The positive side of our topworking failure last year is that the pear trees produced lots of small twigs at just the right spot to do the easier whip-and-tongue graft this year.  I've been swapping scionwood with several readers, too, so I have plenty to graft onto every twig in the right size range, meaning that I was really frameworking this year instead of topworking.

I also splurged on real grafting supplies this winter, which made the project easier.  Hopefully at least a few of the twelve grafts I made will take this summer, at which point I can prune away wood of the old variety.  Here's hoping we'll have tastier pears in a few years!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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