Ok where the scafold branches leave the picture boarder is about where I want to cut them off and then do some rine grafting. I plan on doing half this year and half next yer. will this be okay that far out from the trunk?

I might cut them 4 to 6 foot out, tree will push water sprouts then graft on these next year,...it will make a much better job.

That sounds like a good idea. Maybe still try and do what I want and next year graft onto the sprouts too or are you against the rine grafting? I need to stay six foot off the ground or the deer will eat it. I am not putting anymore fencing up. I have a big area fenced in allready, and the deer still manage to get in it somehow. They ate my little trees twice last year I planted. I hope they can survive. I am ready to start shooting deer! Just kidding. They walk right up to me like pets. When I used to feed them that is. Hard to shoot something you watch grow and play in the yards. Where the limbs go virtical for that foot is high enough off the ground I think. I was just thinking the vertical area would make a nice cut area for rine grafting.

Sure, ...you can do that, nothing lost if it doesn't' work.

Those are huge diameters to be grafting on. The scions may take but for the tree to heal over such a large area is near impossible before rot sets in. Rine grafts are similar to bark grafts and for me have been weak for large diameters. Do as Konrad suggests or top work higher in the top on smaller diameter limbs. Cleft grafts will be stronger on large limbs. 3-4 inch limbs would be about the largest I would try to top work on. Top working however will give fruit in less time. Also you may find that asphalt coating is toxic to the graft union if it penetrates there. Use wax or Dr Falwell to seal the actual graft.

I have read of the method by which you graft stock this size and then weave the growing scions together, progressively removing some over time (years?) to quickly grow over such a large wound.
Always leaves me a bit skeptical, but it sounds reasonable.
I would love to see a series of pics should you go that route.

I have bees wax, and I bought some grafting sealent that is tar based. I just got that in case The bees wax runs out. I was going to buy some of that Dr falwell water base stuff but I had all my stuff ordered on line allready and didn't want to pay the shipping again. That looks like some good stuff. I have read a lot of people don't like the cleft on large diameter branches because the graft is open to a big cleft for disiese, and your limited to how many you can put on. as for a bark graft you can circle the whole stub, and then cut them off after they help heal the cross section. I like doing cleft grafs on smaller branches where one or two scions will heal the cleft. What my concern is are they always doing the grafting one foot away so it makes a better canopy for what room they have or is it because the tree will stop sending the sap flow that far away that most graft wont take unless they are within a foot of the trunk? I think seeing I will be puting a bunch of different kinds of apples scions on this tree it would be neat to keep them spread out away from another like four different trees. The branch on the left was never injured by an ice storm and has its full canopy of branches still out further. I planted a plum tree just on the outside of its branches and I wanted to get rid of that branch tip and retran it with new fruit wood closer to the trunk while still keeping my grafting six foot or higher off the ground so the deer don't eat the leaves. They love to eat fruit trees. I get up to thirty deer at a time in the yard. I would just cut the branches one foot away from the trunk and change varieties, but I would have to fence the tree and yard off again. I am runing out of yard close to the house. I have a large fenced in area with the pool and fifteen fruit trees, along with other trees, and my garden. This tree just happens to be on the other side of the fence. I put 300' of fence up last year. My neighbor got excited when I told him I was grafting my wild apples over to good fruit varieties, and wanted his tree done. I am doing eight trees in my yard. one is going to be just granny smith. I am changing another to honey crisp. I have gala, macintosh, fuji, golden delicious, rhode island greening,and granny smith scions. I have about a hundred scions. I will be changing trees in diferent ways doing all kinds of grafting. I am also grafting cherry, peach, and asian pear too. I am just swaping branches around to help pollenate them better. I have a wild peach tree too, and I am going to try and graft concord grapes to wild grapes. I wish I could put sweet cherry on wild black cherry but it doesnt work.

In this picture you can see my little plum tree I caged in last year below the branch that I want to cut off. You can see better why I want to move the vigar half way back to the trunk.

