Apple Rootstock Grown From Seed

Collecting Scionwood for Grafting

Apple Blossoms Grafting a Scion on to a Cloned M111 Rootstock

by

Kevin Hauser Kuffel Creek Apple Nursery

Riverside, Southern California, USA www.kuffelcreek.com
2010 Kuffel Creek Press

Apples do not reproduce true to seed, as it has two parents. Just like each of your children is different, each apple seed is different, and most make bad-tasting apples. An apple grown from a seed usually has a bad taste or no taste! To make an apple tree like the one that gave the good tasting apple, you have to CLONE it by grafting. This has been done since Biblical times. An apple tree is made of two parts, the ROOTSTOCK (roots) and SCION (top part that bears fruit). For many years apples were grown on roots grown from seed; it makes a big tree that can live for hundreds of years in a cold climate. But for the tree to live in a tropic climate, the leaves must be stripped by hand each year. Without this, the tree will die as it cannot live outside of cultivation. Cloned rootstocks have been used since ancient times because of certain properties they may have, such as resistance to insects and disease, or making a smaller tree. The cloned rootstock we supply is M111 EMLA and is a vigorous grower. It tolerates wet ground and drought, is resistant to wooly aphid, and bears apples much sooner in its lifetime than a seedling-rootstock tree. We will show you how to propagate more of both kinds of rootstocks and graft new trees.

You can sprout apple seeds to make ROOTS for grafting a good variety on it (p. 13). An apple tree on roots grown from seed can live through drought and does well in wet heavy clay, sand, and soil that has been worn-out or washed of nutrients. But it will not get nearly this big in a tropical climate, and depending on the variety of apple, it can take 4-10 years to start bearing fruit.

Named rootstocks such as M111 have been chosen because they can have resistance to some insects and disease. They must be propagated by cloning.

How to Propagate Clonal Rootstock

Let it grow for a season

Plant a clonal rootstock like M111 EMLA, spaced 1/2 meter apart in rows 1.5 meters apart.

Cut the tree off at the ground

The next season the roots will start to grow a lot of branches, resembling a bush.

Branches

New roots

Sawdust Rootstock

Pile sawdust around the branches as they grow. They will send roots into the sawdust.

At the end of the season, pull back the sawdust and cut the branches off.

Photo of the branches growing up through the sawdust. This way of propagating new rootstocks is called a stool bed. Large farms will have rows of them like corn. This can also be done in pots with an upside down pot on top with the bottom cut out to hold the sawdust.

Photo showing the roots on the branches after the sawdust has been pulled away. Cut the branches off the roots and start over again. The branches become the rootstock of your new trees. A stoolbed can be productive for 10-12 years.

CHOOSING SCIONWOOD The best scionwood comes from the current seasons growth which will be on the tips of the branches. You can tell this seasons growth from last years because there is an annular ring separating them. Last seasons growth will also often have small branches or spurs (fruiting buds) coming off of them. The best place to store scionwood until you need it is on the tree; that is, you dont cut it until you need it. But you can cut it and wrap it in damp newspaper and put it in a closed plastic bag in a refrigerator. It will keep this way for about 6-8 weeks, sometimes even longer. Once the scionwood buds start to sprout in storage, they can no longer be used for grafting and should be thrown out. However, it is OK to graft onto rootstocks that have begun to sprout. NO Do not store scionwood or young trees in the same refrigerator with apples. As they ripen, apples give off ethylene gas that causes scionwood to sprout prematurely and can kill young trees. YES NO YES Annular Ring

Annular Rings NO

YES

Spurs

YES

Grafting Vice This simple wooden vice holds the rootstock in padded leather jaws while grafting to protect your hands from cuts, and makes large jobs go quicker. There are special knives for grafting, but a utility knife has strong, thin blades that are replaceable. The wire loop on top goes down to a stirrup you hold with your foot.

Cleft Graft usually done after you strip the leaves off the tree at the end of the season.

2 buds

Make a cut about 3 cm down the middle of the rootstock you want to graft it onto. Cut a piece of the tree you want to copy (scion, pronounced sigh-on) from the end of a branch that grew that year. Handling is easier if it has at least 2 buds, but really only one bud is needed. The bud is where the new tree will grow from. The rootstock is being held in a vice to protect my hands from the sharp knife.

