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Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.
If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot.
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If you're unfamiliar with multi-butted fruit trees and you have a small yard and you want a cornucopia of tasty fruit,
then a multi-butted fruit tree just might be right for you.
Sure, you can purchase a fruit tree with several different varieties of fruit growing on it, but there are limitations, of course.
Or you can take up the garden craft of grafting and splice many different varieties of fruit
onto a single compatible existing fruit tree in your yard.
Here's a hint, it has to do with that word compatible.
Oh, and timing too.
And knowing which side of the tree is better for certain varieties of fruit.
We talk with Phil Purcell of Dave Wilson Nursery and we tackle a fruit tree question from a listener from Ohio
who wants to know, is it better to buy a multi-butted fruit tree or can I do it myself?
And how do you graft branches onto a fruit tree?
Well, you know really, that last question is better answered by watching a video for which we have suggestions
or reading a book about fruit tree grafting, and again, we have suggestions.
Still, that does not stop us from trying to explain grafting techniques on a podcast.
For that, we have Master Gardener Vicki Marie Parker Ward to go over some of the how-to basics of fruit tree grafting.
It's all in today's episode 261, multi-butted fruit tree basics.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful of Butyl on Jungle in suburban purgatory.
It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast brought to you today by SmartPods and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast.
A lot of ways you can get your questions in.
One of my favorite ways is SpeakPipe.
Go to SpeakPipe.com slash Garden Basics and then just yell at your computer and I'll get the question.
It's amazing. It's magic. It's the 21st century.
You can also send an email to Fred at Farmer Fred.com. That works too.
But SpeakPipe, it's a popular way to go without incurring telephone charges.
It was used recently by a listener named Nikki back in Columbus, Ohio.
And here's what she had to say.
Hi, Fred.
My name's Nikki and I live in Ohio's on 6A.
I was hoping you could answer some questions I have about grafted fruit trees.
When I was doing some research about fruit trees that work well in my area,
I noticed that a lot of options are grafted ones.
So you can have three or four different types of fruit on one tree,
which seems appealing when you only really have that much space for about one or two trees in your backyard.
A couple of questions about that is, should I buy like a pre-grafted one or should I do it myself?
If I do do it myself, probably young do the cuttings need to be in order to grow properly.
And then if I do do it myself, either any techniques I should be wary of that might not work well in my area since it is hot and humid.
Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to your response.
Well, it's a fruit tree grafting question.
So for that, we turn to fruit tree grafting expert, Dave Wilson, nurseries, Phil Purcell, and Phil, yeah, grafting is an art.
It's a science. It takes a lot of practice.
And for that reason, I usually advice just go buy a multi-grafted tree.
Yeah, I mean, that is by far the best way of getting multiple graphs onto a tree.
It's just to go ahead and buy one that's, you know, it's already been done by the professional.
You know, everything's done for you.
The root stock is there. The budget varieties are there.
When you just pick up the tree and you can just plant it and let it grow and start enjoying it.
But a lot of people don't realize grafting is all about timing, timing, and timing.
The season.
So Dave Wilson nursery, grafts two times a year.
One is kind of like right now going into April, we do what we call our Junebud graphs.
And we already have established root stock in the ground about when the weather warms up and April into May in the bark on the understock, the root stock starts to slip.
We're able to go out and use some dormant wood, dormant wood that mother block wood that we have been in cold storage.
And we do what's known as chip fighting.
Once things start warming up past about May, any type of grafting won't take place.
You don't get a good knit on it until the fall time.
And that's the second time that we graft.
And then at that time, we're using fresh wood cutting from our mother's stock to basically do the same chip fighting.
But it's all about timing.
If you don't get the timing right, your butt and your graft will not pay.
I have been a victim of that many times because here in California, there's a group called the California Rare Fruit Growers.
And they hold every January, cyan exchanges throughout the state.
A cyan, of course, is that fruiting wood, the piece of wood that's going to produce that desirable piece of fruit.
