Moving and want to bring some of the trees along

Like the title suggests, I’m moving to a new property later this year, a property I already have access to. I don’t want to waste any time in starting the orchard so I ordered 13 bare root trees that will arrive by the end of January, just so I have something from the start.

However, I’d like to bring along some of the trees I have on my current property and figured buying rootstock and graft scion wood to them. Problem is, I noticed purchasing a good rootstock for this project was much harder than I anticipated. The scion will come from a Pluerry, Aprium, Pluot, white peach, and a plum. I’m fine with getting multiple different rootstocks but again, it’s hard to find any that fit the bill.

Krymsk 1 is the only one that does (wet clay soil, zone 9b) but it’s dwarfing and not particularly fast growing and probably won’t be compatible with them all.

Besides Raintree, who else offers rootstock for my project? Also, any other ideas and/or tips are welcomed.

Burnt Ridge has Myro and Marianna 2624, Grandpa’s Orchard has Bailey (peach) and Myro, Cummins has Marianna GF8-1.

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If the trees aren’t too large, I’d move the trees. Now is the time
to do it. I’ve done it a number of times.

Maybe try rootgrafts, using roots from the original tree.?

Plant trees on mounds. With good sized mounds, you can use either Krymsk-1 or Myro 29C, depending on what tree size you want, for Pluerry, Aprium, Pluot, Plum and Lovell or Bailey for Peach.

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I have no idea how to do that. Need to do some research.

2624 seems like an inferior rootstock with plenty of issues. GF8-1 and Myro are standard. I certainly did not mention I did not prefer very large trees, but if possible, semi-dwarf is preferable. Nothing some pruning can’t solve though. Grandpa does not ship to California.

This is something my wife suggested. The trees are entering year 3 and are about 8-10 feet tall. However, I would think keeping them would aid in selling the house as they will all bear fruit this year.

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(“Maybe try rootgrafts, using roots from the original tree”)
-------------/------------
(“I have no idea how to do that. Need to do some research.”)

Gently dig down around mother tree, find a pencil size (?) root.
Follow it toward trunk ,
Satisfy your self that one end is defiantly coming from the trunk area.
That’s the top. Cut a 6"-10" piece keeping track of the top.
Clean the dirt off of the top area well ( wash).
Graft with scion from the same tree , whip and tongue , cleft , etc.
pot up.
you could assume they are compatable. , since it is growing.
Free !!! — is a big plus !
Could possibly make many out of each one and the original tree would look about the same.
They may fail.
In wich case you have lost a hand full of twigs , some dirt.>/!!!/<
But got more grafting practice.

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So let’s say I settle on some rootstock, what grafting method am I using to add the scion wood? Cleft or Omega grafting…or is there a more appropriate method?

I’ve been a Realtor for over 40 years and the average
buyer could care less about buying a house because it
has fruit trees. In fact, most buyers will remove the fruit
trees, because they don’t want a bunch rotten fruit laying
all over the ground creating a mess and attracting flies
and other insects, not to mention rats and mice. Listen
to your wife.

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You can transplant your trees while they are dormant to the new location with a very high chance that they will survive and do well. 99% of home buyers don’t care about fruit trees.

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Agreed, though that is probably good advice in any context! :slight_smile:

If you want to leave one tree with fruit, maybe someone will think it is neat. If you have 10 (or 100+…) they will just think you are the gardening equivalent of a crazy old cat woman.

You are in a good position to have 1- access to both properties simultaneously and 2- it is the dormant season, and so a great time to transplant.

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I see what you’re saying. However, the way I remodeled the entire backyard, the buyer pretty much has to be into the homesteading type of lifestyle or they’ll have one hell of a road ahead of them returning it to a non producing place to live hehehe

Then you’re going to severely limit the universe of potential buyers,
and your house may sit on the market for some time.

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Agreed! I wouldn’t take out a mortgage on a nightmare. Now I’m curious to see a picture of MockY’s backyard.

I’m just saying that the buyers pretty much need to be interested in homesteading, whether there are trees planted or not. So in this case, keeping the trees I would think is an advantage. I’d buy it :slight_smile:
If the buyers are just interested in regular suburban living, I doubt they want this property whether there are trees or not. It would all pretty much needed to be bulldozed down and rebuilt from scratch. Essentially, bringing it back to what it once was.

This was a great and timely suggestion. I had just planted some jujube trees from GrowOrganic less than a week before this thread. They were beautiful, with nice big roots. But, one of the roots was mostly broken, so I cut it off and potted it up. When I saw your post I had just gotten scionwood from Fruitwood Nursery (offshoot of Rolling River that just sends scionwood), so decided to graft it to the root.

I covered all of the above ground root with parafilm, as I figured that it would lose a lot of water if I didn’t. After about 2 weeks, it is leafing out. That doesn’t mean it will work, but I’m still happy to see it.

You could get lucky and find the perfect buyer, especially if the market is strong in CA. But, I think you’d probably do better with mostly lawn. And this is coming from someone with a backyard which looks like this:

Someday, when I move, I’ll need to make it look something like this (a pic from less than 4 years earlier), but with greener grass.

Actually, the “after” pic is from 4 years ago. I’ve squeezed even more in since then…And the only parts of the playground that are left are those functioning as a grape trellis.

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