Hi all, I know most of you are in North America, but I’m wondering if any European members have any suggestions for good sources of scion wood for grafting. I’m in a rural area of central Portugal where honestly the nurseries don’t even know what cultivars of plants they’re selling… so I guess ordering online is likely to be my best bet.
I’m particularly interested in finding a wide variety of stone fruit scions as I’d like to create a multi-graft stone fruit tree. I’d also be interested in apples as so far I only have Granny Smith and Royal Gala, plus two unidentified varieties of which I took scion wood from a neighbour’s tree.
I’d also be interested in hardy mango varieties – I have a mango that I planted last year that died back to the rootstock in the winter, but the rootstock (unknown variety…) seems pretty healthy and is sending up lots of new growth. (Or maybe I should just let it grow and be happy with whatever it gives me…)
I don’t know any EU scion nursery, just in UK. But we can’t get anything from UK on a legal way… the only way you have is to exchange or buy from other EU collectors.
Unfortunately that’s the answer I was expecting. But if you or anyone here has scion wood to share, or contacts for anyone who has, I’d be very interested. I don’t have much that’s worthy of exchanging, but I’d happily buy (and also happily share what I do have if anyone found it interesting).
I’d be interested in pretty much any stone fruit – especially the hybrids like pluots that you can’t find in the markets and nurseries around here. I already have a few plums and some nectarines and apricots.
(I want to make a “tree of 40 fruit”, so every cultivar is interesting, though I also need to do a bit of learning about which ones are compatible and consider whether I need interstems etc.)
Also as mentioned any mangos that might survive in zone 9a or colder… and similarly, any hardy avocados.
I’d also be interested in any hazels of known cultivars. Here they just sell “hazels” and don’t seem to know anything about the existence of multiple cultivars.
Also I’d live to get hold of some serviceberries, though that’s not just scion wood as I don’t have rootstocks.
It’s not cheap when you order internationally, but Fruitwood Nursery has many of the things you are looking for (stone fruit, avocados, but not mangos), and they can ship to Europe with a phytosanitary certificate:
They usually update their stock in late November or early December, so if you click “notify me” for all the varieties you want that are out of stock, you’ll get an email around then when they are back in stock.
Since the $70 phytosanitary certificate charge is per order, it makes sense to wait until the time of year when the most stuff will be in stock and place one big order, rather than submitting multiple orders.