Hello Everyone:
Apologies if this topic has already been covered, but here’s my situation:
We had terrible vole damage this winter (Canada, near Ottawa, zone 4) and
most of our apple trees were completely stripped of bark from the roots to a foot or higher up - never seen anything like it!
Anyways, since I had been collecting heritage apple varieties and most of them were on the verge of starting to bear more than 2 or 3 apples, this was a real disappointment.
In order to find a silver lining, I cut scion wood and ordered rootstocks. The dormant rootstocks are now in my garage in their shipping box, wrapped in plastic. Temperatures are still pretty low and expected to stay that way for the next few days. Can I keep them there for about 3 days without having to worry? (It just so happens that it’s the Easter weekend). I would expect it should be the same as for any bare-root tree, right?
Yes,
Rootstock can be stored several weeks, at temperatures above freezing, – below 40f
( like refrigerator temps)
Make sure they don’t dry out. Or freeze.
Could be put in a bucket ( etc.) with moist potting soil .
Or kept in moist newspaper , peat , etc. wrapped in plastic
Sorry to hear that. Since the trees were damaged when dormant the roots are still good below the bark-removed area. So if there is any bark left by the ground (or even a bit under ground) you can do a bark or cleft graft there and the graft will take off like a rocket, much faster than with new rootstocks. If it does work you need to make sure the scion doesn’t root.
I chopped down a pear I didn’t like this winter right at the base, but after doing so I realized I should have kept it to topwork. But I just pushed the dirt from a side of the stump a few weeks ago and bark grafted there, and the scion is starting to take off now.
100% what scott said! If they don’t look salvageable I would graft your existing tree below the injury. You will get 6+ feet of growth the first year easily.
This winter was crazy with 4+ feet of snow. It reached above my usual plastic wrap protectors. What I think saved my trees was painting the trunks with 1/3 water / 1/3 white latex paint / 1/3 joint compound. Protects against south-west injury and the sand in the joint compound makes it unpleasant to chew through. I did not get any bites at all. The lower branches did lose a lot of buds to rabbits though…
On my younger trees I add additional protection with a ring of hardware cloth going up the trunk.
Thank You so much everyone for the great tips! I really appreciate it!
Yes, I was going to try the bark or cleft graft, because I figured that those roots putting all that stored energy into a little twig ought to really have it take off fast. I was going to put two per stem, just for insurance and then keep the better looking one.
I also want to try a couple of bridge grafts on the trees that have a bit of bark left and perhaps even some inarching (although that looks a bit like Frankentrees to me - has anyone actually tried this and succeeded??)
Anyways, I’m trying to turn the whole disaster into a learning experience. For me, the only ones that were not completely girdled were ones that had a coco coir mat around. The stupid spirally tree guards didn’t do anything - they pushed them up from the bottom and chewed the root area or gnawed spirally patterns higher up! I’m putting up hardware cloth cages and all the newly grafted mini trees are going into Plantra grow tubes!