North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>]

That sounds like an excellent idea to me. I've never heard of that 
before though. Probably better than summer pruning because summer 
pruning is one of those never ending jobs that you have to keep up with 
every year. (And not as much fun.)
Some thoughts:
1. You would want to choose your donor bark from something that you know 
works as an interstem. I think any dwarfing rootstock would be dwarfing 
as an interstem. I wouldn't know how dwarfing any of them would be 
compared to when used for the roots. Maybe it doesn't matter.
2. This bark interstem might not be very dwarfing the first year or two 
or more. Nutrients from the roots flow upward in the wood. You would 
still have the original wood. As that original wood ages and changes 
from sap wood to heart wood, then it might be more dwarfing.
3. When you do this graft, what if cambium remains on the wood? Would 
the original cambium keep making non dwarfing wood? Would that be OK 
because the dwarfing bark would slow nutrient transportation to the 
roots and still result in dwarfing? Could remaining cambium on the wood 
out grow the new cambium from the graft and actually convert the bark 
back to normal? Maybe you should scrape the wood to remove all old 
cambium. Maybe you should even let it dry out for a day before you 
collect and insert the donor bark.

Anyway, that's what I would be thinking about. Sounds like a fun 
experiment. I wish I had a tree or two to experiment on like that.

Steve in the Adirondacks



On 11/18/2013 11:07 AM, rob hamilton wrote:
> Just came up with an Idea that I want to run past some people.
>
> Let say you have for an example a fruit tree on its own roots that propagated 
> from a cutting. You know that the fruit will be of good quality, but you know 
> it will be big eventually. It is established in the ground already.
> Could one do a band graft of a dwarfing rootstock bark (when the bark is 
> slipping) as an interstem without cutting the hardwood? Has any heard of this 
> practice?
> One could do half of one side of trunk on year and then the other, to insure 
> it takes.
>
> Any thoughts?