4 ms·

These are an awful lot of work. I've got a couple of multigraft trees, with just 3 varieties (apples) on each, but wouldn't want anymore. Some varieties are m

by Jedd 7y ago

These are an awful lot of work. I've got a couple of multigraft trees, with just 3 varieties (apples) on each, but wouldn't want anymore. Some varieties are much more vigorous than others, so they require a lot more care and effort with pruning and training. Pest control, irrigation, picking are also much more complicated, as different varieties ripen at different times (often over many months). As I understand it there's no productivity gains either, in terms of volume of produce per unit of (land) area. Most commercial growers have moved / are moving towards upright trees, with dense plantings (1m spacing or less), as it maximises the labour, off-farm inputs, and management costs versus saleable produce. Doesn't look as pretty as the imagined idyll, but little of industrial agriculture does.

dev_dull 7y ago
It’s fun for small yards. I have a few plum and pluot multigrain. As you suggest it’s usually a game of wack-a-mole balancing the healthy vigorous variety with the slow one. The benefit is different fruit varieties at different times of the year.
- Jedd 7y ago
  I think even in small yards it's better to have a couple of upright trees. For pomes (apples, pears etc) in Australia we're seeing most nurseries now sell these on M27 (tiny footprint - will grow to about the size of a human), or M9 (bit bigger but still quite dwarfed). 3 x M27 grafted apples will take up the same (or less) space than a single standard multi-graft tree, but be easier to manage, be more resilient, while still giving you the longer harvest season & variety options.
pvaldes 7y ago
One of the points of grafting a familiar cocktail tree is to have different varieties rippen at different times, assuring the longest fruit season possible.
- Jedd 7y ago
  Again, the problem is that it's often easier to simply have different varieties on different trees, given those trees can be on highly-dwarfing rootstocks, so that they take up a similar space as a 'cocktail tree' with multiple grafts. Multiple trees also turn out to be a lot easier to manage -- you can prune them all the same size & shape, for starters, rather than having to track which branches belong to which variety and try to coax the slower growing specimens along, while being extra savage with the more vigorous varieties.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    This would be a good way to do it, but extra-dwarf rootstocks are delicate: Poor root systems, poor disease resistance, poor wind resistance, will not tolerate dry places or chalk, and are less vigorous than fruit varieties affecting to the graft point. They typically have much shorter lives. And not all fruits have this kind of rootstocks available. Sometimes, in small places, a big tree grafted with tree or four varieties is the right thing to do. It depends on the type of fruit, the type of soil and the space available. [Cocktail tree is a common denomination for this kind of trees, specially used in Citrus. I have one, grafted by me]
    - Jedd 7y ago
      Less vigorous root system, but that's how it dwarfs the plant -- not sure if they're less resistant to disease (I expect this is one of things they select for while breeding). Definitely these types (m9 ,m27) and similar need staking the entire life of the plant. Cocktail tree is something I've only heard in Australia, and only from some small subset of nurseries -- it's also commonly used in Spain then? A cocktail plant for me would normally be something like Mentha nemorosa (also challenging to find in Australia). A friend had a 3-way citrus, which did breathtakingly poorly for them, for the same reason my two (3-way pear, and a 3-way apple) -- a single dominant variety and two much less vigorous grafts. My two are now at least 25 years old, and still present more maintenance challenges than some decent stakes, soil maintenance & mulching.
mikro2nd 7y ago
As the linked page stated, though, the point is neither productivity nor commercial agronomics, the point is preservation of heirloom varieties that are precisely not interesting to commercial growers. I think this is a very important effort since it preserves genetic lines that may in the future turn out to once again be interesting as climate change makes new and unanticipated demands on food growing. That's not to say that we'll use those old varieties unchanged, rather that they may contribute genetics in the development of new strains.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > the point is preservation of heirloom varieties that are precisely not interesting to commercial growers The problem is that is not realist. This is definitely NOT how we will preserve heirloom varieties. Each variety needs their own tree not a stem. Trees discard its stems all the time so in 5 years most ot your varietes will dissapear. Has happened before with old cherries.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    The idea would be like trying to save dog breeds putting a collection of dogs from all breeds (shih tzus, mastiffs, chihuahuas and great danes) in the same room and competing for the same food
- Jedd 7y ago
  Heirloom preservation is indeed highly laudable. Brogdale [1] in the UK has ~2400 apple, ~500 pear, ~300 cherry, and a huge range of other edibles -- a fascinating place to walk around if you're ever in the area. But none of them are multi-grafted. Each apple variety has two physical specimens -- adjacent to each other, on semi-dwarfing stock, and they re-graft and relocate every ten years or so, IIRC. One of the researchers there told me that in the UK there used to be a known range of close to 10,000 unique apple varieties, but many are now simply lost in time. In Australia we've got a much smaller range available -- in the order of a few hundred I think -- but I don't believe anyone trying to maintain a collection is using (let alone relying on) multiple grafts on the same plant. [1] https://www.brogdalecollections.org/ https://www.brogdalecollections.org/
exDM69 7y ago
Even though grafting does not increase crop yield, it does reduce time to first harvest and improve resistance to certain kinds of pests and plant diseases, particularly at the root. In commerical wine production, most if not all vineyards have grafted the wine plants into rootstock of other plants (roses iirc) that have more resilient roots. Some fruit trees are produced similarly, using a fast growing and resilient rootstock and grafting the fruit bearing branches on it. And when buying new young trees to my garden (from a commercial supplier), I noticed that all of them look like grafts.
- Jedd 7y ago
  Grafting may well increase crop yield just because it increases vigour, and reduces disease & stress vectors, for the plant. I didn't intend to suggest grafting is bad -- it's clearly a great thing to do. All ~25 of my heirloom apple, peach, and pear varieties are grafted. And yes, I doubt you can find fruit trees in a nursery that aren't grafted. I was suggesting that multi-grafted trees are more bother than multiple single-grafted trees.

by Jedd 7y ago

dev_dull 7y ago

It’s fun for small yards. I have a few plum and pluot multigrain. As you suggest it’s usually a game of wack-a-mole balancing the healthy vigorous variety with the slow one. The benefit is different fruit varieties at different times of the year.

