rootstock

[mutty042130]

hi i am thinking of having ago at grafting some apple and pear trees,does the rootstocks have to be a certain type of tree or can you use any tree? cheers

[mutty042130]

[Robert_Brenchley]

It certainly does, and particular clones are used to produce trees of different sizes. So if you want a full-sized apple tree you use M1, and if you want a very small bush you use M27, and so on. I'm not sure where you'd get these. I should have kept a note of what mine are on, as I have some trees which are growing as I want, and others that are doing nothing; I'm particularly dissatisfied with the pears.

[mutty042130]

thanks for the info mate if you rem what you used please could you let me know cheers

[Robert_Brenchley]

All the apples came on either MM106, which is the commonest, or M26. I think the latter is probably too dwarfing for my needs, but I can't remember for sure which is on which. The pears are on Quince A, which should produce a smallish tree rather than a bush, but they're not doing anything. I think the plums, which are a great success, are on St. Julien A, which should be a smallish tree, but the Cambridge Gage is growing at a rate of knots and looks set to become rather large. The Victoria is more sedate. I'm going to get more fruit; the allotment is going to become more of an orchard. It's 600 square yards, which is far more than I need for veg. Then I may well  replace some of what I already have if the trees haven't sorted themselves out over the next couple of years.

[mutty042130]

cheers for that robert can you rem where you got the rootstock and the price

[Robert_Brenchley]

I bought the trees attached to the rootstocks - the problem is going to be obtaining the rootstocks for your own efforts. I wouldn't know where to start. Theyall came from local sources. Next time I'm going to buy from a specialist.

[Palustris]

The difficulty with buying rootstocks for grafting for ones self is that the specialist nurseries which grow them normally only sell wholesale and orders are often a minimum of 1000 of any stock!
Now if you wanted to you could damage the root of an existing tree and if it then produced suckers, you could take off a rooted sucker and graft on to that. HOWEVER, the tree you damaged would then continue to produce suckers at that point so maybe the risk is a bit high. Might be interesting though. You would need a piece of the tree you wished to put on to your rootstock, but that is easy, any bit would give you the buds you needed.