For many hobby gardeners, it is an extremely exciting experiment to grow a young apple seedling from a core yourself. If this has been well cared for for a few years, it can be grafted with a proven apple variety.

A suitable base for the graft

In professional horticulture, special rootstocks are mostly used for grafting apple trees. Growth documents such as M9 or M11 offer precisely calculable root and trunk growth and thus a stable and vital substructure for a healthy tree crown. You can purchase such rootstocks for your experiments in your own garden from specialist fruit tree shops. In most cases, however, self-grown seedlings also provide satisfactory results. It is important for the approximately five-year-old seedlings that they have a straight trunk with healthy main branches.

The actual grafting process

You should cut the scions of the desired grafting variety between the beginning of December and the end of January, when the tree has the most pronounced sap dormancy. These are kept cool and moist until around March or April, when climatic conditions are optimal for grafting. For storage, you can put the buds in damp sand, for example, or - if available - keep them in a rock cellar. The buds must neither dry out nor get too wet.

For the grafting you should have the following things ready:

  • the planned root document
  • several well-stored scions at least 10 centimeters long
  • a sharp and clean knife and plant shears
  • some pieces of bast
  • Wound wax for wound sealing

To connect the scion with the cambric layer of the tree, the planned branch and scion are cut diagonally in opposite directions. Then both are pressed together and fixed with bast and wound wax. Depending on the weather, you should make sure that no rainwater gets between the two halves.

Important advice for grafting

While five or six main branches can be grafted on a tree at the same time, the central trunk should not be cut off. During the first phase, this serves as a valve into which the tree can drain excess energy. This is the only way for the scions to have enough time to connect with the tree's sap system. In addition, the so-called juice scale should be observed by grafting all branches at about the same height.

tips and tricks

For beginners, the exact technique of grafting is not always easy to understand. Since a hundred percent success rate cannot be guaranteed even with professionals, several apple trees should be grafted at the same time for reasons of motivation.

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Trees