Unhealthy forest apple tree has no viable scion?

Benja

5 year old buck +
Late last fall I discovered that one of the wild apple trees on my home property was dropping apples of an outstanding quality. This tree is a true forest apple - 20' straight, tall, 6" dbh, and a small crown of branches at the top - growing 20 yards inside the forest. In the past two years I have removed several dying ash trees nearby, releasing it a little bit. I hope this tree will begin to flourish now.

This week I went to take scion wood for grafting and noticed a problem. It looks to me like the past year's growth was seldom more than 2". On nearly all branch tips I can see 3 distinct growth rings within 6" of the tip, which I believe correspond to 3 years of new growth. Occasionally I have found a 6" long, toothpick-diameter branch tip that appears to be last year's growth, but that is smaller than I have ever grafted. I believe that scion wood should be least years growth, right?

I'm hesitant to do any major pruning to this tree until I have grafted it's scion to other, healthier trees.

I know that it's hard to see the details in a small internet photo, but I've crudely marked up a photo to correspond with what I can see in real life and in three dimensions. In this photo the orange arrows point to growth rings and the blue bracket shows a section of tightly stacked rings (?) that is common on most branch tips. The length of this branch is 6" from terminal bud to the first crotch.
A few questions :
- how can I encourage this tree to produce enough growth to collect scion?
- is it possible to graft 3-year old scion if the branch has grown so little and is still less than pencil diameter?
- is there another method that I'm overlooking? I'm a beginner at grafting and have a success rate of less than 50%... so far I've only tried cleft grafts.
- what causes those stacks of rings in the blue brackets?

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First, there are others on here with way more experience with apples than me.

To stimulate good scion growth on old tree prune it back some and it should throw new shoots this year.
Your branch looks like it may have a little fungus on it.
I think you can graft older scion twigs but it is harder to get them to take and sometimes growth is much slower.
The whip&tongue graft is pretty easy and simple to do, lots of good YouTube vids on it.

Again you will probably get better answers to your questions from guys that have been at it a long time.
 
Yep, get more sunlight to it and prune. Although if it’s straight up without not a lot of branches this could be somewhat difficult. I would cut everything around it and see how it responds.
 
Stub cut a limb this winter and it will send up water sprouts during the growing season
 
Some unpruned apple trees can get "spur bound" like this. Each year there is only a short amount of new growth at the tip. Not real healthy or productive but it's just surviving and waiting to be pruned somehow (by you, by fireblight, ice storm, falling trees, etc.). If you can prune the tips of the high stuff back 3-6", the tree should respond to it this year and the pruning gives you more scionwood to graft with now. You won't kill the tree; it has been waiting for this. With more light on the trunk, I'd expect you'll get some buds to push more growth lower on the tree.

Grafting is best with last year's wood but go ahead and graft whatever scion you get and see what takes. I've done enough grafting with tiny twigs between a 1/16" to 1/8" to say it isn't hopeless. It's hard to keep the scionwood viable until you graft but if the cambium is still green when you graft, put two pieces per graft, Use one on each side of a whip and tongue graft. Wrap it tight and seal with wax. You could try doing a bark graft if doing it in the field and the rootstock has woken up enough to get the bark peel back but you have to store the scion longer vs a bench graft.
 
The fungus mentioned above just looks like lichen to me. Should not be a problem because lichen feeds on dead bark unless lichen gets very think and holds moisture next to the bark which may cause problems, but generally not.
Suggestions mentioned above are correct: to encourage new growth (for scion grafting) cut a branch back. New growth will be encouraged. Also, to maximize growth fertilize the tree (with 1 cup 12-12-12 fertilizer per inch diameter of truck) at the drip edge. The tree has next to no new growth because the tree is mature, full height, and putting all its energy into fruit spurs. You can also remove long fruiting spurs, as shown in your picture, to encourage younger, healthier fruit and vegetative spurs. A spur typically grows a fruit bud one year and a vegetative bud the next.

I wouldn't bother trying to graft 2 or 3 year old wood unless you are despirate to save a dying tree by grafting it to another. It usually fails. You could try bud grafting this year if you can't find a viable scion.
 
I second what chickenlittle wrote... do that and you will have scion for next year.
Im wondering how high up you looked/took scion from. I have been frustrated with some wild trees I discovered too that were locked in a mess of other trees and all but choked out with the same lack of scion/new growth. Look to the top of the tree -- way high, often that is the only spot that gets enough light. You may find some marginally better scion - even if its just a twig or two. I have climbed up the center of trees and used my longest pole pruner - stretching to pluck viable scion where the rest of the tree had none. Then really look the trunk/center of the tree over for any overlooked water sprouts - choked out trees often have some - most of the time you'll cry because its from two years prior but stressed trees will send shoots if they get the chance.
Your not out anything - by grafting what you have, even if you just try to graft onto some branches off of an existing tree to harvest as scion next year- I have banked scion before on limbs. You can better match the very small diameters that way.
 
Thanks for the replies and suggestions. That gives me a good plan and a bit of courage to just start by making a few wise pruning cuts. I will cut off a "lower limb" (8' up) that was broken by a falling ash tree. I looked for scion up to about 3/4 of the tree height, but not at the very top. I'll try to look higher in the tree. The dripline barely covers a 10' circle, so fertilizing that will be simple. I should also clear some small brush that's encroaching on the one side.

In the process of reclaiming this property I've done all of this with a few other old, wild apples. Their fruits were unexceptional, so I'm slowly turning each one into an orchard-on-a-trunk by grafting in scion from various named varieties. I'm hesitating on this new tree because its fruit is special. It really tastes like a store bought apple - crisp, juicy, tangy, and sweet. It's the only one of the 40 wild apples that tastes extraordinary in this way, so I intend to take it slow.
 
Hope you succeed in your attempt to bring the old tree back to life and maybe some day offer scion from it .........….hint, hint. :emoji_grin::emoji_grin:
 
Hope you succeed in your attempt to bring the old tree back to life and maybe some day offer scion from it .........….hint, hint. :emoji_grin::emoji_grin:
You bet! That's the plan if it's as good as I thought it was. I will taste test it against other varieties next harvest.
 
As Cavey said above concerning water sprouts - you can even cut the old water sprouts back to the parent limb or trunk. With enough sunlight and some fertilizer, you should get new water sprouts where you trimmed the old ones back. I've done that with some old trees near camp and it works.

Just opening up the surrounding area, especially on the east and south sides, you'll get a flush of new growth on the tree. We did exactly that to an old apple tree buried in a patch of pines at camp and that tree put on a batch of new growth just from open air & sunlight. FWIW.
 
That's a good thought. Water sprouts will likely sprout again. It's good for me to hear about your earlier efforts to do this sort of tree restoration.
 
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