Fruit Trees - Making your own root-stock, doing your own grafting

I have resisted trimming the branches that grow off the base of my fruit trees, the root stock.

On one plum tree, it has about a dozen stalks - the main stem of the grafted plum tree, and all the suckers that grew out of the root stock.

Since I have medium experience cloning, and a little experience grafting, I was thinking it might make sense to do a "Roll Your Own" thing.


Take the suckers that grew off the root stock, cut them & root them.

Then, once they're rooted, use good old Duct Tape etc. to attach a cutting from the top part.

Is that much different from what the 'professional' nurseries are doing ?


Anybody ever try rolling your own grafted fruit trees ?

It depends. Often times the root stock is different than the canopy stock. Your Plum probably has a wild plum rootstock.

From the internet:

"Grafting involves taking a scion or bud chip cut from the desired parent tree (for example, a Granny Smith apple tree) and physically placing it onto a compatible rootstock. The variety and the rootstock are calloused, or grown together, as the tree heals. All suckers are removed from the rootstock, and the Granny Smith scion is allowed to grow into the new tree, thus maintaining its Granny Smith identity. This process is called “asexual reproduction”. Since only one parent/variety is involved in this process, the grafted tree will be true-to-name — and a true-to-name tree bears true-to-name fruit.

Trees are either propagated through grafting — by joining a scion and rootstock together — or through budding. Budding involves placing a single vegetative bud into the side of the rootstock and wrapping it with cellophane tape until it heals together. The results of grafting and budding are the same: a true-to-name tree."

Usually nurseries will ‘stool’ a rootstock mother plant for propagation. Basically you top it (severely) to encourage lots of basal shoots, then mound soil up around the shoots so that they will form roots. The rooted shoots are then dug and separated to use as new rootstocks.

The catch with doing this on your tree is that mounding soil around the trunk of the main tree is undesirable / potentially harmful to the tree.

You might try air layering to develop several new rootstocks from those shoots. Cuttings are much more difficult - hence the popularity of grafting in the hardwood fruits!

If your wanting to graft/bud your stalks from your plum trees, over winter cut these off and put them into cold storage until spring these are called your maidens. when the weather warms up slightly and the root stock is growing then graft/bud your maidens onto the rootstock.

you want your maidens to be dormant still when grafting/budding to your rootstock where as you want your rootstock to be just starting to grow. this way you will have a much bigger success rate.

also use wax rather than tape

i mis read this I've never tried making my own rootstock

zif said:

Usually nurseries will ‘stool’ a rootstock mother plant for propagation. Basically you top it (severely) to encourage lots of basal shoots, then mound soil up around the shoots so that they will form roots. The rooted shoots are then dug and separated to use as new rootstocks.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I did with the fig tree, and I'm working on Fig Tree #3 now.

Fig Tree #2 went to the neighbor who shares his pot.

Might be easier just to take cuttings from the top part & root those.


Out of 30 fruit trees, only 4 or 5 had fruit.

I thought because I had a mixture of apples, and a mixture of pears, that it would work itself out.

But it's a little more complicated !

http://www.amherstnurseries.com/FruitTreePollinatorsChart-id-51.html

I think I'm going to plant some seeds from organic fruit & let those be the pollinators.

St. Phatty said:

That's exactly what I did with the fig tree, and I'm working on Fig Tree #3 now.

Fig Tree #2 went to the neighbor who shares his pot.

Might be easier just to take cuttings from the top part & root those.


Out of 30 fruit trees, only 4 or 5 had fruit.

I thought because I had a mixture of apples, and a mixture of pears, that it would work itself out.

But it's a little more complicated !

https://www.amherstnurseries.com/FruitTreePollinatorsChart-id-51.html

I think I'm going to plant some seeds from organic fruit & let those be the pollinators.

Click to expand...

Non self pollinating figs can be a real hassle.. I air layer my productive ones and axe the fussy.