Grafting To A 2yr Old Tree

Can you save a new 5/8″ transplant the did not grow well the first year and started to die? Yes, and I will show you how here, however it would be much faster to dig it up and plant a new tree. Why? Because it will take 2 -3 years for a new graft to get going and produce fruit, where a new semi-dwarf apple tree will bare fruit within 3 years.

Cleft Grafting With Two Different Scions

Since I already have many apple trees I thought I would save this Zestar instead of digging it up and planting a new tree. However since this is my only Zestar and I do not have any Zestar Scions I will graft a HoneyCrisp & Wealthy to it instead. This will then produce a tree with 3 different varieties; Zestar, HoenyCrisp, & Wealthy. The graft I will use here is the Cleft since the trunk is larger than a nickel, otherwise I would have preferred the Whip & Tongue graft.

The Zestar’s Progress after 10 weeks

It’s now been ten weeks since we grafted to our Zestar trying to save this tree. You will see the progress for the Scions is slow, the deer have trimmed some of the main branches, and yet the tree is doing well.