This year I’ve managed to support my new grafts ad hoc, but only after losing a few in a stiff breeze.
Almost all of my grafts this year were on dwarf rootstock within an orchard that has transitioned mostly to dessert varieties. [The cider apples are on semi-dwarfs elsewhere.] So the dwarf trees won’t get too big and they would have been supported anyway. I’m mostly concerned about one semi-dwarf that I top worked. Right now it has three growing grafts on a 3" trunk, each with a stake supporting / protecting it. It seems like I’ll need protection long-term.
The big pear is a concern too. Elsewhere I’ve stuck a 10’ rebar into the ground and used it for support. I may do the same for the pear.
Seedling pears here typically take longer than apples. I have a 9 year old graft of Rescue on a seedling trunk that doesn’t get full sun and still isn’t sealed over. While a graft of Kieffer also on a seedling trunk in the same location, grafted at the same time, sealed over several years ago. A Conference and Harrow Sweet on seedling trunks look like they might be sealed over after year 3. Not sure if the randomness is because of the unpredictability of seedling stocks? Apples so far typically take 4 +/- years.
Like I said earlier, no rot issues with sealant. I’ve seen snow pile up on the trunks in winter, but never any water pooling.
I would be concerned about a v shape on any heavy bearing apple. I left some apples that grew like that and ended up pruning out one side a couple years later, some due to breakage and some because I was afraid of breakage. Pears or light bearing trees may be ok.
If I were you I’d only leave one South or Southwest facing branch, and then shape the rest of the tree so that there are pretty evenly spaced branches facing all 4 or 5 directions, making a delayed open center dwarf with 4 or 5 equal leaders making your scaffold branches.
If you liked the lower branch it will be a quarter of the tree anyway and you can also graft it out, if you don’t like it you can cut the end and graft it or make it into a Frankenbranch to not lose too much of its size.
The Cornell test orchards do something called a “beaver” graft when they top work existing trees. I’m struggling to find a good article on it, but it appears that it’s common among NY commercial apple growers.
You cut out a portion of the trunk and allow the top to keep growing until the scion definitively takes, then the top is cut off.
Oh, I’ve been doing this as a summer graft….or it would be a great name for what I do: I saw a chunk out of a tree about 1/3 of the way in with a tall wedge cut out from the top down to the other cut, then I do a typical bark graft and in the fall or end of winter cut off the whole top.
I can’t find a picture now, I usually cut deeper than this, but I think this was shallow because it was already on the outside of a curve so I didn’t need the space from cutting deeper.
That Facebook page (Whitney’s Grafting) had these too and called them “Notch Grafts”.
They’re probably good when you have some of those trees that flood grafts… but I’m not sure why you’d use them on apple over just the standard bark graft.
I don’t think it matters at all whether I cover the top of my cut trunk. I’ve now seen enough grafts where the trunk wasn’t healed over that appear fine.
However, I did see a historical article where they braided grafts over the top of a trunk for stability. So I think I’m going to try braiding over the top on a couple trees.
