Hard Graft

Seed trays suspended in my polytunnel... hopefully the mice can't get at them there

This week I learned the meaning of hard graft. Not in the sense of heavy labour although I've had my fair share of that, digging out wheelbarrowful after wheelbarrowful of rotted manure and forking it into my garden soil. No, on Saturday I enrolled on a workshop at the Centre for Alternative Technology to learn about grafting, and specifically the grafting of apple trees. And it is hard.

Our tutor, Chloe Ward, is a local specialist in fruit trees. A few years ago she conducted a survey of all the orchards she could find in Powys, the huge county in which Machynlleth nestles in its furthest north-west reaches, and wrote and published a detailed booklet with her findings. She wanted to find those varieties of apple which do best in the Welsh climate, ie very damp weather and generally poor soil. Her booklet identifies those she believes cope the most admirably with these conditions.

In go the mange tout seeds... 

I learned quite a lot about apple trees. Each variety of apple is a clone, so all Golden Delicious trees, for example, are genetically identical to each other. If you planted a Golden Delicious pip you would not get a Golden Delicious tree - it would be a unique new variety with most likely pretty awful fruit. To get a new Golden Delicious tree, you have to snip a bit of new growth off a branch, called a scion, and attach it to the top of a different little apple tree (just a stick with roots) called a rootstock. You've just grafted a new apple tree.

The art is in the attaching correctly. The two ends have to match near enough exactly so that they fuse, in time. Both ends are cut diagonally and should neatly fit together so you can't see any of the inside. They are then bound tightly together with plastic tape.

The snow has melted, the sun is shining, the muck is being spread!

The outer layer (phloem) in the bark transports the sugars generated by leaves. The next layer (cambium) in produces cells for both the outer and the inner layer. And the layer behind that (xylem) carries water from the roots all the way up to through to the leaves. It's crucial to get the middle layer lined up on both sides or the graft won't take.

After an hour's teaching we all found ourselves hacking away at bits of twig with Stanley knives, trying to get the two cuts to match up. I chose two scions - a Bardsey Island and a George Cave - they both flower at about the same time of year which is crucial for pollination, since they like most apple varieties are not self-fertile. Eventually I managed to get them attached to their respective rootstocks and planted in pots of compost. It's very fiddly. Whether it worked or not only time will tell. I'll be keeping them in my polytunnel and watering them so they should grow a few inches by autumn. If so they'll be planted on my land somewhere in the winter. If not, well, I'll have learned that I'm not a grafter.

My efforts. With spade and bucket for size comparison