I have 15 or so apple trees I’m going to bench graft and have been reading up on the topic.
I’m unclear about the timing of them going into ground… is it most common/acceptable to put them in the ground after a short period of time following the callousing of the graft, in the fall (after the summer in containers), or keeping them in the containers through next winter for spring planting at 1 year old?
To complicate things, I’ll be planting them at 45 degrees in a cordon, and so there will be some early training of them to that pitched angle.
Hi Ross
Callousing of apples occurs best at ambient temperatures between 55-65F. Callousing will continue as long as temps are above freezing. So anytime after you graft you can plant them outdoors. The exception being that they should not go outdoors until temps are well above freezing on a continuous basis. Ideally they would be kept near the ideal temps for several weeks to assure callousing is well started, before exposing them to lower temps. If you do that you have plenty time to complete the project. Just be certain to keep the rootstocks in a moist medium during the time you have them callousing indoors
Dennis
Kent, Wa
I’ve always bench grafted ten placed carefully into pots. Something has to be done with them immediately. My concern has been that in transferring them to the field, perhaps as a group the delicate grafts could be bumped out of alignment. This year I’m planting the rootstock then field grafting to avoid dislodging the graft. BUT I’m only doing ten.
I’ve always potted mine too, though I wondered if I was being overly cautious. This has worked perfectly. The difficulty, though, is transplanting the trees which may not have had time to develop good roots. You might line the pot with a fabric such as burlap so you can pull the soil out of the pot without really disturbing the roots, then plant the burlap too.
Hi Dennis - thanks for clarifying. That’s now clear, and it sounds like first year in permanent spot is OK, provided they’re calloused indoors and kept above freezing outside. Appreciate it.
As I think about this more, I get concerned about planting them directly into the cordon… two concerns I wouldn’t have if doing normal planting. First… having to get the pitch of the rootstock and graft aligned and against the bamboo guides at 45 degrees may lead to more fussing around that gives a chance to knock the graft around. Second… I can foresee that graft may start growing straight up, and then bending and tying it to the bamboo guide may put stress on the graft union, which could be an issue.
Thanks, Masbustelo. What I’ve been reading is that for the heeling, you can put multiple together in damp, loose growing medium for that period, then transfer to the final location. Agreed on the graft being delicate, though I think I would have less concern if doing traditional planting. I like the idea of field grafting you’re using.
I put all my bench grafts into a tub with a combo of wood shavings and potting mix. I then keep them in the root cellar for a few weeks to callous. Next I pot them all. Keeping them all in pots for the summer allows me to have them close to the house so I can better take care of them
I plant them out in the fall
I have had great success this way.
Thanks jrd51. It sounds like you’ve potted up for a year or so. I see where you’re going with the burlap and root protection, though I’m thinking if the nurseries are sending out bare roots… they should be strong enough to survive. Personally, I wouldn’t want to plant something that could constrain the roots, like the burlap. I think the advantage of bare root plants is that they don’t have any of the potting soil, so the roots are more likely to venture out to seek water, versus stay in the happy nursery medium.
Thanks, Ribs. Like the tub idea. That timing may actually be the ticket for me. I may have to think a little more on our local soil conditions and weather.
When you do this, do you strip away all the potting soil to bare roots when you plant?
I put all the bench grafts together in a bundle with the soil/wood shaving mixture.
After a few weeks I put each one in an individual pot and set them all on my porch. I take care of the potted trees all summer then plant them in the fall with the soil in the pots. They have formed a root ball by then.
Hi Ross,
Perhaps the following sequence could relieve your concerns and avoid unnecessary stress on graft unions while they will be healing during the first growing season:
It seems like the first issue may be addressed by preparing your planting trench in the alignment of your future cordon. You now have an empty straight open trench. Then as you place rootstock in the trench, you could verify the angle from vertical you want to achieve, before you backfill the roots of each plant.
Second issue, tweaking stress: Before you place grafts into the trench, take the time to splint each graft with a cane so that as you apply lateral force to adjust the tree angles you are not bending the graft union! Keep these splints on until you have made all adjustments and thru the first growing season.
Next, place rootstocks into the trench at the desired angle from vertical and tie each support cane to a string line to hold them while you backfill the trench.
Take care and good luck
Dennis
Here’s a summary of my first year grafting: I did all grafting of apples and pears on bareroot rootstock trees. For the 50 apples, it was all D.41 and MM.111. All grafts were done in mid-March. I put each grafted tree into a 1.5 g pot, then stored them in a garage that probably averaged 50 F. As I recall, buds were swelling in ~2-3 weeks. I had >95% success (i.e., maybe 2 failures), better than I expected, but that gave me way more trees than I needed – 3-4 of some varieties. Where there was space, I transplanted these trees in June. If there wasn’t space, I kept the extra trees in pots (usually bigger pots) for a year, which frankly was a PIA. Either way, I didn’t lose any trees in transplanting; I don’t think there was even any apparent damage.
As you’d guess, there was no issue keeping the rootballs intact after a year in a pot. The only challenge was keeping the rootball (and surrounding soil) intact when transplanting after <3 months (March to June). That’s where the burlap would come in. If I had to do it again, I’d put burlap in the pot sticking out the top so I could just pull it out by the fabric.
