I'm sorry but I have to ask.....if you knew the deer liked this tree so much, why didn't you graft a bunch years ago and plant it around your place for the deer? Seems odd to buy trees when you have the source in your backyard?
Fair question. Time and Material, let me explain. As owner of both a General Store and Orchard time is precious. In the past, I have topworked trees for a few orchards, having converted upper tiers from Liberty to the more profitable honeycrisp. I have done the same converting wild seedlings to some new disease resistant varieties. A fair number of varieties were done using grafting methods such as bench grafting, field grafting, and t-budding. Because I order and sell trees annually, it is much easier and
affordable to let the nurseries do the grafting for me. I simply and honestly just don't have the time to graft my own.
The Franklin was challenging to graft as budwood was just not available in size that could easily match up to a rootstock. The Franklin Cider tree is estimated to be over 60 years old, a prolific apple producer, and generates few water sprouts. Because the tree is healthy and wood hardened over the decades, it is stubborn to produce usable scion.
When Stark started to take an interest in the Franklin Cider they knew grafting material would be very limited, if not almost impossible to work with. It was the 40 years of
experience of Elmer Kidd, head production officer at Starks who "skeletonize" these very small thin scions which was the start of many trees to come:
(E-Mail from Elmer)
"Mr. Mayo - I wouldn’t book any orders at this point for 2017. We should have this conversation about August 15th.
Here’s the recap of where we are:
We took the scion wood you sent and utilized it two ways:
1. The large wood we skeletonized and scaffold-grafted five 3 year old trees in the orchard this spring. See attached pictures of developed growth. Grafts are growing fine, appears the growth habit of the crab is spiny. Twenty-three of the 25 grafts made it and are vigorously growing."
Stark brothers has since reported the Franklin to be one of the best growers at the nursery.