[Hippocrates_Garden]

I’ve been learning to do my own grafting. All the fruit trees you buy, at least like apple and such, if they have a specific variety named, is a grafted tree, but they may not tell you what rootstock its on.

I want to be sure and pick the best rootstock for my location and situation, then find the apples, plums, peaches etc and graft them on. Heck I may even plant out my orchard just with rootstock and graft as I get time and find them.

Rootstock can be about $3-4 each,

[AbundantAcres]

still new to this. Tried air layering and I must have done it wrong because it didn’t root. 😀

Where do you get root stock from?

[Hippocrates_Garden]

I used Burnt Ridge Nursery in Washington, and I’m in Arkansas. There are several companies that sell. Basically just start learning about the various root stock’s for whatever you want to grow, and see who has them on offer.

[DeepSouthBamaGRITS]

I also experiment with grafting. I currently have 3 successful grafts on a fig tree using cuttings (scions) from 3 different varieties of figs. It will still grow figs from the original fig tree I used as the root stock as well as the 3 additional varieties I grafted.

I’m waiting til spring to re-graft several of my lemon trees as they died back to the rootstock several years ago during an unexpected freeze. I was studying the trees this past summer and noticed the HUGE long thorns on the lemon trees. They normally have thorns but not the length that was on my trees. Researched and found it was all new growth from the rootstock. I have Meyer Lemon & Eureka Lemon trees that are large enough to take scions from that I will graft to the rootstock of the other once was lemon trees. I just wished I had known what I had let grow these past 6 yrs was the rootstock. I may not live long enough now to see the newly grafted lemon trees produce fruit.

I also have Avocado trees grown from seed that are large enough now to graft. I have both Type A & Type B Avocado trees (It takes both types to make fruit as one is male & one is female & must bloom at the same time to pollinate each other) I purchased last year that I will take scions from & graft to the avocado trees grown from seeds. Another long wait for fruit, but maybe I will see an avocado in a few yrs.

I love propagating additional fruit trees from air layering, sprouting cuttings or grafting.
I have my very 1st pineapple from a top I planted from a storebought pineapple a couple of yrs ago. It should ripen within the next few weeks. I grew Chayote Squash plants from store bought Chayote squash & got my 1st squash a few weeks ago before the unusual frost/freeze got the mother plant. It is a perrineal that will come back yr after yr. I have 4 more sprouting now to plant soon in my heated greenhouse.
My latest project is sprouting Cassava Yams (David the Good from my area does them well). He has a group page here on Freesteading. I got 5 huge sticks/scions from a guy he recommended on one of his YouTubes and 10 days in soil (in pots til spring) every single one have sprouted with growth that is 1-2 inches in length.
I also grow lots of turmeric, culinary ginger, and horseradish as well as many herbs & medicinal plants. AND TONS of Elderberry bushes/trees. I have them all over my property that I grew from cuttings (which are wild, and native in my area. They are 3 yrs old and tower every bit of 12-15 ft tall. 4 trees (3 yrs old) produced 6 gallons & one quart of dehydrated berries (finished product) this year. Fantastic medicinal properties & I mix them with turmeric & culinary ginger to make elderberry syrup & tinctures for cold/flu season. Big Pharmakeia & their poisons can kiss my royal bum! 😁

My 1st pineapple.

[Nomad76]

Have you checked with your local nursery? I am located in Washington and we have several good ones near by. Burnt Ridge Nursey and Rain Tree however, I checked there site and their cheapest apple trees sell for $26.

[B.Lynn]

Also, if you do not mind waiting/experimenting, you can start some from seeds of good fruit. You might get an excellent surprise or you might get free firewood. I have 3 peach, 2 mulberry 2 apple and 1 pear that I started from seed. Expecting(hopefully) my peaches to bloom this spring. Oops …1 one lemon (that has given me 1 lemon), a meyer lemon, and a tangerine.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by  B.Lynn.