This is the same tree. It's hard to see this scafold branch because it is behind the trunk in the other pictures. This one has all the branches broken from ice storms. I never have cut them off. I was going to cleft graft close to the main branch on this one. I would like to cut it down lower but then I would be working a large trunk I figure cleft grafting with two scions on each side of the branches should work here. The one on the right I might need to just get rid of.

Yeah..I can see, amazing long branch/overhang!
You'll get allot more light when you trim some of these branches back.
Looks like you'll be heaving fun for several years.

This is the scafold branch to the right of the other photos. You can see why I want to cut it behind the disiesed area, plus the main branch broke right off in the ice storm and is rotting. I could graft onto the little branches on that virtical bend area that I want to save, and try some rine or cleft grafts at the cut.

This is the top of the main trunk It must be 35 foot in the air. It realy grew after the other branches broke off. Next year or so I might graft this one down lower. It's so healthy up there I am not sure If I want to cut it off. I wont be able to spray, but I have learned how to pick apples with a can duct taped to my pool pole. I just cut a vee in the can and push up so the vee picks the stem. You know they say you can't grow the same tree from seed, but all these wild apples grow the same yellow crappy fruit! They have the same color bark too. I had other trees out back that grew different apples, but the got cut down. They actualy were good eaters, and hung on the trees in the winter. Hard crisp apples. red with red streaks going through the white flesh. They died, must have been crab apples. They were only eight foot tall.

That is the kind of tree I've spent the majority of my working hours on in the last 25 years. The person suggesting that the gaping wound left by a big cut probably hasn't seen what I've seen over the years. Apples are first rate compartmentalizers that lose huge branches often when they are over 100 and live another 50 years. Alex Shigo should have spent more time on trees that weren't maples. Focused on one species, I don't think he saw the forest through the tree.

Last two sentences are for the arborists out there- for you Johny, I recommend that you graft outside for some temporary fruit if you want but before changing the tree over take out that big center and over the next 3 years really bring the tree down- even if you must cut some really big wood.

When you can graft on wood fairly close to the ground not more that about 5' from the trunk, where there are well lit water sprouts to graft to, you are ready for your permanent grafts.

I did some ruff cuts to get rid of the vigar so all the brush is out of the way when I go to graft. I might just cut this limb back four foot from the trunk where that water shoot is, or cut it where I was talking about and grafting onto the little shoots up there. I will make clean cuts before grafting. these are just to get close.

I removed all the busted up stuff from previous storms. I will cut freash cuts and graft a little bit closer to the limb.

Here you can see some of the busted up stuff. I am glad to get rid of this!

I want to get grafting, but the weather isn't coperating! We were on the warm side of the storm, but now we are on the cold side. It's snowing now. The ground is already white as I type this. You can see it starting to snow in this picture. You can see about 1/8 of what I have fenced in, the brush pile I cut off the tree, and the other scafold branch that I might not cut off. The main scafold branch that makes the top, and my other cuts. I might just leave the other scafold branch on. I think I will do a bunch of small grafting on the outer side and shoots that are on the linb. There was a nice shoot half way out, That I broke by accident when cutting higher limbs. I wanted to do these limbs first because of the bad wood. It didn't make sence to me to take the top out and leave all this. I left all the healthy stuff on. I do need to prune those areas, and I will do some grafting on lowere areas too. The deer were down at the brush pile eatting the buds just before I took the picture. They are in the back part of the yard out of veiw. They moved out when I took the dog outside for his morning buisness. You can see a nice wild apple tree at the fence. This is going to be grafted to become my granny smith tree. I planted a granny smith below it. I will have to move it. I was going to cut out the wild tree when the little one took off, but now that I can change it I will graft away!

