North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Steven Covacci <filtertitle@aol.com>]

Hi,


I've started a practice of burying the graft-unions (2" bellow ground) of 
trees grafted unto seedling rootstocks of like species (i.e. P. cerasus on P. 
cerasus) - as long as the sapling is of 1" or less caliper.  I haven't had he 
scions root in these cases yet one and two years later (dogwood tree types, 
plums, peaches, apricots and sour-cherries).


Rationale: to eliminate just an unnecessarily source for borers to enter and 
the fact that there is always a degree (minute or not) of incompatibility 
between the scion and the understock - even in cases where they are both of 
like species and even subspecies.


Do you believe that the scion portion that is buried will root? If so, will 
both resulting rootsystems collectively persist (that of the scion in the 
upper portion of the soil, and that of the rootstock in the lower portion - 
being the original root mass)?  Might the tissue of the scion (trunk) be past 
the point of being able to produce roots due to advanced development beyond 
being in the seedling stage?


Thank you,


Steve NJ