When I summed up the purposes of grafting, I warned you that grafting won't create more plants, just change a rootstock from one variety to another.  So where do all those rootstocks come from?

If you want to grow your own fruit tree rootstocks, you have two choices --- seeds or cuttings.  Seedling rootstocks are easy to grow --- just collect pits from the fruit you eat and plant the seeds --- and seedlings have the benefit that they're usually vigorous and healthy.  With some types of fruits, like peaches, a seedling roostock can be a good choice, but most homesteaders with a small backyard won't want to grow their apple rootstocks from seed since a standard apple tree can take over their entire growing space.  Instead, nurseries count on carefully selected and vegetatively propagated rootstock varieties to change the size of their trees and to confer resistance to disease.

Vegetatively propagated rootstocks are much more uniform than those grown from seed, although you have to make an investment of space and time to grow your own.  You can either root cuttings (softwood or hardwood) or use layering (a method of making one plant produce lots of shoots, which root and can be severed to create new plants).  Garner notes that cuttings can usually be rooted for apples, pears, plums, and cherries, although my own experience has shown that softwood cuttings need a lot of babying and might not be worthwhile if you don't have the right equipment. 

Stooling is a type of layering that seems very easy for the beginner.  You simply plant a purchased rootstock, let it grow for a year, cut the tree to the ground, then mound up dirt around the shoots to create new rootstocks that can be removed later.  The downside of stooling is that it takes two years before you get your first harvest, but the stool can produce for twenty or more years after that.  If we like the rootstock we use for our high density apple experiment, I think it would be worth starting a stool so that I could create our own dwarf apples in the future.

Some more complex types of layering are used for various reasons.  Etiolation (in which the shoots arising from the rootstock are pegged down in a trench) is used for shy rooters, like apples, pears, quince, plum, cherries, peaches, walnuts, and mulberries.  Etiolation is more work than stooling, so should be considered only if you can't get your stock to root otherwise.  Similarly, air layering (in which a shoot is injured and then surrounded with moist material to root above the soil line) is a very sure technique, but doesn't produce as many offspring.  At the other extreme, tip layering is an easy way to get blackberries, some raspberries, currants, and gooseberries to root.

No matter how you start our rootstocks, you need to grow the young plants until they're well rooted before grafting onto them.  Budding is often done the first summer, but dormant grafting such as whip-and-tongue grafts have to wait another year.  So, if you planted a rootstock from the nursery now, you could cut it to the ground to start a stool in fall 2013, mound up earth around the new shoots in 2014, cut loose your rootstocks that winter, and graft onto them in early spring of 2016.

In case that seems daunting, I should tell you that you can often order rootstocks of named varieties from various nurseries.  In addition, you should check with your local extension office since many run grafting workshops in the spring which provide all of the rootstocks, scionwood, and paraphernalia, allowing you to come home with several newly grafted trees for a very small fee.  A final option is to skip the rootstock entirely and graft a new branch onto an existing fruit tree in your yard.

I'd be very curious to hear from anyone who has grown his or her own rootstock.  Which method did you use?  Do you recommend it to others?

This post is part of our Grafting lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: The Grafter's Handbook What can grafting do? How to grow your own rootstocks How to gather scionwood Grafting supplies Two grafts for beginners Topworking vs. frameworking

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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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