I made tags from a pop can. I guess you could say they cost a dime seeing that's what the return of the can would have been. I ingraved then went over with a sharpe. I folded the edges to make them stronger. I just wrote initials. R I G stands for Rhode Island Greening. The others are, H C honey crisp, G S granny smith, one Antonovka, and then 1,2,and 3. The 1,2,3 are for scions that i kept in groups from the orchard rows but not sure wich variety they are yet from their rows.

The rest, I might have to make more!

I see some hope for the last tree, You are going to graft much higher in the tree, Cleft grafts there would be stronger and splltting the limbs twice for 4 scions on each would work nicely, An easy wax source is toilet bowl rings. Soft and pliable wax.They used to be made from beeswax. You can use that or the Falwell compound around the immediate graft area then coating the rest of it with the asphalt compound may be ok, If you decide to do the rind or bark grafts tape on a couple of sticks for crows etc to land on, They can easily break off a young bark graft. I have used the AL can tags for years and found that the wire needs to also be AL. I was surprised to see so much corrosion between the different metals.

Thanks bberry,
I cut up electric fencing wire for cattle fences. It's the smaller gage wire. I think it's 17 gage. I was actualy thinking about puting on a couple sticks that are higher so the birds can land on those. They should pick the higher ones, or are you saying to tape the scions to the stick to reinforce them?

I also use the electric fencing wire and it is aluminum. I do not tape the guard sticks to the scions. They are located between the scions and are a larger diameter and longer, They will make a better crow perch if they are L shaped. I would wax around the scions before taping if possible. On that old and scalely bark about any kind of tape will work. I think the asphalt coating over the top of all that would be fine. I think it is the oily component of the asphalt basement coating that can "leak" out on a hot day and penetrate the graft and damage the cambium cells. The regular grafting compound that does contain asphalt has other compounds added that stabilize it in the heat.

I grafted yesterday and today. I used bees wax, grafting tape, and treekote. The treekote is black like asfalt, but it's water based, and doesn't smell like tar. I didn't tape the sticks to the scions, but I did put them close to them. They stick up higher than the scions.

My rine grafts of the rhode island greening. I did them about the 14th. I should of took pictures the day I grafted so I could compare the difference. It looks like the tip on this one is swelling some, not sure. It doesn't look dorment anyway.

A cleft graft with honey crisp, and below that is a graft I did today with bartlet pear. I am courious to see if it takes. I put six on apple wood and one each on the two asian pear trees.

This is the big limb where I cut it off just above the last picture. Here I just put one bud scion wood of honey crisp. I was running out of scionwood, and I thought that if I just did one bud pieces I could get away with no tape. they are rine grafts. I have been thinking it would of been neat to put them in upside down seeing this is up a ways they could grow down ward. I might try that on an extra one just to see how it grows. I'm thinking it would look like an umbrella. It would be easy to spray and it would bring the fruit down to me too. This graft has all the buds up.

broad shot, I have about sixty grafts in just this tree. I used a grafting tool for most of them doing the omega graft cuts. That's the shape of the jig saw puzzle lobs for those who don't know. I have done over a hundred with it already. It works great!

These are my granny smith in a smaller tree. I cleft grafted these with bees wax. The black is treekote grafting compound that I put over the top of everything. The sticks are just bird perch sticks so the scions don't get broken.. I did some smaller grafts on a little branch with rhode islnd greening and a Russian apple anacova, or something like that.

After planting some apples from seed and waiting for fruit, the results disappointed. I experimented with grafts onto these trees with surprising success. In a couple of cases I sawed off some limbs at least four inches in diameter and split the wood with a knife and hammer. I then opened the split with a big screwdriver, hammered in. Scions were inserted as cleft grafts. The handy thing is the heavy wood springs closed on the scions for a firm hold. Most important I believe is sealing the stump and graft well to prevent drying. I used a couple layers of plastic grocery bags over and around the stumps, wrapped tightly by more bags cut into strips. Worked for me!

Yes,...on good size stock this works allot better then bark graft.

