in a tropicalclimate, and depending on the variety of apple,

it can take 4-10 years to start bearing fruit.

Named rootstocks such as M111 havebeen chosen because they can have

resistance to some insects and disease.They must be propagated by cloning.


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How to Propagate Clonal Rootstock

Plant a clonal rootstock like M111 EMLA,spaced 1/2 meter apart in rows 1.5 metersapart.

The next season the roots willstart to grow a lot of branches,

resembling a bush.

Let it growfor a

season

Cut the treeoff at theground


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Pile sawdust around the branches as theygrow. They will send roots into the

sawdust. At the end of the season, pull backthe sawdust and cut the branches off.

Sawdust

Newroots

Branches

Rootstock

Photo of the branches growing up throughthe sawdust. This way of propagating new

rootstocks is called a stool bed. Largefarms will have rows of them like corn.

This can also be done in pots with an upsidedown pot on top with the bottom cut out to

hold the sawdust.

Photo showing the roots on thebranches after the sawdust has beenpulled away. Cut the branches off the

roots and start over again.

The branches become the rootstock ofyour new trees. A stoolbed can be

productive for 10-12 years.


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NO

NO

NO

AnnularRings

Spurs

YES

YES

YES

AnnularRing

YES

CHOOSING SCIONWOOD

The best scionwood comes from thecurrent seasons growth which will

be on the tips of the branches.

You can tell this seasons growth from

last years because there is anannular ring separating them. Lastseasons growth will also often havesmall branches or spurs (fruiting

buds) coming off of them.

The best place to store scionwooduntil you need it is on the tree; that is,you dont cut it until you need it. But

you can cut it and wrap it in dampnewspaper and put it in a closed

plastic bag in a refrigerator. It willkeep this way for about 6-8 weeks,sometimes even longer.

Once the scionwood buds start tosprout in storage, they can no longerbe used for grafting and should be

thrown out. However, it is OK to graftonto rootstocks that have begun to

sprout.

Do not store scionwood or youngtrees in the same refrigerator withapples. As they ripen, apples give offethylene gas that causes scionwood

to sprout prematurely and can killyoung trees.

Grafting Vice

This simple woodenvice holds the rootstock

in padded leather jawswhile grafting to protectyour hands from cuts,and makes large jobs

go quicker.

The wire loop on topgoes down to a stirrupyou hold with your foot.

There are special knives for grafting,but a utility knife has strong, thin

blades that are replaceable.


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Cut a piece of the tree you want to copy

(scion, pronounced sigh-on) from the endof a branch that grew that year.

Handling is easier if it has at least 2 buds,but really only one bud is needed. The bud

is where the new tree will grow from.

2 buds

Make a cut about 3 cm down the middle ofthe rootstock you want to graft it onto.

The rootstock is being held in a vice toprotect my hands from the sharp knife.

Cut the end of your scion to it makes a point. Thebark side should be wider than the wood side so

that the dead wood doesnt keep the scioncambium from touching the rootstock cambium.

Push the scion into the split in therootstock so that it makes a tight fit.

If there is a gap on either side of thescion, cut it again. It should stay firmly inplace even before you wrap it with tape.

Trim thetip off

Cleft Graft usually done after you strip the leaves off the tree at the end of the season.


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Cambium layers lineup on one side only

A gap at the bottom end isOK, even a big one.

There should be no gapsor space along each

side; it should fit tight.

Close-up views of howthe graft should fit

Do not worry about this side.


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Only one side has to line up. Make sure the inner

bark (cambium) is touching.

The middle (dead) wood does not have to touchand will never grow together. If you cut the tree

down years from now there will still be a gapthere.

Wrap the graft tightly with clear plastic tape.Tape over the top end of the rootstock too, but

do not wrap the scion with the plastic tape.

You can see how my foot controls the stirrupand wires that pull the vice tight to hold the

rootstock.

The scion will get wrapped with a wax tape

called Parafilm. It will keep the scion fromdrying out until the tree grows.

