I feel much better now I've started to do this years grafting.
Today I managed to graft all my cherry, plum and pear rootstock's.
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| Some of the completed grafts |
The cherries have been grafted with a few older varieties like "Van" and "morrollo" then some more modern ones like "Summers Sun" and "penny". I only did ten trees as the dwarfing rootstock's I wanted weer quite expensive. I plan to plant all of these, when they've left the nursery bed, in the orchard, quite close together so they can be netted easily.
The 15 pears were a good selection of what I could find locally, from the basic but lovely "Conference" to the more unusual "Court du Lame" (I've just googled this one and found nothing so maybe I've written it down wrong) and I also grafted a medlar on one as well.
The plum rootstock's were used for 4 different varieties of plum and also an apricot "Novi Sad" and nectarine "Lord Napier". These more warm climate fruit should give me a bit of a challenge in years to come (anyone have any luck with apricots over here or am I just dreaming?)!
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| I set myself up in the greenhouse just in case it rains... |
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| Turned out to be a good plan - shame I put the washing out to dry first thing! |
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| All the grafted trees waiting for their nursery bed to be dug over ready. |
For the grafts I used the whip and tongue graft (Have a look in my blog here, here and here for more information on grafting) but I must confess to using insulation tape to secure them together, as the ones I did with it last year seem to work just as well as the ones done using proper grafting tape and wax, I guess time will tell on that one.
So that's 40 grafts down just 100 apple tree grafts to go! Anyone else grafting this year?
This is going to sound really stupid, but where do you get your root stock?
ReplyDeleteGill
Not a stupid question at all, it took me a bit of time to find good suppliers. I got these wholesale from GB online but I've also bought them off ebayin the past and from Frank P mathews
Deletemy parents have 2 apricot trees they brought back from the south of France. They are trained against a red brick pure south facing wall. they have only had apricots once. and they live in Devon. I think it rains too much for them or something and they suffer terrible with leaf curl
ReplyDeleteThis varieity is meant to be leaf curl resistant but time will tell on that one! I'm planning on having these growing under glass as cordons when I put up my big greenhouse so hopefully it should make it a bit warmer for them and they might fruit. It's only a bit of an experiment so if they don't it's not the end of the world.
DeleteAre your long term plans to have a market garden to sell all the fruit you will have?
ReplyDeleteI might sell some by the side of the road but it's more so we have a large variety of fruit that we can store and use over the year. I also want to sell fruit trees in the future, so having a large number of different types gives me lots of choice of different types of trees to sell.
DeleteI need to learn this.... does it work out a lot cheaper?
ReplyDeleteI have a very successful apricot it does some years have leaf curl but it doesn't seem to affect the fruit. Mine is in a south facing bed and I live in north Notts. I inherited the tree with my house so I have no idea of the variety. It is really special to eat an apricot straight from the tree, the tree came into full blossom three weeks ago and we have missed the frosts, fingers crossed for this years crop.
ReplyDelete