My local orchard sells M111 but they don’t get it until March and often late March. I want to experiment with grafting indoors and giving trees a head start on spring under lights in containers. Does anyone know a place that will ship M111 in early Jan?
I’ve been thru this with various rootstocks and thee only place that could get (any clonal) rootstocks to me is Copenhaven Farms and it may have been more toward the beginning of February.
I might suggest you order now what you need, pot them up or stick a bundle/however-many you buy in a large rubbermaid tub.
Personally it doesn’t matter the fruit type anymore for me… I have completely halted bare-root grafting altogether. If you’re going to do it, I highly recommend you bury your grafts sideways vs. parafilm/waxing them and allowing the tops to be exposed. Then after callus… turn on the lights.
Dax
Are you saying, wrap the graft lets say with rubber bands to keep them together however, don’t wrap them in parafilm and just bury sideways to keep them moist?
Yes, that’s what I’m saying.
If (you) can give them bottom heat and cover the bins with poly… do that too.
Dax
Thanks for the link, I’ll try them. My plan for grafting was to graft as soon as my GRIN scions arrive and then put them in Rootmaker RB2 containers. Either 1 gal or 3 gal depending on the size of the roots. I would then put the grafted trees in my cold room for a couple weeks to allow them to begin to heal. I would then bring them in and put them under lights.
The method I used last time was to pot up the rootstock and put them under lights immediately. I let them start pushing existing buds and then grafted them while in containers. I got pretty good success but I found the grafting more difficult when they were in the containers.
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Sure. They’ll want to pull right out of the container.
I haven’t grafted but a 1/2 dozen apples in my life. Pears I would bench graft (again) bare-root. If apples are anything like pears then your methods will work well.
Best regards,
Dax
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I didn’t have any trouble with them pulling from the container. By the time I grafted them they were in there firmly. The problem was size alignment between the scion and rootstock. They were fine if the match was well above the container, but if it was close to the container, the container limited access.
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You should pot them again then! Then again, I’m not an apple grafter, “yet” (not committed to spraying programs at this time and/or limited knowledge about how easy or not easy they graft.) But if there’s one thing I know is that a rooted plant will graft many times more successfully than a non-rooted clonal rootstock or seedling.
Dax
I’m right with you. Most of my trees are for wildlife and I look for trees with no maintenance after they are established. Apples were near the bottom of my list because of the maintenance. I started planting crabapple seedlings for rootstock and grafting them over. I then went to clonal rootstock because I had to cull so many seedling due to disease propensity. All of the varieties I’m grafting are the most disease resistant I can find since once established they will get little if any care.
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Well, I think I finally found some and I learned more about the process of the industry. I could find no retail orchard that had any left a this time of year. My local orchard told me that they graft and plant any rootstock they don’t sell. Perhaps that is the general practice.
Someone on another forum suggested I talk to wholesale orchards. I talked to a couple and here is what I found. Wholesale operations in the far northwest (Washington state) are the first to harvest their rootstock. There is also a specific order it is harvested in and I wanted M111.
Cameron Nursery had just finished harvesting their M111 as is starting the grading process. They are willing to ship as soon as the grading is done (hopefully later this week).
I only needed about 25, but of course wholesale only sells in minimum lot size of 50 or 100 in a bundle depending on diameter. Their prices are much lower but the expedited shipping is high. I’ll be paying about 25% more than it would have cost me to by 25 at the local orchard (if they had them), and I’ll be getting 50. I haven’t decided what to do with the extra yet.
I doubt anyone else wants to screw around grafting in the winter indoors like me, but I thought I’d post this info anyway just in case.
I plan to graft with scions I’m getting from GRIN and I’m sure I’ll hear from them about my order status in a couple weeks. So, for the short-term I should have no problem storing them in my refrigerator until I’m ready to graft.
For the excess 25, does anyone have any advice on storing them until spring?
If your ground isn’t frozen, could you just heal them in and cage them until spring?
That is a good thought. I guess all they need is to keep the roots moist in medium and keep them from freezing while keeping the tops form breaking dormancy. Healing them in gives me another idea. I could put groups of them in a container with medium and put them in my cold room. That would be the easiest for me since I don’t need to protect them. My cold room is just a basement room with an open window that is closed off from the rest of my basement. The temperature fluctuates 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the outdoors. I have a wireless thermometer in there that sends me warnings if it gets down to 33 degrees.
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My rootstock arrived yesterday. I unpacked it and put them in a 5 gal bucket with most sphagnum and sawdust. I covered the bucket with a garbage bag and put it in my cold room. I’m now just waiting on my GRIN order and I can start the project.