You can stretch the Parafilm to make itthinner and it will stick to itself when

wrapping the scion. Keep the Parafilm tapein a cool place or it will melt to itself on the

roll and be ruined.

The inner bark should touch very tight.This is why you make the wood side

smaller so that it will not keep thecambium from touching.

The inner bark is the part of the tree that

grows, and it needs to touch betweenrootstock and scion for the graft to take.

This part of thebranch and scion

(cambium) shouldtouch each other

The wood in themiddle will notgrow together

Cambiums line up;this is where the tree

will grow from

This part doesnt matter, as theywill never grow together

End-View


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Wrap the scion with the Parafilm, making sure

you go over the end of the scion.

Making the cambium layers touch, using

Parafilm tape on the scion, and making sure thetree gets water after you plant it will give you

almost 100% success on your grafts.

The bud will grow right through several layers ofthe Parafilm tape on the scion. There is no

need to remove the wax Parafilm tape from thescion like you do the plastic tape on the graft

itself.

You now have a baby tree called abenchgraft. Put a label on it saying whatkind of tree it is and what rootstock it has.

Keep the benchgrafts damp until you plant them,and plant as soon as you can. See the Kuffel

Creek pamphlet Growing Apples in theTropics for planting and culture directions. You

can download the .pdf version of this athttp://www.kuffelcreek.com/GrowingApples/GrowingApplesTropics.pdf

After the tree grows and the plastic tapestarts to get tight, make sure to cut and

remove the plastic tape from the graft beforeit chokes it. For the same reason put the

label on the support stick, not the tree.
http://www.kuffelcreek.com/GrowingApples/GrowingApplesTropics.pdfhttp://www.kuffelcreek.com/GrowingApples/GrowingApplesTropics.pdf


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Cut the tip off a branch fromthe variety of apple you wantthe tree to be. It should be

about 4 months old and be thisseasons growth.

A cutting like this is calledbudwood because it contains

the buds that you will graft. Cutthe leaves off leaving the stemsto act as handles. This part ofthe leaf is called the petiole(pronounced pet-ee-ol, which

means little foot).

Cut under a bud about half way through thebranch. At the bottom of this cut, make asecond cut only through the bark and not

the wood (red dotted line).

Carefully pull the bark with the bud off thewood underneath, and hold it by the petiole.You must work quickly now before it dries

out.

The trunk of the tree toreceive the graft (rootstock)should be at least 1 cm thick

and growing quickly.

Bud Grafting is usually done 4-5 months into the season when the trees are growing vigorouslyIt is recommended if the scion gets broken off a rootstock or if the graft is not successful. You canalso grow the rootstock for a year and then bud graft on to it this way the next year.

Budwood

Petioleattached to

the bud The bud is

hidden underthe petiole


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Make a T-shaped cut through the barkof the rootstock tree near the bottom.

Carefully peel the bark back and insert thebud under the bark. If the tree is growing

vigorously, the bark is easy to peel.

Make sure the bark will close around the budand that none of the bud is sticking out of the

bark except the petiole.

Tape the bud with plastic tape, going aroundthe petiole. If the graft is successful, the

petiole should dry up and fall off. Cut the tapeafter two weeks.

The bud may start growing, or it may just donothing until the next season.


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As the bud grows, train it to grow up straight. Atthe end of the season, cut the rootstock tree off

just above the bud sprout.

Some times you have to cut the rootstock treeoff before the bud will start to grow.

Here the rootstock tree has been cut abovethe bud to make it grow, and its just starting

to sprout. Take off any sprouts that dontcome from the bud you grafted.

The rootstock and the scion will keep their samecolor and texture their whole lives, and will neverblend together; but they will form a strong union

that will hold a load of fruit in a heavy wind.

Photo: Cameron Nursery

These trees are pruned especially forgiving lots of budwood for bud grafting.They do not bear fruit, but will sprout

hundreds of branches that are cut off forgrafting the thousands of trees the

nursery grafts each year.

Cut

Bud

Rootstock


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The branches will grow up off the trunks like littletrees. As the branches sprout up, layer sawdust onthe base of them and the branches will root into the

sawdust.