Jedd 7y ago
I think even in small yards it's better to have a couple of upright trees. For pomes (apples, pears etc) in Australia we're seeing most nurseries now sell these on M27 (tiny footprint - will grow to about the size of a human), or M9 (bit bigger but still quite dwarfed). 3 x M27 grafted apples will take up the same (or less) space than a single standard multi-graft tree, but be easier to manage, be more resilient, while still giving you the longer harvest season & variety options.

pvaldes 7y ago

One of the points of grafting a familiar cocktail tree is to have different varieties rippen at different times, assuring the longest fruit season possible.

Jedd 7y ago
Again, the problem is that it's often easier to simply have different varieties on different trees, given those trees can be on highly-dwarfing rootstocks, so that they take up a similar space as a 'cocktail tree' with multiple grafts. Multiple trees also turn out to be a lot easier to manage -- you can prune them all the same size & shape, for starters, rather than having to track which branches belong to which variety and try to coax the slower growing specimens along, while being extra savage with the more vigorous varieties.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  This would be a good way to do it, but extra-dwarf rootstocks are delicate: Poor root systems, poor disease resistance, poor wind resistance, will not tolerate dry places or chalk, and are less vigorous than fruit varieties affecting to the graft point. They typically have much shorter lives. And not all fruits have this kind of rootstocks available. Sometimes, in small places, a big tree grafted with tree or four varieties is the right thing to do. It depends on the type of fruit, the type of soil and the space available. [Cocktail tree is a common denomination for this kind of trees, specially used in Citrus. I have one, grafted by me]
  - Jedd 7y ago
    Less vigorous root system, but that's how it dwarfs the plant -- not sure if they're less resistant to disease (I expect this is one of things they select for while breeding). Definitely these types (m9 ,m27) and similar need staking the entire life of the plant. Cocktail tree is something I've only heard in Australia, and only from some small subset of nurseries -- it's also commonly used in Spain then? A cocktail plant for me would normally be something like Mentha nemorosa (also challenging to find in Australia). A friend had a 3-way citrus, which did breathtakingly poorly for them, for the same reason my two (3-way pear, and a 3-way apple) -- a single dominant variety and two much less vigorous grafts. My two are now at least 25 years old, and still present more maintenance challenges than some decent stakes, soil maintenance & mulching.

mikro2nd 7y ago

As the linked page stated, though, the point is neither productivity nor commercial agronomics, the point is preservation of heirloom varieties that are precisely not interesting to commercial growers. I think this is a very important effort since it preserves genetic lines that may in the future turn out to once again be interesting as climate change makes new and unanticipated demands on food growing. That's not to say that we'll use those old varieties unchanged, rather that they may contribute genetics in the development of new strains.

pvaldes 7y ago
> the point is preservation of heirloom varieties that are precisely not interesting to commercial growers The problem is that is not realist. This is definitely NOT how we will preserve heirloom varieties. Each variety needs their own tree not a stem. Trees discard its stems all the time so in 5 years most ot your varietes will dissapear. Has happened before with old cherries.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  The idea would be like trying to save dog breeds putting a collection of dogs from all breeds (shih tzus, mastiffs, chihuahuas and great danes) in the same room and competing for the same food
Jedd 7y ago
Heirloom preservation is indeed highly laudable. Brogdale [1] in the UK has ~2400 apple, ~500 pear, ~300 cherry, and a huge range of other edibles -- a fascinating place to walk around if you're ever in the area. But none of them are multi-grafted. Each apple variety has two physical specimens -- adjacent to each other, on semi-dwarfing stock, and they re-graft and relocate every ten years or so, IIRC. One of the researchers there told me that in the UK there used to be a known range of close to 10,000 unique apple varieties, but many are now simply lost in time. In Australia we've got a much smaller range available -- in the order of a few hundred I think -- but I don't believe anyone trying to maintain a collection is using (let alone relying on) multiple grafts on the same plant. [1] https://www.brogdalecollections.org/ https://www.brogdalecollections.org/

exDM69 7y ago

Even though grafting does not increase crop yield, it does reduce time to first harvest and improve resistance to certain kinds of pests and plant diseases, particularly at the root. In commerical wine production, most if not all vineyards have grafted the wine plants into rootstock of other plants (roses iirc) that have more resilient roots. Some fruit trees are produced similarly, using a fast growing and resilient rootstock and grafting the fruit bearing branches on it. And when buying new young trees to my garden (from a commercial supplier), I noticed that all of them look like grafts.

Jedd 7y ago
Grafting may well increase crop yield just because it increases vigour, and reduces disease & stress vectors, for the plant. I didn't intend to suggest grafting is bad -- it's clearly a great thing to do. All ~25 of my heirloom apple, peach, and pear varieties are grafted. And yes, I doubt you can find fruit trees in a nursery that aren't grafted. I was suggesting that multi-grafted trees are more bother than multiple single-grafted trees.