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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Rootstock Information Gap

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  • From: Ribes60@aol.com
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Rootstock Information Gap
  • Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 21:51:51 EST

Back to your original comments re rootstocks. It is just not that simple. The end product is a result of the scion and the rootstock. There will be a great variety in the size of the final products even if all were grafted to the same rootstock, just as there is in the size of trees all on standard root.
 
There are now so many different rootstocks available and while they may be described as giving a tree 10 feet tall, that may well vary from place to place, and min-iclimate to mini-climate.
 
Most of the mail order houses buy their stock instead of grafting it themselves and some don't know what the rootstock is, don't care what it is and may even misrepresent what they have to "fill the orders". That is why I got into grafting my own, now I have a much better idea of what I may expect.
 
Back to the dwarf peach, I have tried a number of rootstocks and most of the stock that produced a significant dwarf did not produce a long lived tree. You are right that to prune a tree to maintain a "dwarf" size means that you remove a lot of fruiting wood, but any dwarf tree produces less than a full size tree. So, in the "crap-shoot" I would prefer a tree pruned to provide the size I want and live much longer, than to put it on a rootstock with a known short life.
 
 
 
 
Ed Mashburn
Central PA
Zone 5A



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