Trim the tip off

Push the scion into the split in the rootstock so that it makes a tight fit. If there is a gap on either side of the scion, cut it again. It should stay firmly in place even before you wrap it with tape.

Cut the end of your scion to it makes a point. The bark side should be wider than the wood side so that the dead wood doesnt keep the scion cambium from touching the rootstock cambium.

Close-up views of how the graft should fit

A gap at the bottom end is OK, even a big one.

There should be no gaps or space along each side; it should fit tight.

Cambium layers line up on one side only

Do not worry about this side.

End-View

This part of the branch and scion (cambium) should touch each other

Cambiums line up; this is where the tree will grow from

The wood in the middle will not grow together The inner bark should touch very tight. This is why you make the wood side smaller so that it will not keep the cambium from touching. The inner bark is the part of the tree that grows, and it needs to touch between rootstock and scion for the graft to take.

This part doesnt matter, as they will never grow together

Only one side has to line up. Make sure the inner bark (cambium) is touching. The middle (dead) wood does not have to touch and will never grow together. If you cut the tree down years from now there will still be a gap there.

Wrap the graft tightly with clear plastic tape. Tape over the top end of the rootstock too, but do not wrap the scion with the plastic tape. You can see how my foot controls the stirrup and wires that pull the vice tight to hold the rootstock.

The scion will get wrapped with a wax tape called Parafilm. It will keep the scion from drying out until the tree grows. You can stretch the Parafilm to make it thinner and it will stick to itself when wrapping the scion. Keep the Parafilm tape in a cool place or it will melt to itself on the roll and be ruined.

Wrap the scion with the Parafilm, making sure you go over the end of the scion. Making the cambium layers touch, using Parafilm tape on the scion, and making sure the tree gets water after you plant it will give you almost 100% success on your grafts. The bud will grow right through several layers of the Parafilm tape on the scion. There is no need to remove the wax Parafilm tape from the scion like you do the plastic tape on the graft itself.

You now have a baby tree called a benchgraft. Put a label on it saying what kind of tree it is and what rootstock it has.

Keep the benchgrafts damp until you plant them, and plant as soon as you can. See the Kuffel Creek pamphlet Growing Apples in the Tropics for planting and culture directions. You can download the .pdf version of this at
http://www.kuffelcreek.com/GrowingApples/GrowingApplesTropics.pdf

After the tree grows and the plastic tape starts to get tight, make sure to cut and remove the plastic tape from the graft before it chokes it. For the same reason put the label on the support stick, not the tree.

Bud Grafting is usually done 4-5 months into the season when the trees are growing vigorously.
It is recommended if the scion gets broken off a rootstock or if the graft is not successful. You can also grow the rootstock for a year and then bud graft on to it this way the next year.

Budwood

The trunk of the tree to receive the graft (rootstock) should be at least 1 cm thick and growing quickly.

Cut the tip off a branch from the variety of apple you want the tree to be. It should be about 4 months old and be this seasons growth.

A cutting like this is called budwood because it contains the buds that you will graft. Cut the leaves off leaving the stems to act as handles. This part of the leaf is called the petiole (pronounced pet-ee-ol, which means little foot).

Petiole attached to the bud

The bud is hidden under the petiole

Cut under a bud about half way through the branch. At the bottom of this cut, make a second cut only through the bark and not the wood (red dotted line).

Carefully pull the bark with the bud off the wood underneath, and hold it by the petiole. You must work quickly now before it dries out.

Make a T-shaped cut through the bark of the rootstock tree near the bottom. Carefully peel the bark back and insert the bud under the bark. If the tree is growing vigorously, the bark is easy to peel.

Make sure the bark will close around the bud and that none of the bud is sticking out of the bark except the petiole.

Tape the bud with plastic tape, going around the petiole. If the graft is successful, the petiole should dry up and fall off. Cut the tape after two weeks. The bud may start growing, or it may just do nothing until the next season.

Rootstock

Bud Cut

As the bud grows, train it to grow up straight. At the end of the season, cut the rootstock tree off just above the bud sprout. Some times you have to cut the rootstock tree off before the bud will start to grow.

Here the rootstock tree has been cut above the bud to make it grow, and its just starting to sprout. Take off any sprouts that dont come from the bud you grafted.

