Apple leaf issues

Hello Community,

I seek your wisdom. I recently grafted about 75 trees (scions onto rootstock). It was in the beginning of the coronovirus pandemic and I couldn’t find what I normally like to use for potting soil. I had a bunch of old bags of some bad quality garden soil from the previous year so I used that. After two heavy rains, it became very dense and water logged - it held onto every drop of moisture and I noticed the roots were beginning to die and rot. I finally was able to get some better potting medium and I repotted everything last week. There is some browning on the edges of many of the leaves on the scions and many of the new leaves on the rootstock are very thin and rolled up lengthwise. Could someone please help me understand the cause of this: Is it damage from having too much moisture in the first soil (like overwatering)? Is it shock from repotting? Is there some nutrient deficiency? Or am I just overthinking it entirely? Thank you.

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Dont know much about your scion issue but at this point with the good growth you have on the scion i would get rid of everything growing on the rootstocks.

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I plan on it once I feel I’m a little farther out of the woods with the scion. If it ends up puttering out, I’ll still have the rootstock on which to graft/bud.

Although that is a good way to think but those rootstock branches are sucking up a lot of the energy.

Pardon my ignorance on the matter, but I was thinking that the rootstock foliage would be providing photosynthesis/energy until the minuscule scion leaves got better established. Any recommended books/reading material to get a better understanding?

Best of both worlds. Tip the rootstock which will push the scion to grow. If it grows then remove the lower root branches. If the scion dies you can grow the root to graft another day. That is my method.

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What exactly does “tip the rootstock” mean?

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Cut off half of the branch coming out of the rootstock.

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Break or cut an inch off the top but make sure there is a couple of leaves below as backup buds to grow out if needed. Hope this helps. Bill

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Thank you.

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Your welcome. Hope it grows well.

Those shoots from the rootstocks grow much stronger than the grafts. That’s the sign showing you that your graft can’t compete with them.

I would remove at least one of the two rootstock shoots and trim the remaining shoot down. To be honest, if they were my grafts, I would remove all growth under the graft unions. Like @thepodpiper said, you want all energy to go to scionwood. Right now the scionwood is losing.

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