North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lee Reich <leeareich@gmail.com>]

Here is but one example of rootstock increasing cold hardiness over 
own-rooted plant:

Miller et al. found that rootstock cultivars affect cold hardiness of scions 
grafted to them. For example, grafted ‘White Riesling’ was significantly 
hardier than the own-rooted vines...Miller, D.P., G.S. Howell, and R.K. 
Striegler. 1988b. Cane and bud hardiness of own- rooted white Riesling and 
scion of White Riesling and Chardonnay grafted to selected rootstocks. Amer. 
J. Enol. Viticult. 39:60-86.

Lee Reich, PhD
Come visit my farmden at http://leereich.blogspot.com/
http://leereich.com/

Books by Lee Reich:
A Northeast Gardener's Year
The Pruning Book
Weedless Gardening
Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden
Landscaping with Fruit
Grow Fruit Naturally

On Nov 24, 2012, at 12:49 PM, Alan Haigh wrote:

> Charles wrote,  "For the scientific approach, I have continued my
> experimental procedure with
> the seedlings and developed seedlings to out perform any grafted tree
> available for our climatic zone"
> 
> Charles, I am not arguing about the success of your breeding strategies
> only against the certainty of your conclusions- the how can be correct when
> the why is wrong.
> 
> To my thinking, a scientific approach to determine if a grafted tree is
> less cold hardy than a similar seedling tree would be to start with a
> seedling tree that has proven its cold hardiness.  You would take a hundred
> seedlings of that variety and graft half of them with scion wood of the
> proven tree and leave the other fifty as the control.  Then you could
> compare their hardiness over the next twenty years.
> 
> While the experiment would be imperfect for a few reasons it would provide
> a far more accurate manner of testing your opinion, and, I think, could be
> correctly described as a scientific approach.
> 
> Without a control your logical conclusions drawn from years of experience
> are opinions that may be true but don't represent a scientific approach, in
> my opinion.  Of course, this site is mostly about discussing the personal
> experiences of various fruit fanatics and that's what I come here for.
> 
> What got me started on this train of thought was the original claims of
> this topic- that grafted trees create a product that is dangerous to human
> health by a man who I think stated that he actually left the country
> because he was so upset that his idea isn't widely embraced here.
> 
> The main basis of his belief seemed to be that he had health problems that
> quickly cleared up when he stopped eating fruit from grafted trees.   I
> don't blame him for deciding not to eat grafted tree fruit but I need a lot
> more evidence than that to throw out all the advantages provided by
> grafting.  Whether these advantages pertain to cold zone nut production, I
> have no idea, but it still seems logical that if you ever find a really
> standout tree for quality, cold hardiness, and productivity you will end up
> trying to graft it onto other trees.
> 
> Arriving at such a standout tree has historically often taken centuries as
> can be seen by those trying to obtain the qualities of selected Kakis in a
> native American persimmon.  How many generations of grafters/seedling
> growers were required to turn an Asian pear into a Bosc?
> 
> That said, I wish you'd explain your technique of getting your seedling
> nut trees to produce within 3 or 4 years.  I know of a variety of ways to
> accelerate fruiting of the species I manage (scoring, branch spreading,
> root pruning, pruning out excessively vigorous branches, etc) but am
> curious if you've discovered something new that you are using on nut trees.
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