I ended up with quite a few apple and pear scions. I’m wondering, since most of my trees are young/small, if I can use some of the thicker ones as interstems with the intention of them producing fruit along with the end scion. I can see potential problems with initial lack of overall branch strength (especially lower graft), and insufficient sap amount/power to start two leafing scions. I could graft to the two wild trees here as kind of a holding tank but I’d like to get the scions to their permanent home initially. Is this fruiting interstem done?
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I have fruiting interstems I grafted so it can be done.
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I have done this, in a sense: I grafted State Fair to my Liberty and a couple of years later put Winesap on the State Fair. They’ve both done OK. I think @Auburn does it a fair amount.
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Yes you can do it. I don’t have an exact count but my guess would be about 300 on several trees. My orchard is like a fruit cocktail.
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Well, the process that I want to try is to do both grafts at the same time, 'cuz I have all the scions now. That’s what makes the potential problems potential problems.
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Sure we all graft a couple at a time when using interstems so no worries. They won’t all take but many will take.
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Last year, out of curiosity, I took three crab apple scion and grafted them to each other so that’s two interstems. They took and all three sent out shoots.
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Most excellent! I was thinking that if I did find myself needing/wanting to make double-grafts the first one could be done ahead of time indoors.
Since I have some long scions that are really two, and some that are multiples, I was hoping to create some duplicate grafts and this would be a perfect way to do it…less pressure and more opportunity to get every cultivar growing.
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Great idea!