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Two years ago I got an apple with red flesh. I decided to sow the seeds and now I have two small apple plants (far away from beeing trees).

I know, that appletrees mostly are grafted to make them rich and tasty in kind of fruits. I want to try this with mine too. I informed myself about methods to do so.

But I did not find information about how to choose the bottom plant (to get roots and stem from). All I got is "depends at the plant you want to set on the top".

How can I decide, what kind of bottom plant I should choose? What characteristics of the top plant count?

(I am happy to got an old wild garden some weeks ago, there grow apple "twigs" from a stump I could use as bottom part maybe...)

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  • You would not normally attempt to graft the entire top of the sapling onto a rootstock - if you want to get started this year (and are in the Northern hemisphere) your first opportunity would be bud grafting (also known as chip budding) in Late July or August, typically, after new buds have formed on the seedling stock. Spring grafting is usually done with scions harvested over the winter (when the plant is fully dormant, but the weather is above freezing on the day) and stored in a refrigerator to graft to rootstocks in the spring, or "bench-graft" to rootstocks inside in early spring.
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Jun 12 at 15:09
  • As far as now, the seedling has only one bud, where the leaves come from since the first on... They are very near to eachother, wich made me think, that it may need to be grafted, to grow "faster", to get space between the leaves.
    – Allerleirauh
    Commented Jun 13 at 12:52
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    In that situation I would give better odds to protecting the seedling (i.e. from being chewed on by deer or rabbits, mice, etc.) and lettng it grow larger. Grafting is not a 100% success, so you could easily kill off the one bud you have by trying to graft it.
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Jun 13 at 23:20

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Rootstock choice is largely about controlling tree size, with possible other factors such as influencing hardiness somewhat, resistance to some soil-borne infections (that are mostly a problem when over-planting old orchards with new trees) and to some extent time to bearing, as the dwarf trees are both smaller and somewhat precocious (early to set fruit compared to full-size trees.)

It does not have much influence on the fruit size or taste. That depends on the genetics of the top graft, and will be the same as what you would eventually get from your seedling trees if you wait for them to come to bearing (might be quite a while, as seedlings tend to produce full-size trees.)

There's generally no advantage to grafting to a random wild rootstock .vs. letting the seedlings grow, though you might get earlier fruiting if the wild rootstock is several years older than the seedling. Your seedlings may not produce fruit that resembles the apple they came from - apple genetics are complex.

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  • So "same breed" means in general "cloning"? Is this the same for old breeds? I remember my grandpa has done grafting... But I was to small to understand what exactly he did.
    – Allerleirauh
    Commented Jun 13 at 12:53
  • For apples (among many others) a given variety is cloned, yes. Likewise for named apple rootstocks (grafting onto seedling rootstock is not uncommon when full-size trees are the desired result.)
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Jun 13 at 23:17

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