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["bluestem_farm@juno.com" <bluestem_farm@juno.com>]

Caren,

Too early to graft up there, but you definately could store last year's growth in  the fridge (wrap in damp towel, then plastic bag; put in the coldest part, because it keeps best at 32 or 33 degrees F) until things start warming up.  Whether it's a good idea to try to graft it to your other whip, that's a harder question to answer.   If you have even an inch or two of belle wood remaining above the graft, it could come back so that you wouldn't need to graft it; i's still young enough to be able to make adventitious shoots easily.  Do you have any larger apples--even flowering crabs--that you could graft to?  One branch on something else might be a better place to 'hold' the variety until you know if your original is going to recover... a larger tree will also have more places for you to attempt the graft, since first tries aren't always successful.  Good luck with it.

Muffy Barrett
South Central Wisc.
39 degrees today!  Feels like spring!

---------- Original Message ----------

We've just suffered a period of severe winds up here in Quebec, which happened to bring an old maple tree down right on top of my 2 year old Belle de Boskoop!

 

While being totally bummed out about it, I'm trying to think if anything can be done.  Basically it broke off right above the root graft. Do you think there's any chance of it growing back? I'm not in any hurry to dig it up so I'll leave it there and see what happens.

 

However I do have the whip with it's small branches, and I was thinking, could it be worth trying to graft a part of it on to my other apple whip? I have never done this before so I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't want to damage the other tree (better to replace one than two), and I'm not sure this is a good time, being that it's still winter. Could I cut off a part of the damaged tree and keep it refrigerated until the time is right?  Can you even graft to a 2-year old tree successfully?

 

Any advice appreciated.

 

Yours ignorantly,

 

Caren Kirk

St Jerome, QC

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