[DeepSouthBamaGRITS]

You will probably have to graft scions (cuttings) onto some of your fruit trees. Most all fruit trees these days are grafted. This will definitely apply to your citrus trees. Even tho you got a lemon (and a tangerine ?) this year, in order to get a good quality fruit they will need to be grafted. The seeds in citrus are from many generations of growth. The fruit you took the seeds from may be good & tasty but may not carry the genetics from a good quality tree. You could plant every seed from that lemon you originally planted and get a different tree from each seed. It is like a man & woman having children, some will have characteristics from the mother & some from the father, some of both or may have them from generations back. Some citrus trees that grow from seed may have fruit that is of bad quality, may have a few good fruit,s or none at all. Some will grow huge thorns. OR you could be lucky and get a good quality tree but you will waste many years of growth to find out exactly what you have.
You can look it up on the internet. I had to learn the hard way and waste many years waiting on a lemon tree to grow & produce lemons and got nothing but big trees full of thorns…no lemons. The same will apply for mangoes, avocados and many other fruit. Yes, the seeds will grow a tree, but it may or may not produce fruit and may not be worth eating if it does produce.

Most folks don’t know these bits of information so that is why I’m telling you & NOT to discourage you. There are a lot of misleading YouTubes & info on the internet from people that GROW A TREE but don’t have the real experience or knowledge to know about grafting. The only way to get a true clone of a fruit tree is either by air layering, sprouting/rooting a cutting or grafting. At least you’re trying and for that I give you a big thumbs up!

[B.Lynn]

Thank you for posting this information as there are probably many that do not know this. Also, many now old varieties of fruits were found as chance seedlings in orchards. I am fine with waiting. Took 4 years on the lemon which is much quicker than what I have seen posted on the internet.

If they do not make good then I will plant something else in their spot. Life is about surprises and experimenting with plants is a great rush for me.🙃

[DeepSouthBamaGRITS]

I hear you on the excitement of experimenting with fruit trees! I have grafted 3 different fig tree cuttings (scions) onto one of my established fig trees. I waited patiently for them to produce 4 different varieties on one tree and it WORKED!! The grafts are still young and not producing prolifically YET but their day will come. I’ve rooted cuttings from all sorts of fruits (and even veggies) with much success and is how I have expanded my fruit orchard. I also dig up “baby trees” from around fruit trees. Some live, some don’t, some produce fruit, some don’t but it is a chance I take as well as a learning experience. Two great successes were digging up a sapling from under my big old Brown Turkey fig tree. It was about 2 ft tall when I potted it up to baby it while it got established and grew a healthy root system. I planted it 2 yrs ago and it towers well over 10 ft tall and produced an abundant harvest of figs that were still producing when we had an early frost/freeze in October this year.
The heat wave & drought we had this past summer killed several of my fruit trees, blueberry bushes and a bunch of my wild huckleberry bushes. Then we had the 2 early frost/freezes that put everything into dormancy. THEN we had temps in the 80’s for a couple of weeks and everything WOKE BACK UP and my blueberry/wild huckleberries were actually putting on blooms. My peach tree was budding out fixing to flower and all my figs were putting on leaves. And we get that danged Arctic Blast that threw us into the deep freezer, something we RARELY see here in coastal AL! Everything went back into dormancy and hopefully survived. Now I’m wondering if I will get fruit on some of my bushes/trees. I think they are about as confused as we are with what to expect NEXT with our weather. They don’t know whether to go to sleep or WAKE UP because it feels like spring time…in the middle of winter!
Good luck with your trees and I hope they do well for you. Maybe you got GOOD SEEDS that will give you abundant harvest and of good quality! Regardless, I’m sure it has been a fun adventure watching it grow and to produce fruit. SOMETHING YOU GREW from seed. I know that is exciting in itself.

[B.Lynn]

Congratulations on your fig tree! Sounds great!

[Fossilman]

Hartmann plant nursery sells both wholesale and retail fruit trees. I am not connected with them at all other than ordering from them a couple times.

https://hartmannsplantcompany.com/

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  Fossilman.

[voashanks]

Have you tried your local extension campus? My local Clemson University extention campus just took up orders for fruit trees around 8$ each. Orders had to be in by November and picked up in January but the price is well worth the wait. Might be worth checking around if there are options like that near you.

[bigcountry1009]

I got in on that one as well. It was hard to beat. I got a dozen trees varying from peach, apple, pear, plum and 4 blue berries for $175. Through the Abbeville extension office. It’s not local to me necessarily, but I’ll drive 45 minutes for that deal.

[jakebinTN]

Billy just mentioned tyty nursery in a recent podcast and I just ordered from them. Very good prices.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  jakebinTN.

