Had a thought. If you took a Scion wood cutting off of a year or 2 old apple tree seedling and grafted it onto a mature apple tree would it speed up the process of getting a sample apple verses waiting 7-10 yrs from seed to apple.
Just curious.
1 Like
I would think that if you graft it high enough at the tip of a branch where apical dominance should speed it’s growth, then it would fruit much earlier, maybe as soon as 3 years after grafting. It’s worth trying.
Dennis
Kent, wa
2 Likes
Yes, grafting seedlings to rootstock is actually the go to practice for some apple breeders to speed the breeding process through expedited fruiting. The only downside is that if you don’t also keep the original seedling on its own roots then you’ll only be evaluating the fruit, but not evaluating the overall tree. It’s very useful to also know what a tree will do when grown on its own roots in terms of vigor, precocity, drought tolerance, etc.
3 Likes
I should also mention that preventing vertical growth will cause it to set fruit sooner so tie it down to encourage horizontal growth, on an apple tree, if you keep a vertical sucker rather than pruning it off, tie it down to the horizontal to encourage fruiting.
2 Likes
I planted some last winter inside and bud grafted them that summer on b-9 rootstock to induce early fruiting. It was my first attempt at doing that, so im not sure how long it will take yet.
1 Like