Photo: Cameron Nursery

The rootstock and the scion will keep their same color and texture their whole lives, and will never blend together; but they will form a strong union that will hold a load of fruit in a heavy wind.

These trees are pruned especially for giving lots of budwood for bud grafting. They do not bear fruit, but will sprout hundreds of branches that are cut off for grafting the thousands of trees the nursery grafts each year.

Large-scale Rootstock Production

Some farms grow only rootstocks for apples. Instead of planting the rootstock trees vertically, they lay them down horizontally and grow them sideways. As the branches grow up the bottoms are covered with sawdust, and they will form roots. In the fall, the sawdust is pulled back and the branches cut off, which form the roots for new trees. This is how to do it:

Twine

Rootstocks

One-year-old rootstock trees are planted at an angle, and then the tops tied down with twine so the lay flat. You can plant them very close together, as it is good to crowd them.

The branches will grow up off the trunks like little trees. As the branches sprout up, layer sawdust on the base of them and the branches will root into the sawdust.

At the end of the season, pull the sawdust back and cut the rooted branches off. Cut off any little side branches (called spines), and trim to length. The bundles on the left are untrimmed, and the bundles on the right have been trimmed, graded as to caliper, and labeled.

Photo credits; top and right, William C. Johnson, USDA/Cornell Rootstock Breeding Program. Left photo, Cameron Nursery Balance: Kevin Hauser

Plant only the big, fat seeds and throw out the thin ones.

Growing Apple Rootstocks from Seeds

Wash the seeds and remove any bits of apple before planting

Apple trees grafted onto cloned rootstocks like M111 are best, but you can also grow a rootstock from seed. It will take longer to bear, but they are easy to grow and are free.

Since apples come from a cold climate, the seeds need a 45 to 90 day period of cold to sprout. In a cold climate this keeps them from growing too early in the spring, which would kill them.

Put the seeds in a tin with damp sand, and seal it inside a plastic bag. Write the date on it, and it must be placed in a cold refrigerator for at least 45-60 days or more.

Start checking the seeds after 45 days. When a little root starts to come out of the seeds, they are ready to be planted. These seedlings trees are about a week old (they will grow very fast). Scion Graft

Piece of a seedling root The seeds can be planted close together in a row like corn. When they are 5 months old, the Large roots from seedlings can also be cut into seedling trees can be bud grafted. Dig them up several pieces, and each piece grafted onto with a and plant in the orchard the next season as cleft graft (called piece-rooting). Plant it deep so Sleeping Eyes (see p. 11). only the scion pokes out of the soil and water it well.

The Wonder of Grafting

Grafting is actually quite simple to do, and apples take to grafting very easily. But the physiological processes that take place within the tree are anything but simple, and scientists still dont fully understand how it works. All thats required to grow a tree of a certain variety is a single bud from the tree, either snipped off as part of the branch, or sliced off the branch entirely. This bud contains all the genetic information necessary to grow a tree of that variety, but it needs to be joined onto a host tree that provides nutrients and anchorage. It remains genetically identical to the parent tree, and can be thought of as the same tree, just growing somewhere else. The host tree is called the rootstock, as only the roots are utilized. The joining of these two distinct and separate entities is called grafting, practiced since biblical times. The graft is made with an un-sterile knife, the cut pieces line up imperfectly and have gaps and dirt between them and are crudely taped together. Yet the spark of life jumps between the rootstock and the scion and they begin to knit themselves together almost immediately. A callus forms between the two and water and nutrients flow from the rootstock to the scion. As the scion sprouts leaves it starts to send energy back to the roots. Both rootstock and scion keep their individual identities including color and texture, yet they fuse into a union so strong that it resists the loads of high winds and heavy crop loads. I cant even begin to explain how this works, and can only say that it is the finger of God, as otherwise there would be no way to propagate quality fruit and we would starve. A good apple variety would only last as long as the tree lived, and then wed have to start searching through tens of thousands of seedling trees before finding another good one. With grafting a good variety can be perpetuated through generations, and the apples we enjoy now have been selected through the centuries from all over the world and from among billions of apple trees. This testifies to the loving and creative nature of God and is borne out before out eyes each season. Do not forget to thank Him for it and be awed by His wondrous works.