Making your own trees................

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Sufficient Life
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One of my asian pear trees had developed canker so I cut it down. But that meant I needed a pollenizer for my others. I decided to get a bartlett as it's an easy tree to find.
Went to the garden store as bare root trees are in now here. And bought a semi-dwarf Bartlett for $24 - I couldn't believe it- last grafted tree I bought was $15 and I thought that was too much.

Today I was planting out the tree and found one of my grafted apples had suckered. But instead of clipping it off like I usually do, I dug up the suckers to use of root stock for an spple that I want to graft off a tree that is too small. I will let it grow this year then graft next spring.

At one point in my life, I scrounged root stock off of friends trees along with scion wood to make trees the size and variety I wanted. But I got lazy recently and bought trees.

Grafting is sooooo easy-and you can get the size and variety you want at little or no cost if you know someone willing to let you take some suckers and clip a few branches. In fact I have bought a tree or two that did not turn out to be what I wanted so I cut it back to the main trunk and grafted what I did want onto it. Big tree in two seasons.

So if you want fast and usual, then buying is what you should do- but if you want lots of inexpensive trees or want something not commercially available- grafting is easy and you will have a producing tree within two years of one purchased.

I
 

freemotion

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OK, let's start with this question....how do you dig up a sucker? I thought they were attached to the tree. Of course, 6 years later, I still have no fruit from my apples or pear tree, so I am obviously dense in this area!
 

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Suckers come out from a root below the dirt level- if you push away the dirt, you will come to the place that the sucker has grown its own roots, just clip that far enough down to have a bunch of roots attached and pot it up. It should then grow like a new little tree and of course, is the same root stock that you had on the old tree. If you take a sucker from a semi-dwarf apple, then you can graft on an apple scion and it will be dwarfed. Just remember that the grafted tree may still be bigger or smaller than the sucker source depending on the height the scion would grown naturally.

Are your non-fruiting trees blossoming but not setting fruit? If so, maybe you need pollenizers. You could just graft a pollenizer onto the same tree if you don't have space for additional trees.

There are ways of forcing trees to blossom and set fruit- I found this out when an orchardist told me a story about his grandfather dynamiting a big tree that had stopped producing. Just enough to distrupt part of the root system- the tree went back into production.
I tried something similar with an asian pear that was huge but not producing- I cut several strips of bark out from one side of the trunk and the thing finally went into production big time.
 

me&thegals

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Wow! Thanks! I'm still grieving the loss of our neighbor's apple tree. He let us pick every year, but when he died and his land was sold it was bulldozed. How I wish I had thought to get something for grafting.

Keep on telling us about this, ETR, and I will be listening :)
 

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Me&thegals- I'm nobodies idea of an expert so if grafting is easy for me, anyone can do it. Some books make it sound like a real technical challenge but it's not.
I know what you mean about losing a valued tree- one reason I want to graft that apple. The man who gave me the tree when it was about 10 years old and 4 feet high created this tree as an experiment but it was so small he couldn't get it above deer browsing height. I have been looking for the apple it produces "Alaska" but haven't been able to find it. So if this little tree goes, I won't be able to replace it.
I'm also growing on a local unnamed plum that has sweet skin- the source for that graft was killed by a bear a couple of years ago and the owner of that tree is waiting til mine gets big enough for him to take some scions off it.
It is wonderful to keep these old varieties going.
 

me&thegals

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In Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire, he tells about one orchardist who has devoted 100s of acres to 1000s upon 1000s of old varieties, just to keep them going and alive. Makes me wonder if a person could somehow get grafting stock (is that the right term?). I know a lot of heirloom garden seeds are given away or sold quite cheaply just to perpetuate those varieties...
 

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The breeder of Waltanna lived a few miles from here and he had lots of various varieties that he used to breed new varieties. When he died, his place was no longer maintained until a couple of years ago, a woman bought it in order to preserve the hundreds of trees he was raising.
If you knew where this person lived who had the old varieties, I bet he would be happy to send you wood to graft- most people who do this sort of thing are very generous.
Maybe if you googled heirloom apples or something like that, you could find a source.
 

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enjoy the ride said:
Are your non-fruiting trees blossoming but not setting fruit? If so, maybe you need pollenizers. You could just graft a pollenizer onto the same tree if you don't have space for additional trees.
Here is my fruit tree history: We bought this property almost 7 years ago, and I put 4 trees in that first spring. Two cherries, a dwarf apple and a dwarf pear. The third year, the two cherries were winter-killed in an unusually cold year where many people lost plants and trees they'd had for 2 or 3 decades with no problems. So I replaced them the following year with two full-size apple trees. Last year, voles, I'm guessing, ate the roots of one from below and when the ground thawed in the spring, the dormant tree fell right over. I made it into a stand for my birdbath, upside-down, with a glass bowl wired into it's remaining roots and morning glories planted to twine up the branches. Lovely, but I would have preferred apples!

The pear never gave me so much as one little bud. I think it does not get enough sunlight.

All the apples have blossomed, but only one tree per year. The dwarf set 14 apples once, and 11 made it to harvest. Last year, one of the full-size trees set a gazillion apples, and every last one dropped off while still tiny.

Not sure if I should move them, or what! I do not want to use any chemicals. The last house we rented had an apple, pear, and cherry, all neglected and none sprayed or pruned, and all VERY productive. It is just not fair!

Help?
 

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First the creature eating the roots is probably a gopher and can be avoided by planting in a chicken wire cage. If you have gophers, you probably have mounds of soil around too. I hae never heard of voles decimating a tree but who knows...........

The pear could need for sun- the more the better. But it could be that you don't have enough hours of chill- I don't know where you live so can't say. It should be blooming by now. And if it does, you will need a pollenizer to get any fruit from most varieties and places. Hopefully your neighbors have a pollenatior for you. If not, you can add a branch of one to the tree.

Re: apples - a lot of apple varieties have a tendency to produce heavy one year and light the next. That's pretty normal. It is early for apples from a standard tree- they frequently take 2-6 years longer than a dwarf to produce. Also the variety may be a problem- some need more chill hours than others but it could be that you are too cold for your variety. Don't know your zone. Or variety. But the fruit drop could be a lack of a pollenizer too- the blossoms just did not get fertilized- again variety and timing with other apples around.

That must have been some freeze for people to lose cherries- I have seen them happily produce in places with snow 5 feet deep.
 

freemotion

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I live in MA in Zone 4 or 5....I no longer fully believe it is zone 5, we had -16 last night. And with very little snow cover to protect roots. If that is what you are talking about, we have chill! Lots of large orchards in the nearby hilltowns, maybe 10-15 miles away.

The labels that came with my trees said that a pollinator was not needed but there would be a larger crop with one. The one year I got 11 apples, nothing else bloomed nearby that I know of.

Every year I prune them in the winter, and every spring it rains and rains, and the trees are covered with those long branches that are vertical. I wonder if this has to do with the lack of fruit. I read that I should prune them while dormant, which I have.....but at some point in late spring or in the summer, all these shoots appear and everything the trees have seems to go into producing them.

I finally forgot this fall to protect the trunks, so I don't even know if the mice and rabbits got the bark yet.....I have pretty much given up, and forgot to get that done this fall. They are planted near a stockade fence, and the neighbor has bird feeders on the other side, which attracts the rodents.

I was thinking of moving them, but am not sure if this is the solution, or where to move them to (not many choices), and I also hesitate because that will set me back more years from getting fruit! Aaarrgh! What do I do?
 

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