I have just watched an item on Food Unpacked on Channel 4 when an apple enthusiast had a large apple tree in his garden with 250 different varieties of apple grafted on it. That really is a labour of love!
It caused me to ponder that very rarely do we see different grafted varieties of fruit trees available to the consumer and I wondered why, with smaller gardens now becoming the norm why they are not more popular, if for example you have only room for one fruit tree in your garden and perhaps wanted to grow both an eating apple and a cooking apple like a Bramley.
I suppose grafting trees is a longer term expensive business. is it possible to graft and grow two different fruits on one rootstock, e.g an Cox apple and a Victoria plum?
Grafting
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Primrose wrote: is it possible to graft and grow two different fruits on one rootstock, e.g an Cox apple and a Victoria plum?
Yes and no...the plants being grafted have to all be comptatible, so a plum and and apple are no go... but a plum and another stoned fruit (cherry, peach ect) might work... The other thing to consider is the viability of the rootstock. No point grafting together lots of plants if the roots cant handle the load
Grafting a tree onto dwarf root stock is very popular, just about every garden center i've ever been too only sells trees grafted onto known rootstock... However, grafting more than one type isnt. The problem is, its a really hit and miss job. I've personally grafted red/white/black currents together many times, and it always weakens the plant, so if done at the wrong time, or the weather just turns wrong, it can easily kill them off
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Geoff
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You can often buy so called Family Apple trees with often three varieties grafted together. The problem I believe is balance, all varieties have different vigour so one tends to take over.
Geoff wrote:You can often buy so called Family Apple trees with often three varieties grafted together. The problem I believe is balance, all varieties have different vigour so one tends to take over.
And family cherry trees... Mine died last year when one variaty had grown bigger than the other 2, and during a storm, the imbalance caused it to twist and split the trunk... The insurance blamed it on bad pruning
Once the game is over the king and the pawn go back in the same box. Anonymous
Exploring is like walking, where the walking decides where we're going. Bob the dinosaur from dinopaws
Exploring is like walking, where the walking decides where we're going. Bob the dinosaur from dinopaws
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PLUMPUDDING
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I've had several fruit trees from Deacons which they call family trees and have three or four different apple varieties on one root stock. They also sell what they call a Jenny tree which they have grafted three or four apple varieties one on top of the other.
They do save space and are compatible polination partners, but sometimes you find that one is more vigorous than the others and tries to take over. I think they do the same with pears and other compatible fruits. Another problem can be that the graft can be an access point for canker.
My own attempts at grafting have been failures the only one that looked as though it had succeeded broke off when a bird landed on it. Maddeningly, my son who was 9 at the time had been watching my efforts and copied me and successfully grafted an apple twig onto the side of the same tree. He hadn't told me and owned up when I commented on the oddly placed new shoot the following year.
They do save space and are compatible polination partners, but sometimes you find that one is more vigorous than the others and tries to take over. I think they do the same with pears and other compatible fruits. Another problem can be that the graft can be an access point for canker.
My own attempts at grafting have been failures the only one that looked as though it had succeeded broke off when a bird landed on it. Maddeningly, my son who was 9 at the time had been watching my efforts and copied me and successfully grafted an apple twig onto the side of the same tree. He hadn't told me and owned up when I commented on the oddly placed new shoot the following year.
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Primrose
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Obviously not as simple in practice as it sounds then.
The bloke who experimented with the "partridge in a pear tree" had obviously not been paying attention in biology classes
Went to an interesting talk on the nomenclature and naming of plant & animal species the other day. I'd often wondered whether it would be possible for a human being and a chimpanzee to mate. Apparently some species can mate, i.e. you can mate a horse with a donkey and produce a mule, but the by product of that mating will not be fertile and be able to reproduce.
I suppose species grafted on rootstock work roughly on similar lines in not being able to continue reproduction in an efficient manner because the genetic differences are too great .
The bloke who experimented with the "partridge in a pear tree" had obviously not been paying attention in biology classes
Went to an interesting talk on the nomenclature and naming of plant & animal species the other day. I'd often wondered whether it would be possible for a human being and a chimpanzee to mate. Apparently some species can mate, i.e. you can mate a horse with a donkey and produce a mule, but the by product of that mating will not be fertile and be able to reproduce.
I suppose species grafted on rootstock work roughly on similar lines in not being able to continue reproduction in an efficient manner because the genetic differences are too great .