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Have a problem, hoping for help.
Local nurseries have all joined in a conspiracy to rip gardeners off by only selling grafted trees.
Grafted trees loose their grafts in 8-12 years. So what you plant today, won’t be what you harvest in the future when your older and need an reduction in effort to harvest the food you thought you’d planted long ago.
Least thats my experience.
I remember when Graft was something to avoid, not something anyone wanted to depend on.
So please, does anyone know who sells ungrafted Zone 9D trees? Or could some kind soul point me in the right direction?
Looking for Aravaipa Avocado, Peach, Nectarine, loquats, cumquat almond, olive, Lemon (lisbon or mayers preferred).
Heritage Seeds Welcome, have green house willling to grow my own, bare root probably would be better for transportation.
Thank you
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I haven’t had any luck, they were all grafted; HD, Lowes, ACE, Costco, Amazon, Wayfair, Overstock, HSN, QVC are the big box I’ve checked. Big one here is Moon Valley-all grafted. It’s cheaper to graft a teeny tiny bit of a good plant on a cheap root base, and they get away by saying it is for the health of the tree. Only they’re not any healthier, just very much cheaper to mass produce, and who doesn’t like an increassed profit, even if its at the cost of the future.
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great point….that pertains to roses also…hard to find those that arent grafted from something else to make a new species….AND as you mentioned…they revert back to the “mother” after so many years…..had a gorgeous rose, names “Firefighter’s Rose” specifically remembering the 9-11 firefighters that dies….father and brother were firefighters in our city, Dad bought all 3 of his kids one of those roses….they were the most beautiful color…deep, deep red, and sooo fragrant! the others lost theirs, still have mine…has been from VA, NC, WV, FL and now back to NC, in the ground permanently. contacted Edmund’s Roses bout a year ago, they said it has reverted back to the original stock it was grafted from….so fragrance isnt so strong, and the color isnt as deep. still beautiful and has memories. so yes, good point to beware of in planting food for the long term…..I wouldnt have even thought of that!!!
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My dad grew up in apple orchards. He says trees are grafted because they produce better fruit, or because they will graft a particular fruit to a disease resistant rootstock. I attended a grafting class years ago and it was neat to learn how to do that. We grafted a different variety of pear onto an existing 4-inch trunk. It also allows a few varieties to be on the same tree, for those that don’t have enough space for a huge orchard. For instance, I have an apple tree with 5 different varieties of apples. It gets a bit tricky since they can mature at different times 😋.
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We have grafted and use grafting fruit to alder roots… they fruit is never as big or as sweet as the true trees.
It works good for about 10 years then it just starts dieing off.
It does have good uses but should not be first purchases. The original trees here some are over 40 years and still I good health giving us fruit and all the grafting clips we need.
We have into 100s of fruit trees.
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I don’t know about anything except apples, but all apples you buy at any store or orchard are coming from grafted trees. And grafted trees have been the norm for decades.
The apple fruit, is determined by the type of tree it grows on – a Macintosh tree produces Macintosh apples. But the seeds inside that apple are like human embryos and contain a mix of the DNA from both parents. Thus the Macintosh apple has seeds inside it, which are a blend of Macintosh DNA (from the mother tree it is growing on) and whatever type of daddy apple tree inseminated it (could be any type of apple: Wolf River, Dolgo crabapple, Granny Smith, etc). As a result, those seeds within the Macintosh apple, will not grow into a Macintosh tree, but rather will be a unique blend of Macintosh and Granny Smith DNA, and that new seedling may be hardy, or wimpy, may produce well, or sparingly, may taste like crap, etc.To avoid this problem, all modern trees are grafted, where a bottom half (roots and a few inches of trunk) have the top chopped off and a small branch from whatever is the desired type of tree gets grafted onto the trunk.
There ARE some host/graft incompatibilities, but in general, most trees are just fine. If a nursery is selling things were the graft breaks after 10 years, I would be curious about WHO is doing the grafting and picking the rootstock choices.Having said all that, if you wish to plant non-grafted trees, you can call most nurseries and tell them you just want a “rootstock” sapling. The most common type is Antonovka (a Russian, cold tolerant, sour apple), though I have heard that Ranetka is also quite good.
There are other engineered types that will result in SOME degree of dwarfing, but they are also engineered to have different types of disease resistance. The problem is that many will required additional support (staking to hold up branches) and such, which is why for the home orchardist I would recommend Antonovka or Ranetka.
Here is a link that has some info – https://wintercovefarm.com/shop/rootstock/
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