This is a summary of 2023, which was my first year grafting and growing trees:
I’m here in Zone 5.
On 3/16, I received 90 apple and 30 pear rootstocks and scionwood, which I unpacked and put in moistened pine shavings and Promix in a 65 degree room.
I grafted between 3/31 and 4/4 and put them back in the mix of moistened pine shavings and Promix in the same 65 degree room. Once they started to get some bigger buds and started to leaf out I moved them to the garage to try to slow them down a bit on 4/15. They continued to leaf out and I even had some flowers develop on the apples. I gave them a week to harden off a bit outside with the sun and had everything in the nursery by May 6th, at which point they were pretty well leafed out. I think I’ll try to get them out a little sooner this year, so I don’t need to worry about any hotter than normal days which I think had some effect on them, definitely seemed to affect the pears which I had to shade a bit.
The apples took very well and so far they have all made it. The pears were a lot trickier, maybe 50% at this point. I think some of the issue was that the pear rootstock came in a little dry and the scionwood was bigger than the rootstock in a few cases… I need to learn a method to handle this in the future.
So far so good. One issue I faced was leaf damage from caterpillar. I used BT to try to knock them down a bit. This year, I am going to start with the Holistic Orchard program that I read about when reading Michael Phillips, and also which Fedco has a lot of info on.
I am also going to plant them in 3 gallon grow bags to see how that goes this year.
Thanks for the ideas. I am thinking of having a bamboo cane to train the scion to, like shown by Dave, here. But, that won’t really support as low as the graft, so I think your idea of a separate splint for just the bottom part may do the trick. I was concerned that tying to the larger cane and then packing the soil would be an issue to the graft, but done your way, that would be less of an issue, so thanks on the idea. What’s a good material to use to bond the scion and new growth to the canes, that won’t abrade the new growth?
Now, all this said, I’m pretty busy at the moment with rebuilding the house, and thinking putting in containers, at least until fall, may buy me some time, as preparing the ground and building the structure may take some time.
@jrd51 and @AtoB, thanks for sharing. I’m impressed that you all jumped in full force the first year… 50 and 90 apples for your first try, with good success is awesome! Congrats on that.
AtoB, you raise a good point about pear scionwood being larger… I think they just have water sprouts that grow so fast, so that’s a note to me to order larger pear rootstock, when available. Luckily we don’t have too many pests to devour the plants, except for the vole problem I have out in the garden, and why I was avoiding putting them in the garden bed for a year. I do think some folks do that, too… put in the garden bed with loose soil to get them started. I have heard that cooler temps (than 65) are important during that callousing, so maybe that small change will help you out with future grafts.
Well, in my case it’s mainly a function of age. I figure that if I don’t attack the wish list aggressively, it may never happen. So the motto is “Carpe diem.” Also I didn’t expect to be so successful. 50 grafts probably represents 2-3 each of 15-20 varieties. I was planning for failure, which didn’t happen. I was able to give away a lot of good trees.
One take-away is that apples are very forgiving. Pears too.
I was told that to solve for the mismatched caliper to try a x- graft or saddle graft. When I say nursery, I essentially meant garden bed. I pulled back sod, added some compost, and planted newly grafted trees in rows. It worked very well. I do have some voles around as well. My biggest pest problem was caterpillar damage to the young leaves, and then Japanese beetle damage. The former I managed with BT and the latter I managed by picking the beatles off when I took my dogs out before bed. My biggest advice is to just keep a careful eye above and under the leaves. Good luck and have fun! I learned a lot last year and am excited to add to my knowledge this year.
I make a lot of potting soil for figs with no actual soil. It’s 50% peat, 20% compost (leaves and grass), 20% calcined clay, 10% diatomaceous earth. To this I add some dolomitic limestone, gypsum, wood ash, green sand, etc. as nutrients.
For the apples and pears, I wanted a mix that was firmer so that it would hang together if I removed it from the pot in a couple months. And I wanted a mix not too different from what the trees would experience when planted. So as I recall, I dug some dirt from a corner of the yard where it wouldn’t be missed and mixed it roughly 70-30 with some leaf compost. I probably added some limestone, gypsum, green sand for nutrients. In this application, I omitted the calcined clay and diatomaceous earth both because they would tend to make the mix crumbly and because they would enhance drainage.
Drainage is usually a good thing but with young trees in small pots you don’t want to overdo it. It’s very easy to ignore pots for a few days and inadvertently let them dry out. This would not be good for the young apple and pear trees. So my advice in this case is to build a mix that errs on the side of retaining water well. Between the soil and the compost, my mix was OK. But if your soil is sandy, you should consider adding maybe 30% peat moss.
I don’t really know much about potting soil and went with a mix similar to Drew’s for my long term container plants. I like that yours has the DE… it’s dry here, so I’m around 20% on it. I’m still trying to figure out a mix for plants that will eventually go in-ground. What you’re suggesting about a somewhat similar medium to the destination ground makes good sense.
