Just went to Honey crisp apple picking last weekend. I am really impressed by those M9 trees. I am planning for my first apple tree. Would you get one of these?
Thank you
to be honest, apple grafting is incredibly easy. I would buy an apple you like (and, ideally, disease-resistant) from anywhere that sells nice trees, then put on the branches of your own choosing…for example you might buy a honeycrisp, train and prune it for 4-8 primary branches, and then give it a branch of Golden Russet, one of Chestnut Crab, and one of Arkansas Black.
I don’t have an issue with store-grafted trees, but I’ve never seen any that had all varieties I wanted, and the cheap in me finds it more interesting and cost-effective to do it myself (lots of places sell 3-in-1 or 4-in-1 trees for almost twice the price because of the additional labor…)
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also note M9s need staking…
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I agree with markalbob, grafting is easy and what a great feeling of accomplishment when your graft takes off for you. A bonus too, you get what you want and get to make friends with some of the incredible people on the forum. Enjoy!
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I have several multigraft trees that I bought the first year I planted my orchard. I thought it would be a quick way for me to have a lot of varieties with slightly more expense over a conventional tree. They’ve somewhat worked out but you can get handicapped by the quality of the nurseries graft. They may not always choose the ideal scaffold locations. My combo apple should have been an espalier because the 4 varieties were all in the same plane. After that I picked up grafting very easily and my favorite tree I have is a really well formed plum tree I purchased this spring from a local farm coop that had great form. I grafted over 10 different varieties of Asian plum, euro plum, pluot, apricot, aprium, and even nectarine to it. Of course it didn’t bear any fruit this year but I’m hoping for a few pieces next year. Should be a really interesting bloom.
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Sounds like you have a Frakenplum tree! So, you can graft any stone fruit onto a tree and it will take and later produce? What about combining a pear and apple onto the same tree? Would that work, considering they’re similar fruit?
How big are typical grafting scions, and how soon would you be able to get fruit off of it? Guess I should read up on grafting, but it does sound intriguing.
Also, unless you get confirmation that the “semi-dwarf” you are ordering from Stark Bro’s is actually an M9 root, you could be getting something very different in size and habit. I suspect they call M111 standard, but probably call M7 semi-dwarf. This is everyone here’s biggest gripe about Stark Bro’s, they don’t specify rootstock, but just general size class. M7 is a significantly bigger tree than M9.
Others might chime in, but Honeycrisp is a variety that can benefit from a more vigorous rootstock. Cummins Nursery out of NY has some Honeycrisp on G.935 roots, which would be close to a big M9, and probably as productive or more productive.
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I call it the Frankenstone tree! lol
Yes for the most part but peaches and nectarines are normally not compatible on plum. My necatarine graft is still looking fine but not sure it will make it long term. You can go backward though and graft plum to nectarine without as many problems.
No apples and pears are not compatible but there are some cases of people having success using “Winter Banana” apple as an interstem. I think there are a few people here on this board that have pear growing on apple via interstem.
Most people send scions sticks that are 6 inches long with about 5 buds on them. But if scions are in short supply you can get away with a 2 inch piece of wood with 1 or 2 buds on it. Some people have gone the opposite direction and grafted 18" long scions. Average would be about 6 I’d say.