Grafted several varieties of red fleshed apples today. I was struck by how red the wood is on all of them.
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Isnāt that remarkable? Apricot wood has a distinct apricot color, pear is almost colorless, plum wood is plum colored, and so on. (Pear, by the way, when sanded down enough and finished is absolutely pearlescent and beautiful, - very subtle and delicate.)
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Iād noticed that in the pastā¦have one that has the darkest purple wood Iād ever seenā¦ considered grafting a bunch to grow up some pigmented wood/lumber for woodworking, but an accomplished woodcarver and orchardist told me the pigment doesnāt hold in seasoned lumber.
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Thanks for sharing your photos. My memory is getting shorter as I get older, but I have 30 red fleshed cultivars now, (not counting the three Budagovsky roots I am going to try āstoolingā).
Among the whole of the 30, I donāt remember any of them being redder than the B-10 rootstocks!
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Beautiful wood! I have grafted a few varieties this year myself courtesy of @BlueBerry and am excited to see what they do as they seem to all be growing at the moment! I really didnāt pay attention much to the color difference of the scions (except that the cambium was harder to see but the rootstock of B118 definitely had a red color in the wood 
Good luck in your grafting @ramv
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Thanks @BlueBerry,
I do have several BUD118 rootstock and they are certainly red. These appear even redder than those!
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I noticed that when Iām grafting and slip and cut my finger, itās red inside too. 
But seriously, Iāve seen a bunch like that. I think I remember Bud-9 is red inside too. Redlove is red inside when pruned, and the new leaves and flower buds are red. I hope they taste good.,.
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B-9, B-118, and now this year B-10ā¦all are reddish inside, but I believe B-10 is the darker of them. And the red fleshed apples are pink or red inside (more plum/lilac in many cases) for the most part. The ones from Albert Etterās breeding in California are not red inside the wood.
Most of the rest are. Including the Redloves. If the leaves are red, then the wood inside will be colored also.
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Which do you recall as being the darkest red, Lucky_P?
The āGiant Russianā is growing great this year, after just āhanging onā last summer.
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Hampshire Red was the one
I did send you some of it, right?
Its an open pollenated seedling of Hampshire, presumably with a redflesh crab parent, received 15 yrs or more ago from NAFEX member Victoria Caron
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I wonder if this can be used when breeding new varieties instead of waiting for a seedling to fruitā¦
Yes. The twig was probably the thinnest of those you sent, and I cut it into 2 pieces and put it on G890 as two pieces stuck in one cleft graft. Both took, but neither grew much at all.
However, there are two ālimbsā now with 6 inches new growth each (letās hope itās still red after this week and not blackened with the cold!)ā¦ā¦ā¦so, probably next spring I will remove one of them, and be able to check the wood at that time.
Veralma Simontorrnya may be the reddest, but Odysso and Niedzwetzkyana and Bakran are pretty darned red, as are the Budagovsky rootstocks.
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All my grafts took!
Red love Era has flowers on it. Real pretty.
All of them have pretty red leaves.
Red love Calypso
Red Love Odysso
Another Odysso
Red Love Era
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Well, ācongratsā are in orderā¦only 90% of mine took.
Thatās a good pictureā¦Calypso bloom.
I feel like some of these were rushed to marketā¦but that much better will come along in a few years.
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Thanks. I think I only have 1 or 2 failed apple grafts over the 4 years Iāve been grafting. Those were in year one.
It is still very exciting when they take and grow
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I know! I feel like a brain surgeon when one takes, instead of the clumsy hack I really am.
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Understand your point Mark. It was a real big surprise that 21 of 27 pear grafts I did for first time took this year. My apples have been in the 80-90 % range for a few years now.
100% just isnāt expected when I graft.
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I know! But thatās why we do extras, ay?
:-)M
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Precisely, when I have enough scionwood, I always do 2.
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ramv
perhaps you wouldnāt mind explaining what your āprocessā is to obtaining such good
grafting outcomes?
(If someone makes 3 grafts and they all live, that could be considered āluckāā¦but if itās dozens or hundreds or thousands, and youāre getting 100%ā¦then you must have some
habits others would do well to adopt?
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