[DeepSouthBamaGRITS]

I have ordered a few fruit trees from TyTy Nursery in Georgia. I have had a couple of bad experiences with the bare-root trees I’ve gotten from them. They do have an insurance policy that will replace the trees if they do not grow or die providing you follow their instructions to plant & it is not negligence on your part. The insurance policy will issue you a CREDIT with TyTy Nursery but no refund.

One order I got from them had mold growing on a totally broken & damaged root system. They told me to plant the tree anyway to see if it would grow. I’m definitely NOT A NEWBIE on growing trees and knew this would never survive. I responded to them that when I make a purchase I expect to receive QUALITY MERCHANDISE with no defects and what I had gotten was obviously of poor quality. I did not pay for POOR QUALITY. After a month or so of haggling with them they finally issued me a CREDIT and I re-ordered the tree THAT DID NOT LIVE as I did as they instructed & planted it anyway. 4 months wasted to plant a dead stick with broken roots & mold growing on the root system.

2nd time I ordered 2 trees and planted them upon receipt. I waited & waited for signs of growth and had NOTHING. I scrapped the cadmium layer at the base of the trees and it was brown, indicating it was dead. A living tree’s cadmium layer will be a whitish color. Again it took several weeks (after waiting several MONTHS for springtime for it to show growth) for me to get ANOTHER store credit. By now I was not wanting to order any more trees from them but had no choice since they do not offer refunds.

One other time I placed an order in August. I kept getting emails that my order was being delayed, either due to inclimate weather conditions, c-19 delays, too much rain & the workers couldn’t get to the fields to harvest, etc. I finally received my order in January the following year which was not a good time to plant ANYTHING in the dead of winter. I had to pot it up (since it was bare-root) and keep it inside my greenhouse til springtime to plant. Wasted a half year of getting this tree in the ground to get established.

Maybe my luck was just a fluke (3 different times???) but expect delays either with your order(s) or with correspondence from them. Keep your records, take pictures and document everything if you have problems with your order and pray they don’t try to blame the problem on you & your incompetence.

[OldBear]

I deeply appreciate honest and detailed reviews, thank you for posting your experience!

[Bluesky63]

I have purchased fruit and nut trees through University of Missouri Extension, which also has lots of info on cultivars, spray schedules, pruning, etc. I bought Chestnut trees and Black Walnut trees through the Center for Agroforestry (Univ of MO Ext) .

[AbundantAcres]

Thank you! I am in missouri and did order from the Mo conservation site. But haven’t gotten anything from the University of MO extension. How big are the trees that come from them? Im expecting the conservation trees to by super tiny sticks lol

[jeffR]

I ordered from Iowa DNR and they were 18 inch to 3 foot for the trees and shrubs so guessing yours will be similar.

[AutumnRidge]

The best bet is to graft your own trees. We grafted all our 62 Heritage Apple trees. Its not hard to learn and you can choose from a wide variety of rootstock and interstems to aid in disease resistance and hardiness. Our cost last year on new stock was around 12.00 per tree for scion wood and grafting supplies. We use Queener Farms (https://www.queenerfarm.com/) for our scions. I think you can get a bundle of 20 scions for about 60.00 on selected varieties of the same kind. Individual varieties are from 6.00 to around 15.00 each depending on how rare they are. The most economical way is to find someone with established Apple trees who will give you a few scions off them for free. I’m sure many on this platform would donate a few cuttings if you paid the shipping. If you have any questions about grafting and rootstock, contact us we will be glad to help.

[AbundantAcres]

Thank you for your reply! Ive started looking for local trees to get scions off of… now to buy rootstock!

[Baldwin-farm]

You can go through your local forestry service. You can get an order form from them. They have a good variety of fruit trees and also hard wood tree’s. Just depend on what you want.

[Baldwin-farm]

I go through my local forestry service. You can order from 25 on up. If you buy them by the bundle It is much cheaper. It usually is around a 1 a tree and up depends on what you get. They have a great selection of fruit tree and hard wood.

[AbundantAcres]

Thanks! I’ll check them out

[AbundantAcres]

I am in Missouri and I did order from our Conservation. They had some native fruit trees but no apples, cherries, etc. 🙁 but I got alot of other cool trees that I am excited for!

[AbundantAcres]

Thanks! I had never heard of this organization before!