North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Bernie Nikolai <bnikolai@shaw.ca>]

Del asked
>
>"Bernie, is bark grafting a trunk that much different than top working a 
>smaller trees limbs because its past the crotch? or?
>
>From my experiments its no different EXCEPT if a bark graft is not under the
snowline, often even hardy varieties winterkill for me.  Keep in mind this
is in -40C stuff.  They apparently don't winterkill in milder climates.
However whip and tongue grafts of equal sized scions and branches from a
small trees seem fully hardy at extremely cold temperatures for me.

Also Del asked

 "Also I felt I needed to leave a few shoots that were on the trees base to
grow to feed the roots a little. Surely cutting a 5 " tree at near ground
level kills most of the roots?"

It probably does kill a lot of the roots.  Its got to be a heck of a shock
to the tree, you would think.  However, I've had great success with the
"cutting off at ground level and bark grafting" on trees 3" and less in
caliper.  I did do some 4 and 5 inch trees this spring, about a week ago.
Worst case I figured the grafts wouldn't take on the 5 inch trees, and a
zillion root suckers would come up, and then I'd just regraft some of the
root suckers next spring.  I'll let you know how grafting the 5 inch trees
works out for me.  Keep in mind I'm doing this on really tough Ranetka and
Siberian Crab rootstock, not the dwarfing rootstocks.
Bernie
>