I wish i had found this forum sooner. You guys are a great source of info. I live in central Pennsylvania, and we have had an unusually warm March. Last i heard, we are at 12 days so far this month above 70 degrees. The apple trees are already in the green tip stage. I do not have any more scion wood that is still dormant, so i guess i will have to wait till next year to gather more scion. Can i make my own rootstock from the suckers on my mom's tree? This is a quote i read on another web site. "The rootstock is actually a sucker that sprouted from a host tree, and sawdust is mounded up against it which causes the young trunk to sprout roots." I know there are suckers at the base of her tree- will the suckers be dwarf? And then i can bench graft next year.

OK Brandon - here is my explanation :-) I wrote that response last night sipping my glass of wine while waiting for dinner to cook. Seems to me that over the years I had seen some rootstocks increase in length (IOW, the graft appears higher than it did initially) but maybe that was just a perception of the increased diameter or the soil level declining. This morning, after I think about and have sufficient caffeine, it doesn't seem very logical at all. I take it back :-)) Ken, I think you need to get out more :-)) All sorts of fruit trees can be grown in containers and it is an excellent way of growing tender or semi-tropical fruits in colder climates due to portability. And essential to those who garden in limited spaces like rooftops or apartment balconies. It helps if it is a naturally small tree or on dwarfing root stock but even that is not essential. And root pruning does not affect fruit size, just as growing on dwarfing root stock does not result in dwarf fruit - if all other cultural conditions are met, the fruit will be of normal size, regardless of the size of the tree or any necessary root pruning. container blueberry, root pruning is necessary for any woody plant confined to a container. Obviously the root run of a tree in the ground is far larger than a container will provide. Container grown plants will become rootbound eventually and rootbound plants are unable to get adequate moisture, access nutrients and lose vigor and decline. Root pruning restricts the growth of roots to fit the container and regenerates feeder roots that die off quickly when limited by the container size, heat, insufficient nutrients and dry soils. Unless you have a very large container, this type of growing is a natural dwarfing or stunting process, similar to bonsai. Top pruning may also be required but proper root pruning is essential.

My first fruit tree was an apricot, which is still alive and bearing today. I adopted it when my parents bought the house and property it was on in 1963. So apricots can be very long lived as far as stone fruit goes- at least in warm, dry climates. The photograph suggests some cambium issues- diseases or other damage of the bark, but that is hard to evaluate from the photo- obviously there is still plenty of functioning cambium because of the vigor of the tree. Probably nothing you can do anything about anyway. I understand the issue of the trees architecture- the codominance of the two remaining scaffolds do threaten to split the tree apart. I would simply cut back the more horizontal left scaffold somewhat severely- particularly any shoots that shade the right side scaffold. Favor the more upright one and don't let the crop load get too heavy on the left side- crutch it if necessary to protect it during cropping. Keep doing whatever else that is creating that vigorous growth and I bet you get another 20 years out of that wonderful tree.

Hi Saki Glad these comments were helpful, and we're always eager to help a beginning rose grower feel confident with their roses. The photo you posted is a lovely and very mature specimen of what looks like two or maybe even 3 climbing roses all splayed out horizontally along the fence. You can see one "fan" of canes spreading out from just right of center and another fan spreading from the left 1/3 of the photo. I can't tell if the cane stretching straight up in the center is part of a third plant with a few lateral canes or not. This effect is definitely a great thing to strive for, but I'd be totally depressed if I tried to get all my climbers to look like this, since not all climbers put out as many primary canes coming straight out of the soil as this one does. I'll show you two contrasting climbers for example. Colette looks the most like the photo above with several canes coming straight out of the soil that I'm encouraging sideways on my fence. Do remember that climbing roses have to be secured in some way to the fence - they won't climb on their own like clematis or other vines will. Mine is probably 3 years old, and you can see that it has three main canes out of the soil (I usually call them primary canes in a climber, but they come out of the base and I presume the terms are the same thing). Mine is own-root so there isn't a graft from which these canes split off, but if I'd buried my graft the 2-4" that is recommended in cold zones, it would look a lot like this too. Now, the reason you distinguish between primary canes and laterals in a climber, is that your blooms aren't mostly going to be directly on those primary canes that you bend sideways. Even in a young climber like this, you can see that the blooms are in smaller off-shoot canes that branch off vertically from these horizontal main canes - we call these lateral canes. The main/primary canes are toward the bottom of the fence, but the blooming laterals stretch up a good 2-3' higher than the primary canes. The more horizontal you can stretch your canes, the more likely the rose will put out laterals all the way along the length of those primary canes. That means you can have a fence full of blooms from only a few primary canes, even if the rose puts out a limited "fan" of canes. As Colette ages, she might put out more base canes, but I doubt I'd get the rich "forest" of canes in the photo above even when she's mature - particularly in any climbers that lose cane over the winter. Still, I'm confident she'll fill this part of the fence in another 2 years or so. Here's another rose that for me grows in a somewhat different habit. I've only seen one primary cane off the base of my Lunar Mist, and it's more like 4-5 years old. I bend it sideways in the same way as I do the Colette above, and it sends up laterals all along the length. Same principles of laterals and primary canes as above, it's just that the base of the rose is at one end of the array and the blooms arch off to one side off the primary cane that I've bent sideways. You can't quite see the base of Lunar Mist here, but it's off to the right and below the picture here, below where the clematis is. My New Dawn never got mature in the poor location under my oak tree, and we'll see what the new grafted version wants to do now, but at the moment it just has one big cane that I've stretched sideways like the Lunar Mist above. Climbers are very different when young vs. when mature, though, so you have to be patient with them. It usually takes at least 4-5 years before a climber has built up enough root structure to support a robust blooming rose, and not all of them will build this kind of fan structure very widely. Some will be more of a "rainbow" like my Lunar Mist. Regardless, the principle is the same and we encourage more growth of canes from the base in climbers as we do in any rose, with adequate water, maybe some alfalfa to encourage basal breaks, and patience, patience, patience. The rose will "tell" you what it wants to do over time. Just be sure to bend the young canes sideways when it's young, as robust climbers like New Dawn can get pretty stiff and woody in their primary canes over time, and they're much harder to bend. Hope that helps. Cynthia