Wondering how Johnny is doing on he's grafts.

double

This post was edited by konrad___far_north on Fri, May 17, 13 at 0:14

I just got my computer fixed. I had a virus that kept me from logging onto this site. Anyway, here are some up to date pictures of some of my grafts. I have had so far about 80% take. this is honey crisp rind grafting on the end limb and cleft grafting onto a small branch.

these are the rind or bark grafts I did of rhode island greening. They took off slow as did the honey crisp above, but what they were doing was growing at the attachment and healing that first.

This is a branch just below the first picture on the same limb. The bigger graft is honey crisp again and the smaller graft below to the right is bartlet pare.

These are cleft grafts with bees wax. I grafted granny smith. I noticed they are really fragile to spray. I am missing the one graft on the other side of the cleft. It came off with the tape! I also put tree kote on over the wax.

Same wild apple tree that I am making into my granny smith tree. Cleft grafts on another branch except I put antonkova or some Russian apple on. I forget the name its on the tag. Its my longest graft so far at about two foot. there is two of them that long on each side of the cleft.

More honey crisp on another wild apple tree. I used the omega style grafting tool on these. I did eight on the outer limbs and seven took so far. They all look about the same. I still have some of my grafts just popping buds. That tool works good. I even got 1/4" grafts to take. It's better on 1/2" stock though. This was about 1/2".

Here is a broader shot of the honey crisp and the bartlet pare. The pare is on the skinny branch at the left with the tag. You can see other omega grafts out in the background from the limb above. They are lighter in color. They are gala, or Fuji. The rind grafts are the longer branches and the little stuff is sucker branches.

Here is my other cleft graft with granny smith on my wild apple tree that I am changing into granny smith.

This is just an experiment. I have bing cherry on wild black cherry. Looks good so far, but it's not growing branches yet. I haven't found any posting on the net that says it has worked. Some say it looked like it was going to work then they died, so we'll see. The leaves are a bit small too. They should be three times the size. I have one more that started but didn't send leaves out. They are all still green tips. It was the whole tip of the branch with a lot of buds.

sorry for miss spelled words, and the name of the Russian apple. I have been building lots of houses, tending to the gardens, the large yards, the pool, the boat, and I am really tierd. Plus I have been hauling firewood!

Couple things. the pear won't work on an apple tree. Also do all of your grafts get plenty of sun? If not, look at making it more open.

You've got a great tree started. Pruning will be the next thing to learn about.

I know I need to prune some little branches out of the way. I cut the two biggest limbs off the tree when cleft grafting. I only have three small branches left and they will get cut back next spring when I ad more grafts. I left one third of the tree for nurse branches. I can open it up a little more when I get time. So your saying the pear will die. I thought people were growing pears on apple trees from what I have read. Then there were people grafting winter banana and then grafting pear onto that. I have five out of seven pears with leaves. Even if it doesn't take no big deal. It was fun trying.

Here is a better shot of the pear. It looks like it will take to me. Why do you say it wont work?
You can see the cleft graft of the honey crisp too. It healed nicely.

This picture above can be seen in the picture of the grafts without leafs yet with my clog - foot in the lower left corner of the picture further back in this article

I have the 4th off work so I spent some time pruning. I left only one nurse branch on this tree. Now all the rest of the leaves are from grafts. These two grafts are my longest ones so far. They are anovnokva. They are about two foot long so far.

Here is a broad shot of what I have been calling my granny smith tree, but really I should be calling it my green apple tree seeing I have granny smith, rhode island greening and antonkova on it. All the green except the top are just grafts. I cut every leaf of that was from the root stock. I will cut that last branch off and graft more onto it next spring.

Here is a shot of the trees that match the first pictures taken at the beginning of the post.

My previous reading indicates the pear will always struggle. But you may have a lucky combo and do better then the norm. No reason to remove it now, no harm to the apple side

I grafted fertility pear to my unknown apple rootstock and got a few pears a couple of seasons before it died.