I plan to harvest scionwood from a seedling apple soon. It’s a wild tree approx. 40 feet tall, with a small amount of vigorous vegetative growth starting at about 25 feet. I know it’s most desirable to use vigorous one year growth… but how important is that? What has been your experience grafting with older wood?
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I would rent or buy the ladder I needed to get to the more vigorous wood- or use a pole pruner. The wood growing in the shade has less stored energy and 2 year wood may have flower buds- although if it in the shaded portion of the tree it probably wouldn’t be able to accumulate enough energy to manufacture them. I’ve never tried old wood, but I have seen the difference between scionwood grown in full sun and fully vigorous and wood from the shade and the latter is a disadvantage as far as rapid establishment. If a graft doesn’t grow vigorously from the start it can often runt out entirely.
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I have an extendable pole pruner that I have used for scion gathering. Works great for reaching high places when you only need to make a few cuts.
I think it would be well worth the effort to get that wood from the top of the tree. Either by extendable pole pruner, ladder, or having your kids climb the tree and snip some limbs. Although older wood can be grafted the success rates are much lower and the amount of growth you will get may not be much.
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I’ll make it four-for-four!
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Not trying to go against the grain but if the best wood is 40’ in the air it can stay there. My rule is if some ok wood is down low and a great scion is on top of a 40’ tree I’m ok with ok. Maybe the Kansas wind is the difference. All you need are 1- 2 inches of stick so I would not break my neck to get it. If you have a pole saw or can easily get a saw do so but don’t make it more complicated than it is. The path of least resistance is the way to go when you don’t need to do otherwise. Maybe the best question to ask is how bad is that lower wood? These guys are absolutely right new pristine wood is better but trust me if it means walking 3 miles up hill carrying saws and through three muddy fields they would snip some branches that were ok and rely on their grafting skills like I would. If the tree is accessible from the road and ground is fairly flat well then I would make it 5 going for that wood on top. I’m saying i don’t know enough circumstances to say what i would do at this point.
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What has been your experience grafting with older wood?
Failure
Any chance you have a picture of the tree we might have a better idea?
I stop gathering when it requires climbing a ladder. This is when other scion wood is ok for me.
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Chris, I would get a shot gun and aim 3 feet below at the branch that to want to harvest the woods. I am sure you will get what you want and prune some of the top at the same time.
Tony
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I’m not quite so confident on a straight extension ladder when I’m going up 30’ or more to tie a rope to a tree I’m felling- glad I only have to do that a few times a year. but I like climbing my Little Giant type ladders, and would probably enjoy the well made tri-pod orchard ladders as well, if I could fit a tall one in my light PU truck. Which is a good thing because I’m on one most working hours of most days. If the wood is sound, I love climbing trees also. What I hate is pole saws- I can work on a ladder or off tree limbs all day long, but a pole saw wears me out in 15 minutes and slows the job down to a crawl, anyway.
Of course, 10 minutes is more than enough to get ample graft wood.
Clark, apple trees tend to cast more shade than pears so lower wood stores less energy. Also, in areas with full sun and lots of wind, sunlight is probably better distributed throughout the tree.
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Do you mean hand pole saws or those pole chainsaws, Alan?
Thank you for all of the responses!! Thats why this forum is great.
I thought that might be the consensus, I’ll take a buy a pole pruner and do the best I can.
I don’t know why you want this scionwood but I’ll assume that is an heirloom or special in some way like a pear tree at my mothers house that I grew up in.
This tree is old and dying and I wanted to save it. There was literally no vigorous growth.
I purposely pruned one side of it hard and forced it to sprout. It took a year of course.
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I want to graft it because I like the flavor of it, sweet, tart and aromatic,(my wife even thought it was a good apple, like many of us she humors my interest 
) they were still crunchy when I ate the last one in late Dec. I’m pretty sure it’s a seedling, there is an old homesite with a 7 apple orchard about a mile away from the tree, with other abandoned homesteads in the area.
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This has been posted before, but Steptoe Butte is about 20 miles away.
https://news.wsu.edu/2015/04/09/wsu-researchers-sleuth-resurrect-lost-apples-of-the-palouse/
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You might get permission to prune it. It might bring the vigor back and you would have scion in later years as well.
Just hand ones. The ones with “turbo” blades (the Japanese design) are the best. I have a very long one made by ARS, but I rarely use it. Nice tool though.
I’ve never used one of the power pole saws- my brother swears by his electric one- but he’s an amateur who never keeps his tools sharp!
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I asked a professional tree pruner why he didn’t use a power extension saw and he said they bring the wood down on top of you too easily. Very experienced (retired now) capable sawyer and pruner.
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please delete post