North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[david liezen <chandos49@hotmail.com>]

I read recently "The Grafter's Handbook" (which is a bit large to be 
described as a handbook) by one of the big names (Garner) at East Malling 
Research Station in the UK in which he illustrates this very technique.
My understanding is that the first season the grafted roots will do the job 
supporting life for the scion. Since you'd selected only a portion of a much 
larger root, there will be considerable growth below ground to match that 
above. If the graft union remains under the surface of the soil longer, the 
scion itself will begin to produce roots and they will supercede the grafted 
roots, unless you grafted onto the same cultivar.
 
Let's say you wished to produce a younger-bearing tree that is dwarfed to 
some extent and perhaps borrows some disease resistance to fireblight, you 
could do that with a portion of a Geneva rootstock and re-plant it once it is 
well established so the graft union stands above ground in order to retain 
the advantages of dwarfing, cold hardiness and fireblight resistance.
 
That's my understanding. Anyone on the list wish to correct any 
misconceptions?
 
Dave Liezen
 
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 10:22:56 -0500
> From: debs913@gmail.com
> To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Mystery apple trees
> 
> This is interesting! Is this still done today?
> 
> deb
> 
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Kieran &/or Donna
> <holycow@frontiernet.net>wrote:
> 
> > In the old days it was more common to do "piece root" grafting, using a
> > piece of apple root and simply planting it so the graft union was
> > underground. There were farms that produced and sold the root pieces to
> > nurseries for grafting. Donna
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