Scion Backup

This is an unusual scion gathering year for me. Normally I gather some of the scions that I might want to graft to expand their presence in my orchard. This year I’m gathering scions mostly as backups for any transplanting tree failures from my orchard to my next orchard. In the picture is about 50 different varieties and I have about 15 more to cut. As a space saver I’m cutting the scions shorter (graft size). Pretty sure 95% of these scions will never be used. You have to love the hobby of growing fruit to go this extreme.

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The small bag has 5 different hazel varieties.

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Best of luck with all the grafting you will be doing this Spring @Auburn

Can’t wait to see your progress in your new place! :+1:

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Nice and neat. Doubled bagged. Professionally done.

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You are in a hotter climate, but it is rare here to lose an apple tree to even bare root transplanting. Apples store plenty of energy in their wood apparently and can survive the stress very well. Larger pear trees are another story and are the only species that I can’t reliably transplant bare root.

I had a customer who bought 50 year old apple trees from a commercial grower and insisted on going ahead and transplanting them even though he could only get a tree spade to the site after they were already leafing out. Out of about 20 trees moved this late only a couple died- and they got no supplementary water and certainly no misting. They didn’t regain vigor for about 3 years, though.

Yeah, I bet most of your back-up wood is going to waste.

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My plans are to plant the plums (5), blueberries (4), and pears (6) first. I prefer to plant while they are dormant and these are my first to leaf out. The pear trees are larger and the ones I’m mostly concerned with surviving. I cut them back considerably and I think they will do well. We usually get adequate rainfall until about the end of May then I plan to add water as needed throughout the summer. The first year I will be primarily concerned with survival.

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These are the ones I’m concerned with also. Hoping I was able to get enough roots.

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I completely understand your backup plan. :+1: That is exactly what I would do

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Bare root pears at 6 feet, 100% have lived bare root in April. Larger ones, I don’t know.

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@Auburn, I moved about 8 years ago and transplanted some pretty significant size trees. I didn’t lose any of them, but it set them back quite a few years. My bartlett pear that bore some nice fruit previously has yet to fruit in its new home.

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It’s still a little earlier than I prefer…but getting scions and making backup trees of those I only have one tree or one limb of…is in the plan.