Root Stock Growths

[zazen999]

Probably for FB but others may know.

I am involved with a group that are in the process of taking over responsibiltiy for a community garden and we went round today to start documenting it 'as is'. and at the best of some of the fruit trees [it hasn't been touched for about 18 months/2 years] loads of shoots of the parent root stock are growing.

Natch, I am trying to capture as much 'propagation material' as possible during the clean up and along with getting the soft fruit that has already germinated potted up for selling next season - I wondered how easy it is to pot these up and use them as future root stocks for grafting? I'm not worried about knowing the variety of root stock, they all seem to be medium sized as the garden and trees are many years old.

Best solutions would be great, the garden will be working as a social enterprise and it's essential that we make best use of any and all resources presented to us.

Any ideas would be grand to try and maximise the returns on this idea. Thanks.

[FB.]

Rootstock suckers can be dug up and used for rootstock. They need to be fairly vigorous ones and need to have a few roots attacked for best results.

If the trees have much canker, it is risky taking any grafts or suckers from it as it seems that canker can spread in graftwood. If canker is a problem, prune out the cankers for a year or two and if canker comes under control, you cna start taking grafts from vigorous young shoots.
Successful grafts require healthy and vigorous young shoots. Weak-growing shoots have a high failure rate, especially if they are not naturally high-vigour varieties.

You may find that the trees you propagate are less vigorous than their "mother" tree due to the mother tree gradually having picked up virus infections throughout its life - such as from sap-sucking aphids and nematodes. Viruses can't be cured or treated, but most trees can live with them and only tend to show a reduction in vigour.
Most of the ancient varieties of apple probably carry viruses picked up over the centuries but we still grow them successfully.

[zazen999]

They are very vigorous - and look very healthy - thanks FB, much obliged.

Will start marking them up so that the volunteer groups don't chop them back when I'm not looking. I am colour coding things with coloured balls and anything labelled in red is not to be touched, green is good to compost and blue is to be taken off site. Will get some balls for next week.

Cheers.

[Two_Sheds]

There was a good bit about rootstocks in the Sepp Holzer that I just took back to the library this morning.

There must be a free PDF on the net, somewhere

[zazen999]

There's probably a copy in the library at work, it's just I've been working at home most of this week. Will have a look on Monday, thanks.