My big project for this spring has been to produce a Jubliee apple tree: A single tree with multiple kinds of apples on it. This month I finally got everything in place to start.
I bought a relatively inexpensive apple tree from a Home Depot. It is a red delicious tree, but I'm not really buying it for the apples (although those are my metamour's favorite apple). The important part is that the roots are from a dwarf tree, which means that no matter how old the tree gets, it'll only grow to about 12 feet tall. This is good for me, because I don't have space for a big tree and I don't want to produce a hundred bushels of apples every year.
Last weekend I planted the tree in a big hole and have been watering it. I also ordered "scion wood" from The Internet. Scion wood is the living wood of another apple tree that we then graft to the first tree to propagate the apples we do want.
The grafting is not too hard but it is dangerous. This was my best graft:
This is a "whip and tongue" graft. You make a diagonal cut through each piece you are grafting together, then cut backwards into the cut facet to split the wood lengthwise. You fit them together and end up with the zigzag shape above.
The knife you use should be very sharp and because you are cutting into the end of your scion, the knife is coming right toward your hand. I cut myself really bad one time and used pliers to hold the wood for every cut after that.
It's also important to line the bark up on one side. The only part of the branch that's actively growing is just below the bark, and we need those sections to join together so the new branch can live.
Once the two grafted pieces are connected, we tape the graft using waterproof tape
This provides structure and support to our new branch while it grows into the old one. This is grafting tape, and it stretches, which will keep it from putting too much pressure on the joint once the branches grow thicker this summer.
And that's it! As you can see from the tree up top, I've tagged all the different apple varieties. There are 6 that I added, plus the native Red Delicious, so 7 in total. We should know in about a month if the grafts took. Exciting!