PUT TOGETHER AN ORCHARD BY YOURSELF!

(Page 6 of 6)

August/September 1992
 
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FRAMEWORKING AND TOP-WORKING

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If you have a vigorous, hardy apple tree already on your place, but wish that it bore better fruit, you can framework it to convert the whole tree top to a new variety. (It's better to do the work over two years or more in order not to shock the tree.) Cut off all its branches at a point where they are about two inches in diameter, and using cleft, bark, or oblique side grafting, put on scions of the desired variety. Or use smaller branches and do whip and tongue grafting. Remove all shoots, spurs, and small branches of the original tree top. In only a few seasons, your tree will bear a full crop of the new kind of apple.

If you want a previously grafted tree to bear more than one variety of apple, or if you just want to add a few different branches to a wild apple tree, then topwork the tree. The grafting process is the same as that for frame-working, but less extensive. All you have to remove from the tree are those shoots that spring up below the graft.

All this may sound like a lot of bother to you. Perhaps it is. But an orchard you make yourself is both satisfying and rewarding — just wait until you take a bite of your first home-grown!

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