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  • From: Ginda Fisher <ginda@concentric.net>
  • To: nafex@egroups.com
  • Subject: Grafting Aftercare
  • Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 22:12:05 -0400

Hi, I'm pretty new to both NAFEX and this list. I live in a suburb in
eastern Mass., in zone 6A. I would like to have an apple tree or two,
but don't have much in the way of sunny land to plant on. (Most of the
lot is either shaded by oaks or covered by house or driveway.) I
thought it would be fun to have something a little interesting, but
wanted an apple that my husband and I would enjoy, when grown in our
conditions. I have two wild crab apples on the edge of the property.
Soooo, I figured, why not test out a few cultivars by grafting them to
the crabs, and see what works. If something is good, we can plant a
tree of it in a couple of years.

I bought a couple of scions of half a dozen cultivars, and proceeded to
put them on my crabs. We had a very warm March, and all the buds
started to swell, so I did a little grafting then. As I was cutting and
wrapping away, it got colder and colder, and soon began to sleet. A
couple of weeks later we had some warm weather, and I grafted a bit
more. It promptly dropped below freezing. I used up the rest of the
wood in mid April, after a week of gorgeous warm spring weather.
("after") The next day a cold front moved in, and it has been mostly
drizzling and in the 40's since, with a few frosts.

So after reading all the postings here about the importance of warmth, I
figured my efforts were for naught. But it is warm again, and the crabs
are beginning to bloom. I went out to examine my grafts. One of the
Ashmead's has a half inch of green on each bud, a Pitmaston Pineapple
(sp?) has green tips, and a couple of Spitzenburgs seem to have swollen
buds. One twig of Caville Blanc is dead and shriveled, which makes it
obvious that none of the other twigs is dead, yet. Hope springs
eternal!

My question is, what IS appropriate care for the trees and grafts at
this point? These are mature crabs of unknown parentage, with various
grafts all over, but mostly out on branches. In the spirit of
experimentation, I tried various cuts and splices along the ends and
sides of various sized branches. I attached the scions variously with
rubber bands, some cloth grafting tape, and masking tape, and covered
various parts of the grafts and scions with paraffin, grafting wax
(nasty stuff!) or nothing.

Sorry to ramble on so, and thanks for any advice,

Ginda Fisher
Eastern Mass., zone 6



  • Grafting Aftercare, Ginda Fisher, 05/02/2000

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