About the service
A mature apple or pear already owns the one thing a young sapling cannot buy: a root system that took fifteen years to build. Throwing that away because the variety turned out sour, or because the fruit never ripens before the first frost, has always seemed wasteful to me. Top-working keeps the trunk and the skeletal limbs exactly where they are and changes only the crown. Two or three seasons later you pick a different apple from the same tree, and if I work several limbs you get three or four varieties at once, which settles pollination on its own and stretches the picking season from midsummer to late autumn instead of cramming it into one busy week.
The work begins in the middle of winter. I cut scionwood on a frosty day, once the cold has properly settled, taking well ripened one-year shoots from the outer, sunlit side of a tree I have seen fruit. The wood goes into damp sand or a sealed wrap in a cool cellar, a degree or two above freezing, because the whole trick rests on one rule: the scion must still be asleep when the stock has already woken up. Compatibility is decided before the knife comes out. Pear goes onto pear or quince, apple onto apple or a seedling stock, plum and apricot stay inside their own family; an unhappy pairing may hold for three years and then part at the union under a load of fruit.
On thin wood, up to about the thickness of a pencil, I use the whip-and-tongue: the tongue locks the two faces together, the cambium meets along the entire length of the cut, and the union is mechanically sound from the first day. On a thick stub the choice is a cleft graft or bark grafting, and bark grafting only once the sap is running and the bark lifts cleanly. The knife is honed until it shaves, every cut is made in one pass, and nobody touches the exposed wood with a finger. Bindings are tight and elastic, every open surface and the top of each scion sealed. Spring work follows the sap; in midsummer I bud with a dormant eye, the quietest way to add a variety to a tree.
What is included: assessment of the tree and choice of compatible varieties; winter cutting and correct storage of scionwood; whip-and-tongue, cleft and bark grafts as the wood dictates; summer budding where it suits better; tight binding and sealing of every cut; a return visit to loosen the ties, thin competing shoots, rub off wild growth below the union and begin shaping the new crown; written notes on what was put where. I guarantee the take: whatever fails in the first season I regraft the following spring at no extra charge.
The work begins in the middle of winter. I cut scionwood on a frosty day, once the cold has properly settled, taking well ripened one-year shoots from the outer, sunlit side of a tree I have seen fruit. The wood goes into damp sand or a sealed wrap in a cool cellar, a degree or two above freezing, because the whole trick rests on one rule: the scion must still be asleep when the stock has already woken up. Compatibility is decided before the knife comes out. Pear goes onto pear or quince, apple onto apple or a seedling stock, plum and apricot stay inside their own family; an unhappy pairing may hold for three years and then part at the union under a load of fruit.
On thin wood, up to about the thickness of a pencil, I use the whip-and-tongue: the tongue locks the two faces together, the cambium meets along the entire length of the cut, and the union is mechanically sound from the first day. On a thick stub the choice is a cleft graft or bark grafting, and bark grafting only once the sap is running and the bark lifts cleanly. The knife is honed until it shaves, every cut is made in one pass, and nobody touches the exposed wood with a finger. Bindings are tight and elastic, every open surface and the top of each scion sealed. Spring work follows the sap; in midsummer I bud with a dormant eye, the quietest way to add a variety to a tree.
What is included: assessment of the tree and choice of compatible varieties; winter cutting and correct storage of scionwood; whip-and-tongue, cleft and bark grafts as the wood dictates; summer budding where it suits better; tight binding and sealing of every cut; a return visit to loosen the ties, thin competing shoots, rub off wild growth below the union and begin shaping the new crown; written notes on what was put where. I guarantee the take: whatever fails in the first season I regraft the following spring at no extra charge.
