Chopping and grafting may look brutal but can result in beautiful fruit trees
Visitors to my garden this time of year are often astonished to see me lopping the tops off some of my trees.
No, I'm not the Henry VIII of horticulture, chopping the head off any tree that no longer meets my fancy. OK, I am actually lopping the head off any tree that doesn't meet my fancy.
I part ways with Ol' Henry, though, because first, lopping the head off a tree does not kill it, and second, I graft on a new head. A few years after this seemingly brutal operation, the tree looks as chipper as ever. And it has a head that I like better — or else off it comes again.
I do this type of grafting, called topworking, mostly on my apple trees, but it could be applied to many other kinds of fruit or ornamental trees.
For instance, if you don't like the growth habit of your red maple or the leaf shape of your Japanese maple, you can just lop back the head and change it. Same goes for the flower colour of a crab apple or flowering cherry.
Each time I lop back one of my apple trees, I can make that tree into any one of the more than 5,000 other varieties of apple.
Mostly, you can only graft the same kinds of plants together — any variety of apple on an apple trunk, cherry on cherry, maple on maple, etc.
GATHER YOUR STEMS
Before you can topwork any tree, you have to have stems, called scions, of the variety to which you want to change the plant. You might get scions from a neighbour's or friend's tree that you have admired. I often get scions for grafting mailed to me from enthusiasts elsewhere across our fruited plain, or from government institutions.
Healthy portions of last year's growth, each cut into pieces a foot or so long, are ideal to become scions. They can be collected anytime in winter or early spring, as long as stems are showing no signs of growth and temperatures are above freezing.
Once you have scions in hand, put them in the refrigerator. Wrap them well in plastic, perhaps with a damp cloth to keep them plump with moisture.
A FEW CUTS AND YOU'RE FINISHED
The ideal time for topworking is when buds on the trunk are just beginning to grow; the scions are still under refrigeration in their winter sleep. This way, the scion will have time to knit to the lopped-back trunk and hook up its plumbing before its buds expand into thirsty new shoots.
The actual grafting operation is simple, and there are a few ways to go about it. The method I'll describe is the cleft graft, practised by gardeners for thousands of years and best done on trunks 2.5 to 10 centimetres across.
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Ask A Master Gardener • View topic - Pruning Japanese Maple Tree
Hello Lichow: The best time to prune a Japanese maple is not now, but from late autumn through to late winter, while the tree is leafless and dormant and when it is easier to see the woody parts of the plant. Never prune a maple in early spring when the sap is rising and the tree’s energy is focused on producing fresh foliage. Minor corrective pruning and thinning may be done in the summer when the tree is in active growth. Remove any dead or dis¬¬eased branches, followed by any that cross or rub against each other. Then, working from the trunk outward, remove any twigs and or awkward growth to promote good air circulation and an open framework. Cut off any branches that run parallel to each other and any running parallel to the main trunk. It is not really possible to restrict the height of a Japanese maple. The tree will just grow faster with thin, unruly branches.
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