I’m in the middle of topworking a lot of apple trees for friends. I find this statement on a grafting tutorial at Home Orchard Society website:
“It is a superstition of many growers to leave one branch ungrafted to nurse the rest for the first year”.
If you have successfully topworked fruit trees leaving no nurse limbs I’d really like to hear from you.
If I am completely top working a tree I almost never leave a nurse limb. So, many hundreds of times yes for me. I don’t think it helps getting grafts to take at all, but it could help the tree vigor overall.
I agreed with scott. I whacked the whole top off and every branch will have a scion. Every 2 to 3 days, I rubbed off all the new shoots below all the grafts.
Tony
I agree with the above statements on top working but I leave nurse branches on small trees when saddle or whip grafting. When top working which I use rind aka bark grafts or cleft grafts I’m grafting over everything and don’t leave nurse branches either. Sometimes I leave nurse branches when top working if I plan to graft the nurse branch over later using a whip graft etc for example.