181 Franklin Farm Lane, Chambersburg, PA 17202
Telephone: 717-263-9226
Cloning Apple Trees
We
occasionally receive calls or visits to the Extension Office from gardeners, or
homeowners, who want to know how to get an apple seed to germinate. Or, they
want to know what kind of apple it is that is growing on their property. Often, the gardener is trying to reproduce an
old apple tree that was special for some reason (good quality fruit, planted by
grandparents, etc.) Unfortunately, apples grown from seed will not be like the
parent.
Only
about 1 in every 80,000 apple trees grown from seed will be as good as the
apples we are used to eating. Granny Smith apples, for example, are grown from cloned
scion wood that came originally from a single specimen, a chance seedling that
grew out of a rubbish pile by Anna Marie Smith's kitchen window in New South
Wales, Australia. So, most apple trees grown from seed will result in a tree
that has small and inferior quality fruit. If you want a tree exactly like the
parent, you must propagate that tree vegetative.
In
the case of apples, this usually means grafting. Apple trees are actually quite
easy to graft, even for beginners. Don't be afraid to try this even if you
haven't done it before. The step that needs to be done at this time of year is
the choosing and cutting of scion wood or small branches that will be grafted
on top of a rootstock.
If
you are planning on doing any grafting this spring, now would be a good time to
collect scion wood. Following are tips on how to choose and prepare them.
-
Scions
should be cut from one-year-old wood.
-
Buds
should be prominent and widely spaced. Water sprouts work well for this. Water sprouts
are twigs that grow straight up from a major branch.
-
Inner
bark should be light green and the wood creamy white.
-
Best
scions have more wood than pith; small diameter wood often has wide pith.
-
Older
bearing trees produce poor scions unless pruned heavily. The best scions are
toward the top of the tree. You may need a pole pruner even for small trees.
-
Cut
the shoot into 6-8 inch pieces having at least 3 buds per stick.
-
The
best scion is often the basal (bottom) piece.
-
Always
discard the terminal (the end piece).
-
Store
in the refrigerator in a plastic bag with moist paper towels.
Fruit
trees are normally grafted (or budded) onto specially selected rootstocks.
These rootstocks usually are selected to manage tree size. For example, a tree
that normally would get 25 feet tall will only reach 10 feet if it is grown on
a certain rootstock. Dwarfing rootstocks also allow apples to bear fruit a year
or more earlier.
Note
that dwarf rootstock reduces tree size, not fruit size. Therefore, a Golden
Delicious tree that only reaches 8 feet tall due to a dwarfing rootstock, will
bear the same size fruit as a Golden Delicious tree that is 25 feet tall.
Most
nurseries only sell trees that are already grafted. A company that does sell
rootstocks is Raintree Nursery, Morton, WA, (360) 496-6400. Another is Cummins Nursery, (865) 233-3539. It is also possible to buy a tree from a
local nursery and graft your clone into it. One disadvantage of this method is
that it is possible to prune off the special clone instead of the cultivar
branches by mistake.
The
details of grafting or budding and subsequent care of the grafted tree can be
found at these excellent publications by Missouri Extension:
No comments:
Post a Comment