Frankenstein fruit tree

[Postman]

If you want to get fruit from most types of apple, cherry, pear, etc. trees you have to buy 2 varieties that can pollinate each other. If you only want 1 tree, you can graft short sections of limbs called "Scions" from say, 1 sweet cherry like" Bing" to another like "Black tartarian" Check internet sources in your state or similar climate areas for compatible pollinizers  -they have to bloom at the same time. Supposedly, sour and sweet cherries do not commonly cross each other effectively in most areas.This will allow the tree to pollinate itself.

If explaining this in a high school, wait for jokes to subside....

Basically, you select a twig piece (scion)  with 3-4 buds and make 2 diagonal cut below a bud to get a pointy wedge.  A diagonal cut on the "graftee" (forget tech. term)  should be done on a slightly thicker twig, above 1 bud and slightly below another. This opens a spot to place your scion. A sharp cut straight down is done, you slightly twist the knife, and jam in the scion. The side with more bark gets to face out. You are trying to get the greener outer layers of the 2 twigs (cambium) to match up and join together as they heal. Tape it tightly with grafting tape, or electrical and/or wife's "nurse tape" if you can't find any and forgot to order it

[Postman]

Another type of graft is the T- graft. Here, we are taking just 1 bud, slicing it off like a scab, and sliding it into a T_ shaped cut on the host tree.

[Postman]

Here is my 8 year old summer rambo apple tree, with  a 2-year old grafts of a gold delicious and 4 other unknown varieties from a commercially grafted "5- on - 1"  mail order apple tree that was on it's last legs. I pollinated it last year by swapping "bouquets" of flowers with a gold delicious tree. Hopefully the grafts will at least bloom this year, though I doubt they will set fruit. The tree I swapped with was 10 years old and produced fruit for the first time. My summer rambo went crazy, and I had to pick a lot of apples early so it wouldn't lose limbs.

In the first pic. you can see the healed over graft and black tape residue. I mark the grafts with plastic or  leave the tape and prune below them to stimulate growth of the new varieties.  Marking them also protects them from accidental pruning. Pruning and training fruit trees is easy, and necessary for good production.

I'll try to update this  if the cherry grafts  work and the apple grafts flower successfully  - it took 3 springs  to successfully graft  my apples, so try again if you fail!

[gstoneberg]

Very nice.  Love that shot of the kids and apples.  I've never seen grafting done, very informative.  Never know what you're going to learn on Primitive Archer.

George

[Cameroo]

This post reminds me of watching my grandpa doing some grafting when I was about 5.  I had no idea what he was doing or why.  Now I know   That's very cool.

Is it possible to make a  frankenstein with 2 totally different fruits?  Not for the purpose of cross-pollination, but just for novelty?

[david w.]

Great post.  really cool stuff

[Marc St Louis]

Interesting.  I tried my hand at grafting about 20 years ago with poor success.  I had 2 grafts out of a dozen take but then they died off after a year

[HoBow]

Cameroo- I've seen a tree that had two types of fruit on it.  I assumed they grafted different limbs on one tree

[Postman]

Thanks guys! - The pro's can do different trees together, I assume they have special techniques or use hormones that help.

I think the T-Graft is doomed - I used the wrong scion - I cut 2 and grabbed the "mistake" one.  I didn't have enough cambium on that one on the top part. It should fill in the whole "T". Didn't notice it till now...

There are very good videos online that you can check out. Timing seems to be everything - The bing host that has it's leaves out a bit more will probably be more receptive  -more sap is flowing. 

[Pat B]

I have tried my hand at this but with the same results as Marc. I do have a friend that graphs about 10,000 Japanese Maples every year.
 One of our landscape client has an apple tree with 4 different apples grafted to one tree. I believe the grafts have to be the same genus and maybe more specific that that.  Most fruit trees today are grafted. Generally the top growth of the fruit variety is grafted to a hardy root stock. Most wine grapes in the world are now grafted on American native grape stock because of it's hardiness and disease resistance.

[Bone pile]

That can be done with citrus also.We had 3 kinds of citrus on one tree.Most all citrus is grafted to a sour rootstock,if the graft doesn't take or the tree comes from an orange seed you'll get a sour orange tree. Some Cuban recipies use sour orange
Bone pile