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?

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?
