Gary Tocheri, age 14, of Fort William., for his question:
Why do we have to graft fruit trees?
John Chapman gathered apple seeds in Pennsylvania. He toted them to the pioneers in Ohio and planted them in rich soil beside the streams. He was, of course, our gentle Johnny Appleseed, who not only planted orchards in Ohio but in Indiana and Illinois as well. Ten years after Johnny planted an orchard the pioneers enjoyed a fair harvest of apples. The apples were goods but not so good as those from the parent trees in Pennsylvania.
Our great big apples descended from the pretty little crab apple. When our highly developed tees are grown from seed, they do not run true to form. The apples may take a step back towards their wild ancestors, or they may produce something new and different, In any cases, apples from seed trees cannot be depended upon to be like their parents. The fruit farmer makes sure he gets the apples he wants by grafting.
Grafting is a merger between two trees. One is a sturdy stock tree grown from a seed. The other is a cuttings called a scion, taken from a tree bearing the kind of apples selected.
The seedling is cut down to bare the inner wood. The scion also is cut to bare the inner wood. The two areas of inner wood are placed face to face. The stem and the twig are taped and sealed together. New woody cells begin to grow, joining the stock and the scion. Soon they begin to act as one plant. The stock provides the root system. It sends up moisture and minerals from the soil for the whole tree. Later on, when the scion buds its leaves provide plant food for the whole tree. The scion may be the whole trunk or merely a branch of the grafted apple tree.
The apples from the scion will be perfect copies of the apples on the tree from which it came. Not only does this grafting guarantee apples of the right sort, it also speeds the harvest. In stead of the ten years needed for a seedling to yield, the grafted tree has apples in two or three years.
There are other advantages to grafting. A grafted fruit tree may be made to grow in new places. A peach likes sandy, well‑sanded soil. The plum tree likes poorly drained soil. Peach can be grafted onto plum stock growing in soggy soil. Plum can be grafted ,into peach stock growing in looses sandy soil. So we get peaches and plums growing where they have never grown before.
Grafting also helps to keep down plait pests and disease. Some fruit trees cannot be hurt by this pest or that disease. These trees form fine stock, though the fruit may be poor,.
Some years ago the grape vines of France were attacked by a pesky root louse. This fellow had no interest in the roots of our American grape vine. So these immune vines were used as stock, Scions from the French vines were grafted onto them. The result ‑ the French vineyards bore French grapes on American stock free from the pesky root louse.
Grafting is a simple job to an expert. The fruit trees are grafted at a nursery. The farmer gets the young plant when stock and scion are already merged. He plants them far enough apart and in the proper soil. When harvest comes around, he is quite sure to get the fruit he expected, all because of grafting.