Tell me the caliper (or diameter of the red delicious branch about 4" away from the trunk) of the branch and I will save you appropriate diameter size of Golden Dorsett.

You can graft a small 1/8" diameter using cleft graft unto it. But it wouldn't be vigorous. You can forget about that branch and graft unto others that have split into several bigger branches. Do the other cultivars have forked into bigger branches already?

Congratulations on your find!

As for how they graft trees like apples and peaches, the most common method is cleft (also called whip or tongue graft). You match the diameter of the limb at the point you are going to graft, make a matching long diagonal cut on both pieces, then make a short cut angled inward on the cut face of each piece. Put them together so that the short tongues are inserted into each other and then wrap with grafting tape.

You can do a cleft graft on any part of the trunk or branches, but as the diameter gets bigger than 1/2 inch it becomes easier to do bark grafts.

They use chip budding on those multiple grafting when the rootstock is still small. Unlike citruses, the multiple chip budding on a single trunk will readily sprout with pome type fruit trees.

All of this talk about grafting apples makes me want to try to graft a pollinizer to my two apple trees. I have two young trees, one is a staymen, one of my favorites, but sterile. The other is a granny smith, which I love for baking. My granny smith will pollinate my staymen, but not vice versa. My neighbor has a yellow delicious, which is close enough to my trees to do the job, but since it is not my tree and he could decide to remove it... I would not get good pollination, since the next nearest apple is a crabapple about 100 yards away. My mother has a yellow delicious of a size that a few donations of scion to her daughter would not impact her production, so I could ask her to collect wood for me to give it a try. Is February in PA the proper time to do this? If I follow all the advice in this forum, I believe I would store this scion wood sealed in zip bags and in the crisper of my frig; is this correct? I think I would also wait to attempt the graft when the tree buds are breaking, since this would be my absolute first attempt at grafting in any way, shape or form. That would also give me the time to get all the grafting supplies that I would need.

In reading about the different types of grafting, I think I would be most comfortable attempting a cleft graft for my first try. Joe or anyone else who is an avid grafter, could you suggest a ranking of the easiest to hardest type of grafting for someone who has never attempted? This would obviously be top work, so I do not think budding or chip budding would be ideal for this situation, but any input on that would also be appreciated. Thank you Dauben and Joe for fueling my interest in doing this, Barbara

Try the bark grafting tutorial when the barks are slipping. You can use smaller diameter scionwood to graft unto bigger diameter destination branch. It is one of the easiest as you need to only slice one side.

Yes, wrap the scionwood with moistened paper towel, put inside ziploc bag and place in the crisper until the stock is blooming. Then do your grafting. you can do bark grafting well into fall, so that is a lot of time. The earliest you can do it is when the bud swells, usually the bark can be lifted easily for the bark grafting operation.

That's a great pictorial demo from FigNut. Thanks for the posting.

My only comment to improve Fignut's method is that to first detach the leaf from the donor bud by cutting the leaf petiole midway. This would still leave you a handle to comfortably hold the donor bud, but the major advantage is that it would minimize moisture loss on the bud. Imagine a whole leaf losing water vapor especially if the air is dry, which often is, the tiny bud attached to a transpiring leaf would be dessicated easily. I suspect that the operation was done in the morning when relative humidity is a lot higher, or just after the rains, and the operation took a very short time and so the bud survived. But to be safe, I strongly recommend to cut off the leaf attached to the bud even before removing the donor bud. You wanted your donor bud to be as succulent as possible to enhance survival.

Today, I was spraying some of my Clementine trees with a 10-PPM Gibberellic acid spray to "pollinate" the blooms. Afterwards I looked through the entire 26 pages of the gibberellic label and noticed that there is not one single registered use on apples, not one! I was surprised. While reading the label, I also noticed another interesting item, which really did not surprise me all that much. It had to do with none other than one particular statet--- CALIFORNIA. Gibberellic acid is registered for use in every state of the union and most countries of the world for uses on Blueberries, Red Tart Cherries, Italian Prunes, Non Bearing Stone Fruit, Strawberries, Cranberries, Cucumbers, Melons, Peppers and Spinach but cannot be use in----- California. Does the voters in California need to take a look at the regulators they send to office ??????- Millet

BTW -- I bought some more Pink Lady apples at the store the other day-- It reaffirmed my opinion of Fuji apples as number 1 in my book. The Pink Ladys are getting a little soft --maybe since it is 4-5 months past prime picking time-- I never get that from Fujis no matter what time of yr I get them. Some of the Pink Ladys are still pretty firm, and they are all still much better than the average apple this time of yr--especially RDs.

Perhaps I got the genuine Pink Lady apples and/or a fake Fuji Apples growing in my yard.

One has to remember that the Pink Lady apples are better planted where there is prolonged heat like in the inland valley where I am located, and not in the California foothills where most of the best apples are grown.