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[Steve <SDW12986@aol.com>]

I saved this post so I could reply when I had time.
First, my long ago experience trying to buy a 4 in one apple tree.....   
I may have ordered one twice but this was in the early 80s and I'm not 
sure now. Now that I think about it, I think that second one was a pear. 
When I first owned my own house and yard, I wanted to have fruit trees 
but didn't have a vast amount of space. I saw four-in(on?)- one apple 
trees in a catalog and thought that is what I needed.  In the spring, 
the tree arrived and I planted it. This was long before I learned how to 
graft and before I had much of a clue which cultivars might be hardy in 
the Adirondacks. Maybe it was a 5 variety tree because I seem to 
remember 4 side branches with grafts and the top remaining the original 
tree.
Early on, I knew the tree was going to be a problem. The side branches 
had obviously been budded with the bud placed on top of the branch near 
the trunk. The reason for that placement was obvious. They could shove 
the tree into a box with the branches bent upward and not break off the 
grafts. The thing was going to be a nightmare to train. Since it was 
small, the branches were all lower to the ground than I would want, but 
I had to save those low branches to have all the cultivars. Also, since 
the buds had been placed where they were, the branches were growing 
straight up parallel to the main trunk.
In the end, all that didn't matter because the whole tree was killed on 
the 2nd or 3rd winter. Not too many years later, I read up on which 
apples were very hardy and then I learned how to graft things myself.

Today, I have 3 trees grafted to multiple cultivars. One must have at 
least 8 different types on it. I selected very hardy trees for the 
trunk. The two I purchased with multi grafting in mind were Norland and 
Rescue apple crab. (Both came from St. Lawrence Nurseries)  I didn't cut 
the trees back or do anything to them. I just grew them and trained them 
to a central leader with the lowest branch high enough to easily mow 
under it. As the side branches developed, I would place grafts that 
started a foot, to nearly 2 feet, from the trunk. I mostly just used a 
simple splice graft though have have also used bark grafts when I wanted 
to graft a branch that was much thicker than the scion. This has worked 
out very well and I have had no problem keeping things in balance by 
pruning. I leave a side branch, or 2, ungrafted to keep the original 
cultivar and I have tried to graft the very top with a cultivar that is 
not too vigorous.

I do worry a little about viruses. What if one of the grafts carries a 
virus that doesn't badly affect that cultivar but is damaging to the 
tree chosen for the main trunk? I may possibly have had that happen. 
Before I grafted these trees, I had a young Haralson tree. I grafted 4 
or 5 branches as I described above. One early spring, I noticed patches 
of bark all over the Haralson parts of the tree that had puffed up. 
Large areas were raised up an eight of an inch or so. Those areas felt 
spongy to the touch. I never saw winter injury like that before or 
since. As the tree leafed out, the ungrafted branches wilted and of 
course, the grafted branches eventually dried up too. The trunk had died 
right from under the grafted parts. Haralson SHOULD be hardy here. I 
always wondered if an introduced virus was not tolerated by Haralson and 
lead to that kind of injury. (If anyone has any insight into what caused 
the puffed up bark, I would be interested.)

Last, I can't figure out why anyone would plant more than one tree in 
the same hole. Also, cutting the tree short so that all branches come 
from near the ground doesn't sound like a great idea. Of course, mine 
are standard size trees. Perhaps on a dwarfing rootstock, the idea might 
make sense.

Steve Wilson
zone 3/4


jfruth@tds.net wrote:

>    Some of us don't want a whole tree full of apples all ripe at the same 
> time.  I wanted an apple tree that started ripening in late July and 
> finished ripening in October.  Here is how I accomplished it:
>                                                                             
>                                        From a local nursery, I bought two 
> apple trees that were growing in nursery cans (bare-root would have been 
> fine but nurseries near here don't offer bare-root tree).  These were two 
> varieties that I wanted to have fruit from.   I planted them 20' feet apart 
> and, the following Spring, I sheared both off at about 18" above the graft. 
> The tree's immediate response was to produce a flurry of new sprouts and, 
> throughout the following growing season, I continually removed any sprouts 
> that grew from below the graft.
>    The following Spring, I ordered scion wood.  My objective was to have 
> fruit ripening starting in Late July, then Early August, Mid-August, Late 
> August, Early September, Mid-September, Late September and Early October 
> (Here in zone 3 we can expect really hard frost in October so later ripening 
> apples are out of the question).
>    First, I selected the branch that I wanted to keep, the original apple 
> variety.  Then I selected three other branches that were as close to 90 
> degrees apart from each other as possible and grafted the scions on these 
> three.  All other branches/sprouts were removed.  It took a three tries to 
> get one scion variety to take.  Now I enjoy ripening apples for over a two 
> and one half month time span.  I have since planted other apple trees but 
> these two are my favorites and the branches are all 4" in diameter.
>    One potential problem with making a four-on-one tree is that each branch 
> is very close in height to the others and we are warned that high winds 
> could easily(?) split such a tree.  That hasn't happened (yet?) even though 
> a nearby maple tree was snapped in half by straight-line winds.
>
> Jim Fruth
> Brambleberry Farm
> Pequot Lakes, MN  56472
> For jams, jellies & syrups:
> www.bberryfarm.com
> (877)265-6856 [Store]
> (218)831-7018 [My Cell]
>
>