Why Grow Your Own Fruit Tree – Growing Apple Trees

Why would anyone want to grow or develop their own apple trees when you can buy them and not have to worry about anything but planting them? Well even if you purchase your apple trees from a local nursery you still need to take care of them if you are going to get a high quality apple of them year after year. But there are many other benefits from growing your own Fruit Trees.

What Is The Best Way To Grow Your Own Apple Trees Or To Start An Orchard

I strongly believe the best method for starting your own Apple Orchard is by growing your own Fruit Trees from Root-stock. Yes it will take you two extra years for Fruit, but you will get the trees and the fruit you want, at a fraction of the cost.

By growing your own Apple Trees you choose the Root-stock that is most suitable for you and your geographical area. Then you graft onto that Root-stock the Scion or Bud of the Apple you want to grow. These Scions and Buds will grow an exact clone of the fruit in which you took the Scion or Bud from. So by asking around and finding apple trees that family or friends may have, choosing those that are great tasting or good for cooking, you will get more than enough Scions and Buds to grow hundreds of trees in one year.

You may wonder, by taking these Scions & Buds are you hurting the Fruit Trees you have taken them from, no! What you want to take are the Scions that will be removed when trimming the tree back for next Spring, so they would be just tossed away anyways. And one long Scion will have many Buds that can be used to produce many new Apple Trees. Also, one nice Scion will be long enough to cut four or five sections, each with 3 or 4 buds, to use for grafting.

Benefits From Growing Your Own Apple Trees

Here are a few benefits for growing your own Apple Trees;

You choose the type of tree you want; Dwarf, Semi-Dwarf, or Standard.
You choose the best Root-stock that will grow in your soil type and climate (region).
You choose the best Root-stock that also gives you the disease resistances you want.
You now graft which Apple you plan to clone.
After 3 years you can also graft (clone – exact genetic code) other types of Apples onto the same tree.

Is It Hard To Graft Scions & Buds To Root-stock

Grafting is very easy to learn, but practice on a bench first before trying any grafting. I found after the first year, learning how to do multiple grafts, I get 100% success on Root-stock and 98% when grafting to large branches or trunks.

When Will I See Fruit

When growing Apple Trees from Root-stock you will see a few blossoms after the first year, but you want to pick these off, not allowing any apples to grow until the fifth year. This gives the tree time to develop its root system and become stronger.

How Fast Will My Trees Grow

The growth of your Apple Trees will depend on you Root-stock, soil, and the weather. However since you need to plant these new trees in your garden for the first two years, protecting them from the Rabbits and Deer, you can control all these elements. Since I use Semi-dwarf root-stock my trees grow like this;

Buds- The first year (same year of the graft) you will see no growth to 1 inch.
Scions – The first year (same year of the graft) you will see 8 inches to 3 feet of growth.
Buds – The second year you will see an additional 2 feet to 3 feet of growth.
Scions – The second year you will see an additional 2 feet to 3 feet of growth.
Buds & Scions – After 5 years you looking at an 8 to 10 foot tree.

See why the Bud Graft is the best graft!