I don’t know why I think it’s different than putting it on a rootstock, and maybe it is, but if I have a full grown apple tree, doesn’t matter how big, just mature. Can I take any apple scion wood and graft it on the mature apple tree and get that scion wood’s apple type? For example, can I take a fuji scion and put it on a Granny Smith and get a Fuji apple?
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Yes, totally. There are people with apple trees with a hundred varieties on them, and that’s done in this exact manner. The only real risk is that if the scionwood has a virus it will be transmitted to the rest of the tree.
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Thanks.
I was asking because I thought about moving, and if I did and I had apple trees, I could take scions if the trees were rare or whatever.
Can you do this with the whip? If I had a tree from the store that was a whip (unpatented), can you make scions from the whip? There’s no difference in the whip and later branches as far as creating scions is there?
If you mean buying a young grafted tree from a store, no, there’s no practical difference between getting scion only from somewhere and chopping the scion off that tree, but I’d encourage you to get your money’s worth and consider either a) just buying scion wood from a nursery or user here or b) at least planting that young tree, chopping it off (above the graft) so it’ll branch, then you’ll possibly get several scions the next year.
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Grafting onto a mature tree is often refered to as “top-working.”
Apples are fairly forgiving compared to many other graft species.
You’ll likely get better quality scion from a tree that has been growing in the ground (or at least adequate space if potted) than you would from most whips in a store. I have used cheap whips as rootstock when I only wanted one or two trees. Some of the box store samples this time of year are fairly cheap.
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I have a apple that i really like at our current home… but we plan to build a new home new location soon…
Last spring i grafted a scion from it to the rootsrock i wanted.
And…
This spring i planted it at my new location.
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Yes, in fact, this is most of the grafting I did last year.
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I got some arkansas black, black limbertwig and pristine scions thru trades recently that i will graft onto existing apple trees. I have 3 … 4 year olds… and one 20+ year old apple trees that i will graft those scions onto.
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