Aw, thank you! It is pretty amazing to have a hand in keeping something alive that was around decades before you were born. And, hopefully, it will continue to last long after I'm gone
perhaps contact Fedco, explain the dire situation and ask to find someone who can graft these for you. asap.@lazy gardener Apologies, I can't remember where we were talking about this: I was trying to propagate an ancient dying apple tree via getting cuttings to take root and you wanted to know how it went.
Since I can't remember which thread that was in, I'm posting here. Please let me know if you want it moved elsewhere and I'll do it
On March 24th I took 15 cuttings from our old, dying Mr. Apple. I wouldn't be surprised if it's over 100 years old. It was split by a maple, languished on the road side, has no heartwood left and I had to cut the last real life-supporting limbs off last fall for road easement reasons. It also grows the most delicious apples.
View attachment 1327310 View attachment 1327311 View attachment 1327312
I want about 12 fruit trees for the future orchard. It would be nice if there were some variety in there, but the over-wintered buds were in rough shape due to plow damage and I've never done this before, so I took 15.
A little prepping, rooting hormone, and 50/50 sand/potting soil mix later I had it (and five red prince weigelas - our beloved three were all girdled by voles this winter) all ready to go:
They say rooting should take 2-4 weeks on the apples. We are 13 days in and:
We have new life! Four of the apple cuttings are opening their buds! I wonder how many more will pop up in the next couple of weeks?
I really only needed one to take to carry on the old apple's legacy. But since I have zero experience in fruit trees, I greatly appreciate having many chances to practice
Thank you for your concern! You weren't aware that I was intentionally doing this in order to avoid rootstock and grafting. It's a long, involved story as to why...
I'll spare the other readers the tale as it does not exactly tie in to BTE and HK themes of the thread... Hence me apologizing to LG about posting it here! I just can't remember where we were talking about it
This is definitely an experiment! I'm reasonably confident some of the cuttings will take root just fine (and the growing buds seem to be evidence along those lines). But if it's an utter failure, the tree would have died regardless; so there's not really anything to lose. But it is a big, potential learning opportunity; and I'm all about those! I generally learn more from my failed experiments than the ones I'm successful at
