Many amateur gardeners would like to preserve old varieties of apple trees from relatives' or neighbors' gardens. However, this requires a specific approach and a specific technique for the apple tree.

Moss and cuttings are of no importance for apple trees

Many garden plants can be propagated from cuttings and cuttings cut at specific times. Mossing with the stimulation of root growth in a moist environment is another technique for creating plant cuttings. In the case of the apple tree, these techniques are theoretically possible for a genetically identical copy, but they are of no economic importance. That is why grafting is usually necessary for the propagation of proven apple varieties, in which a scion is copulated with a suitable rootstock.

Reasons for copulating apple trees

If seedlings are grown from the core of an apple tree, these offspring only have about half of the genome of the tree from which the apples were harvested. Since the pollen of another apple variety is needed to fertilize the apple blossom in the self-sterile apple trees, an identical copy of an apple tree can never be produced via seedlings. This goal can only be achieved by copulating scions from the trusted and selected apple tree onto a suitable growing base such as the following:

  • the widespread M9
  • the commercially used MM11
  • Seedling rootstocks obtained from seeds

The right time for refinement

The best time for harvesting scions for copulation is December and January when the weather is mild. These are cut from this year's twigs about the thickness of a thumb and driven into a shady place until about March. Then, just before they sprout, they are applied to the substrate with a slanting cut in the form of counter-tongues and fixed with wound sealant and natural bast. The success of the copulation can be seen after about three to four weeks when the scion has sprout on its root.

tips and tricks

Since seedlings grown from cores are difficult to predict in terms of their growth rate, they also represent an element of uncertainty when used as a tree rootstock. The commercially produced rootstock M9, on the other hand, meets requirements such as weak height growth and good root development.

Category:

Trees