And people come to these exchanges with basically sticks in hand, trading it for others.
They might trade some apples for some peaches or something like that.
The mistake a lot of people make is after they leave that January event, they go home and they try grafting.
And it ain't going to take because it's too darn cold.
I guess you have to put those cuttings like you do at Dave Wilson Nursery into cold storage for a few months.
Exactly.
What's very unfortunate is that after they do the grafting process, they wait and wait and wait.
So now you're on to one month, two month, three months, two, you realize the grafting is paid.
And that kind of goes back to Nicki's question.
Well, should she go ahead and try to do the grafting herself?
You can go out and buy a tree that already has varieties that are one year on the tree, ready to go.
Or you can spend your time trying to find that the graft would do the grafting and waiting and waiting
and waiting to see if it actually takes.
And on like a multi-budget tree, what if only one or two grafts take?
Now you have a misshapen tree right from the get-go.
Again, much easier to go to the nursery and buy a pre-grafted tree.
But if you're going to do it yourself, I would think that whatever you're grafting on there has to be compatible
with the root stock.
What are the limitations in that regard?
What a lot of people think is, you know, look, hey, I have a peach tree out there, but I wanted to go ahead
and maybe I'll experiment with some apples.
I got, you know, my neighbor has some apples varieties.
I don't have one on it to go ahead.
I don't have any apple trees, so I'll go ahead and try to graft it onto the peach tree.
It doesn't work that way.
It has to be, when you graft onto a tree, it has to be in the same family.
So apples need to be grafted onto apple root stock.
Pears need to be grafted onto pitter root stock.
Cherries need to be grafted onto cherry root stock.
Where you kind of can get a little bit of flexibility is to just nectarines.
They're a little bit more interchangeable.
We have a root stock called citation.
And citation is actually a hybrid between peach, nectarine, and plum.
So with that root stock, you can do a plum, an apricot.
You can do a peach or nectarine.
But mostly it's got to be like varieties that you've grafted onto.
So you have to make sure you have the proper root stock for the sign that you're going to put on there.
Now I know that some fruit trees, especially citrus, especially the Meyer lemon,
you could take a cutting and stick that in the ground and it'll grow up to be a healthy tree.
But that isn't necessarily true with much in the way of deciduous fruit trees, is it?
No, it's not.
The root stock actually on a tree has sort of two purposes.
The root stock is for size of a tree, like there's going to be a standard tall growing tree
or more of a semi-dorf tree in soil add activity.
So over the years, scientists, botanists, we've developed a certain variety of, let's say, apple,
that specifically is only used for root stock.
And then you graft onto it.
So if you're just to try to take a cutting from a peach and plant it, it's not going to root out.
Now there are certain things that you can take cuttings from that will root out.
Stakes, for example, root out relatively easily.
Pomegranates are another one.
You can just go ahead and take cuttings and root them out.
But for most of your deciduous stone fruit or palm fruit, the only success you're going to have
is that you graft it onto a known root stock, whose purpose is to be grafted onto.
You know, in all my years, shopping at a nursery, I don't think I can ever recall seeing a sale on root stock.
We don't sell them.
And all the root stock that we grow and propagate ourselves is just for ourselves.
You just can't go out and buy root stock because it's the only purpose is to be a root stock.
I would be also wary of grafting on a tree that you don't know what the root stock is.
It may have not been the right root stock for your area or soil to begin with.
And maybe that's why that tree is in decline.
And you think you can save that tree by grafting something else on there.
But the fact of the matter is if that root stock can't take wet soils, for example,
or can't take a drought or doesn't like clay soils,
you're probably going to have the same results, not good.
Exactly.
If you go on to the internet now, there's so much information on the different root stocks that are available
that you can really educate yourself on what would do well in your area.
Because every area is different.
Every soil type, even within a next-door neighbor, might have a different composition.
So, if you know what your soil is like, then you can do a little bit of research and understand,
well, maybe you kind of have to have like gamut of root stocks that might work for you.
Then you can go online and there are people online, there are internet dealers that will sell root stock.
But it's going to be very limited too.
So, you're going to have to understand that part of it.
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Let's get back to our conversation with Phil Priscoll from Dave Wilson Nursery about multi-butted fruit tree basics.
If you want more information about the types of grafting to use,
very specific information with pictures, with moving pictures,
I would suggest you go to the Dave Wilson Nursery YouTube channel
and look up their videos that they have about grafting fruit trees.
There's several of them, many with Tom Spellman,
that will give you step-by-step instructions on the various types of grafting to use
based on whatever you have.
And so you can learn a lot from that, and like I say,
they're moving pictures, which makes it a lot easier than trying to describe it on a podcast.
Nicky did ask the question, how young do the cuttings have to be?
Well, that's an interesting question.
I think what you really are trying to match up is the size of the wood,
one to the other, the scion to the rootstock.
It is, if you're going to do like a regular top-working, you know, weight graft,
that's absolutely true.
If you would like a book on the subject, one of my favorite books is from the American
Horticultural Society, it's called Plant Propagation.
It is an excellent reference with even more information about grafting
if you really want to get into the science of cutting your fingers.
Nicky also did ask the question, are there any grafting techniques to be wary of
because of the weather in Columbus, Ohio, which in the summertime can be hot and humid?
Once again, it's all about timing, like we said.
So in a place like Columbus, they would probably start, or they're grafting a little bit later
than I do in California.
If you're going to do chipbuddings, like we did at the nursery, the understock, the rootstock,
when they peel it back, when they make a tea cut, the bark should peel off relatively easy,
and then they can peel it back so that you can slip that little chipbuddings in there.
My guess is in Columbus, that's probably the starting time might be maybe the end of April
at the soonest in May, but you do run into problems with the humidity that, you know,
that's where any type you make a cut on a tree, if you start running into humidity problems,
that's where you can get fungal or bacterial growth that can really inhibit the actual
but being viable.
For those of you playing at home with your farmer-fed bingo card, you can cover up the square that says,
all gardening is local because I'm going to say it again.
All gardening is local, and for Nikki and Columbus, probably checking with the local nursery people there
can give her a better idea about the timing of when to do it.
Yeah, absolutely.
When in doubt, I always tell people, go and talk to your local ag advisor.
Most counties have them, most states have them, and they're there to help the homeowners
answer questions that are really specific for their locale.
Yes, grafting can be done.
I would go the insurance route.
I would buy a pre-grafted tree and then try it at home on something that won't break your heart
if it doesn't work out.
But it's worth trying.
It can be a fun hobby.
Yeah, that's really good advice because if your graft doesn't take, you won't know for
quite a while, and if you could have just gone ahead and planted the tree that you got in
the spring from your local garden center, you'll be one year ahead of fruit production of if
you'd self propagated your own grafting.
I would think, though, you have to keep an eye on any multi-grafted tree that you purchase
and be sure that there isn't one variety that's taking over.
There are on the market trees called fruit salad trees that contain a variety of different
fruits that are compatible on the same tree.
Phil, give us an example of what Dave Wilson Nursery would sell in that regard.
So on our multi-grafted trees, we do the apples and the cherries and the pears, and there are
four varieties on each tree, but we do like to mention the fruit salad.
And that's really kind of a fun novelty tree.
On our fruit salad, we put a Santa Rosa plum, generally speaking of a blend of apricot,
and then two peaches and a nectarine.
And we kind of go back to what I had mentioned before, where you have to make sure that you
have the right rootstock that's compatible for the plants.
Well, all these on the fruit salad, they're in the prunish.
So that's why you can go ahead and do different varieties on the one rootstock.
The one definite knock on the fruit solids is that you can very easily get one or two
varieties that are very precocious and grow a lot faster than the other varieties.
And what will happen is that it will start shading out the weaker varieties because they're
so fast growing.
Commonly on a fruit salad, it's going to be your plum or your apricot.
They just tend to grow faster than peaches and nectarine.
So if it was me, what I would do is when I was planting a fruit salad, I would cut
back the plum and the apricot, the branching on that substantially and have it facing
kind of the north or east.
And then you have your peaches and nectarines facing the south and the west.
They give it as much sun exposure.
They've got to give it a head start so that the plum or the apricot doesn't take over.
Well, that's a great tip too, to help slow down the speedier kids on the block.
Yeah, but sometimes you'll see this also in apples.
There's certain varieties of apples on the combination apple.
It's just by nature, they're a little bit more aggressive growing if you plant a multi-butted
apple.
Make sure that one branch, that one variety that really wants to start taking over.
Just keep on cutting it back and allowing everything else to balance out the tree so
that three or four years on the line, you'll still have three or four varieties on that
tree and not just a single variety tree.
Well that's also a good warning for people who normally prune their trees and don't
get too carried away when pruning a multi-grafted tree because you might accidentally take off
an entire fruiting variety.
I've done that myself.
Yes, haven't we all?
So be wary at pruning time.
I always like to keep, in the case of the Dave Wilson varieties, the original tags that
came on, say a four in one tree on the tree and also write it down indoors which way they're
facing so that if I lose the tag, at least I know, oh it's the west facing one and that
would probably be okay, well that was the flavor supreme.
Yeah, no, that's a good tip because it'll never be the tags over the years of one.
So where a lot of times people will call and say, hey do you know what variety was on
this four month plot?
I can tell them what varieties were on it.
But by then everything is starting to grow unless they, let me know what the fruit looks
like.
I'm just a guest because I'm not sure how they planted in their yard.
And that brings up more of Nikki's questions.
After she sent us the audio question via Speakpipe, she wrote me back and gave a little bit
a little bit more clarification about where she's going to be planting these grafted fruit
trees in her yard.
She says, I live on top of what I think is a bog, water collects during the wet seasons.
At my neighbors two doors down, there's enough water there that ducks have landed and called
it their home as it looks a bit more like a pond.
This keeps our lawn very wet and muddy due to its clay like nature.
Well, that brings up a very good question then.
What fruit trees can take wet feet?
Is there any fruit tree that can take wet feet?
You know, in a case like that, I would highly try to dissuade the homeowner.
If they know that their area is not well draining and that water sits in the area, I would not
suggest planting directly into the ground without doing a lot of soil amendment or at
least doing mounding of a tree or even better putting them in planter boxes so that you,
from the get go, you are elevating the root out of the wet zone and then allowing it to
naturally go ahead and root its the soil as it can.
At least at that point, you know you are going to get drainage.
This is kind of a common thing in California Central Valley.
Yes, a farmer knows that their acreage is not really well drained.
They will even with almonds, they will plant them on mound.
They come in their attractor, they will go ahead and they will pound their farms to
make sure that when they plant that tree, it gets off to a good start.
It will adapt to your wet soil but if you are planting it straight into the wet soil,
that is when you really run into the issue.
If people have an area that is wet, we kind of go back to when a niche I said the rich
dog has two purposes.
One is size control of the tree, how big it is going to get and the other one is soil
add activity.
So if you actually go into our website, we have a listing of all different rich dogs
that we use and we will make mention if it is good for areas that tend to be a little
bit more wet.
So for example, apples, in the most common root stock we use is M1-11 and that is your
kind of your standard California semi-doreth apple.
That one does relatively well in fairly wet soils.
Cherries, you would want to make sure that your trees are on maxima if it is a semi-doreth
or mazor which most cherries are standard cherries, common cherries are put on to mazor
root stock.
They can withstand more moisture than others.
Our citation root stock which is a hybrid and we do peaches, nectarine, apricots, plums
on them, pluots, apriums, that does really well in wet soils.
So that being said, wet soils is not a solid soil.
That is a complete different animal where really nothing does well.