One-year-old rootstock trees are planted at an angle, and thenthe tops tied down with twine so the lay flat. You can plant them

very close together, as it is good to crowd them.

Large-scale Rootstock ProductionSome farms grow only rootstocks for apples. Instead of planting the rootstock trees

vertically, they lay them down horizontally and grow them sideways. As the branches growup the bottoms are covered with sawdust, and they will form roots. In the fall, the sawdust ispulled back and the branches cut off, which form the roots for new trees. This is how to do it:

At the end of the season, pull the sawdust bacand cut the rooted branches off. Cut off any

little side branches (called spines), and trim length. The bundles on the left are untrimme

and the bundles on the right have beentrimmed, graded as to caliper, and labeled.

Photo credits; top and right, William C. Johnson, USDA/Cornell Rootstock BreedingProgram. Left photo, Cameron Nursery Balance: Kevin Hauser

Twine

Rootstocks


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Apple trees grafted onto cloned rootstockslike M111 are best, but you can also grow arootstock from seed. It will take longer to

bear, but they are easy to grow and are free.

Since apples come from a cold climate, the seedsneed a 45 to 90 day period of cold to sprout. In a

cold climate this keeps them from growing tooearly in the spring, which would kill them.

Put the seeds in a tin with damp sand, andseal it inside a plastic bag. Write the date

on it, and it must be placed in a coldrefrigerator for at least 45-60 days or more.

Start checking the seeds after 45 days. When alittle root starts to come out of the seeds, they areready to be planted. These seedlings trees are

about a week old (they will grow very fast).

The seeds can be planted close together in a rowlike corn. When they are 5 months old, the

seedling trees can be bud grafted. Dig them upand plant in the orchard the next season as

Sleeping Eyes (see p. 11).

Large roots from seedlings can also be cut intoseveral pieces, and each piece grafted onto with acleft graft (called piece-rooting). Plant it deep so

only the scion pokes out of the soil and water it well

GrowingApple

Rootstocksfrom Seeds

Wash the seedsand remove any

bits of apple beforeplanting

Scion

Piece of aseedlingroot

Graft

Plant only thebig, fat seedsand throw outthe thin ones.


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The Wonder of Grafting

Grafting is actually quite simple to do, and applestake to grafting very easily. But the physiologicalprocesses that take place within the tree areanything but simple, and scientists still dont fullyunderstand how it works.

All thats required to grow a tree of a certain varietyis a single bud from the tree, either snipped off aspart of the branch, or sliced off the branch entirely.This bud contains all the genetic informationnecessary to grow a tree of that variety, but it needsto be joined onto a host tree that provides nutrientsand anchorage. It remains genetically identical tothe parent tree, and can be thought of as the sametree, just growing somewhere else. The host tree iscalled the rootstock, as only the roots are utilized.The joining of these two distinct and separateentities is called grafting, practiced since biblicaltimes.

The graft is made with an un-sterile knife, the cutpieces line up imperfectly and have gaps and dirtbetween them and are crudely taped together. Yetthe spark of life jumps between the rootstock andthe scion and they begin to knit themselvestogether almost immediately.

A callus forms between the two and water andnutrients flow from the rootstock to the scion. Asthe scion sprouts leaves it starts to send energyback to the roots. Both rootstock and scion

keep their individual identities including color andtexture, yet they fuse into a union so strong that itresists the loads of high winds and heavy croploads.

I cant even begin to explain how this works, andcan only say that it is the finger of God, asotherwise there would be no way to propagatequality fruit and we would starve. A good applevariety would only last as long as the tree lived,and then wed have to start searching throughtens of thousands of seedling trees before finding

another good one.

With grafting a good variety can be perpetuatedthrough generations, and the apples we enjoynow have been selected through the centuriesfrom all over the world and from among billions ofapple trees. This testifies to the loving andcreative nature of God and is borne out beforeout eyes each season. Do not forget to thankHim for it and be awed by His wondrous works.

Graft Apple Orchard

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