You can graft to your rootstock when the new growth is large enough. A nice experiment, educational and inexpensive.

You could do a bud graft in the summer (when buds are available from the current year's growth) but not force it until spring.

You could do a whip and tongue, a bark, a chip, or a cleft graft next spring. Plenty of people here would be glad to give their well-informed opinions on any of these.

You do run the risk of being on a rootstock that isn't suited to your purpose, but you should be able to find out from the seller what it is- or at least whether it's a semi-dwarf (most likely) or a standard. Then come back here and get even more opinions!

Good luck to you,

M

Thanks. I need a book or DVD! :)

I'm guessing you were happy enough with the rootstock when it was Honeycrisp so I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be just as good for you to graft onto again.

By grafting onto it you maintain the advantage of having already established roots so the graft should take off nicely.

I have 4 apple trees on my property that were all stumps cut flush to the ground when I bought my house 10 years ago. I didn't even realize they were appple trees until I stopped regularly mowing them to the ground and allowed one sucker from each to grow into a tree.

Beginning last spring, I am now topworking them all into multigrafts. Its a lot of fun.

Frank- A couple of links to get you started. I suspect you'll have questions for a while ...

http://citrus.forumup.org/about500-0-asc-0-citrus.html

http://citrus.forumup.org/viewtopic.php?t=1762&mforum=citrus

A word of warning: just about everybody here knows more about this subject than I; I'm a fair source for links, but that's about it! (To put this in perspective, I've done probably 100 or so grafts in my lifetime. Some of these guys do that many in an hour or so.)

:-)M

One further word of caution.

Highly, *highly* addictive this grafting thang.

Consider yourself warned.

Don

I'm already tempted to order some Antonovka seeds and start growing my own rootstock. I've already got 2 peaches started from seeds (locally picked) 8 walnut seedlings, 2 mangoes that have sprouted from seeds, and i just put in an order for a bunch of banana seeds! I plant on keeping all my peach seeds from this years crop.

Frank:

I know you are in a chilly winter climate, but seedling Antonovka will grow a really big tree. Every time I prune, spray, thin, bag and pick my apples, I thank my blind luck in planting trees on semi-dwarfing rootstocks.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA