Grafting apple trees are important techniques in joining different types of apple trees. Known in agriculture as a sexual propagation, grafting apple trees is a simple technique of inserting a part of a branch of an apple tree to those of another tree to connect its vascular tissues.

Available variety of apple seeds in the market is rare. Grafting apple trees is an expensive tool in produce your desired type of apple.

What do you need before you start grafting apple trees?

Before you start grafting apple trees, you need to first know the different parts of a grafted tree and the anatomy on how these plants grow from two combined into one. Scion is the top part of a grafted tree and the stock is at the bottom which is the root the grafting apple trees. The scion is responsible for the genes to reproduce together in conjunction with the stock. In some cases, a scion could be a stem, a fruit or a flower.

To be able for the grafting apple trees to be successful, the scion and the stock must in contact with each other. Since the tissues of the tree are newly formed, the structural joint is weaker which is at the graft. So in order for the grafted tree to stand strong, it needs few weeks for the graft to be “taken”.

One of main advantages of grafting apple trees is that it the trees don’t undergo the juvenile phase anymore. Since there already an existing tree, this gives you faster time to harvest your apple trees. Grafting apple trees also produce hybrid apples in just a short period of time compared to other hybrid apple trees that took five years for it to produce results.

What are the different types in grafting apple trees?

There are a variety of approaches in grafting apple trees. But these steps are simple and easy to do.

Using a knife, you need to cut the top of a rootstock from an apple tree. The length of the stock should be five to six inches above the soil level. After it, you need to slice the mid portion down to the bottom of the stock in around half an inch to create a slope for the scion to be connected.

For the scion, you need to get an apple twig that has few buds, cut a length of four inches in order for it to match with the slope of the rootstock. You need to vertically cut the mid portion of slope at the base of the scion in a half an inch.

Join the stock and scion together interlocking cuts. Cover the grafted part with a strip of plastic to hold the two pieces in place. A better option is a waxed string for grafting apple trees. It would take around 4-8 weeks for the grafting of apple trees to successfully complete.

Grafting apple trees is not that complicated compared to other types such as budding, cleft and whip, even beginners can do this as well.