Hi I am Christine and I never grafted anything before. I live in zone 6a and have a wild apple tree that I grew from seed. I am only in my zone during the months of June to Late November. Would my scion take or which is the best month to try to do the graft?
Hi Christine, and welcome to the group. It’s getting a little late to do field grafts but it can work. Take a dormant scion and make a simple whip or cleft graft to your seedling. Your odds improve if you do the graft higher on the tree, but how high is your tree? (I don’t know whether to envision a little 12 inch whip or a five foot tall, branched out specimen.)
Another option is less time sensitive. You can chip bud. That involves taking a dormant bud from the current year’s growth of the tree providing scion wood and sticking it on the seedling. It’s very easy to do and works pretty well, but you have to wait until late summer to do it and then you won’t see whether it worked until next spring.
Please feel free to ask questions- lots of people here happy to answer them.
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I second marknmt on the lateness of doing dormant scion grafting. In my neck of the woods I did one this last year when a first graft got kicked or something. The second one took & I worried it wouldn’t have time to harden before winter set in. It did fine.
Since you sound like you could be a snow bird, getting a leaf with mature bud at its base to make a chip bud graft is your best option. As he said, late in summer (here, no later than August 5). If the leaf stem dries up & drops off, while the edges of the graft have healed over (callused), then cut above/beyond it at the end of next winter making it the dominant bud & voilá: a new branch or tree! (Since yo might not arrive before that, make the cut as soon as you return north & watch the result. It should take off nicely.)
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Putting a chip bud to bark that thin is best in my experience.
Wow… you guys sound like experts at this… I have to do a lot more research to dormant scion grafting, chip bud to bark… Should I cut off the top part of the tree just where I initially cut it so that it would spread out.
Right now it’s hard to see what your tree is up to. Is there a second trunk (or a second tree)? It looks like you have a vase shape started with healthy branching and the trunk is good. I’d think about taking out the second trunk and then cleaning up the remaining tree by nipping off branching that’s pointing down to the ground. It would be nice if you have three main branches coming off of the trunk but it’s not clear from your picture.
Whatever you do, go slow, and post pictures here for comments along the way. As you work on the tree its basic shape should emerge - the trunk and two or three scaffold branches.
I hope this helps and isn’t too confusing. Good luck!
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i agree with Mark. id give it a good pruning this fall ,after its dormant. then graft next spring. research pruning to a vase shape. there are plenty of tutorials online to show you how and what to cut. that will put the trees energy into renewing itself, and making the odds much better at your graft taking. good luck!
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Thanks for all the help. Truly appreciate all your help. I will cut it back and clean it up when the leaves fall. I will post pictures as I go…
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