If you have ducks living on your property, you have wet soil.
Exactly.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, the plant roots need air too.
I've always planted my cherries on the high side either in raised beds or in the higher
parts of the property because I've always heard that cherries can't take wet feet.
They really can't.
We have mazor vaxxamite which can take wetter soils.
But again, wetter soils is not wet feet and a lot of people don't quite understand that.
I mean if you dig down 12 inches, 18 inches and you fill your hole with water and if it
doesn't drain, make sure that when you plant a tree, you put it into a raised bed or a
planter bed.
We get a comment from Eric in Montana who sent us this message via Facebook.
He says, followed your guidance for tomatoes last summer and in Montana, that's challenging.
I ended up with over 150 pounds of tomatoes.
That's the first time I successfully sewed tomato seeds and had productive plants.
Most of it came from what I learned from your show.
Thank you.
Well, thank you, Eric, from writing us for Montana.
And yes, there are parts of Montana where growing can be quite a challenge with heavy
winds, summer hail storms, wacky temperature swings and all that.
So congratulations, Eric, on growing tomatoes in Montana.
Way back in episode 93, America's favorite retired horticulture professor, Debbie Flower,
gave beginning tomato gardener some tips for planting tomatoes to speed up their development.
I wouldn't be surprised if Eric went back into the catalog and listened to episode 93
and picked up those tips.
And more recently in episode 259, experienced tomato gardeners learned from nurserymen and
tomato aficionado Don Shore, a better way to give your tomatoes a boost before you plant
them in the ground.
After he offered up that tip, I had to try it.
And sure enough, the size of my little tomato plants nearly doubled in less than a week.
And again, this happened before I planted that tomato in the ground.
So what did I do?
What are the benefits of this tip besides quickly getting a bigger tomato plant?
What exactly was Don's recommendation?
Well, you're going to have to listen to the podcast and read the newsletter.
It's in the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter.
We have Debbie and Don's tomato growing hints and tips there.
It's available now for current newsletter subscribers.
Look for the issue entitled tomato growing tips for 2023.
If you're already a subscriber, it's probably in your email waiting for you now, or you
can start a free subscription or read it online.
It's free.
Find the link to the newsletter in today's show notes or sign up at the newsletter link
at our homepage, gardenbasics.net.
Let's get back to our conversation with Phil Priscoll from Dave Wilson Nursery about multibutted
fruit tree basics.
What should the dimensions be of a raised bed for a single fruit tree that the garden
your plans to maintain at a height of, say, six to seven feet?
Ideally, if you can get that raised bed into the 12, the 15 inch range, I mean, that will
give that tree a great start.
What about length and width of that raised bed?
I always tell people get it up.
And then if you can get it out to about three feet or a seat, the more you can do, the better
it is.
I understand people have area constraints or it's just a lot of work to do this.
So when you think you've had enough, just try to do a little bit more.
There's no downside to it.
Yeah, basically the fruit trees that I've grown in raised beds, most of them are usually
three feet by three feet and maybe 12 to 16 inches tall.
And I've been successful doing it that way.
Yeah.
I mean, that's ideal.
Some advice for anybody thinking of planting something they haven't planted before, be
it fruit trees or whatever.
And first of all, the soil, if you know that you have heart soil, maybe it's clay soil,
maybe there is hard pan below, go ahead, dig a hole, dig that hole, maybe 10, 12 inches
deep and wide, fill it full of water.
How long does it take for that water to drain from the hole?
If it takes more than 24 hours, you may want to think about planting someplace else or
building a raised bed or somehow improving the drainage on your property.
The other thing to think about too, if you're thinking of planting something that you've
never planted before, take a long walk through your neighborhood.
See what's growing there.
You may be surprised what some people are growing.
And also note how they're growing it.
Are they growing it in a raised area?
Are they growing it in the higher part of their land or in the lower part of their land?
And how is it doing?
How much sun is it getting?
Take a walk, take a look and you just might be surprised about what you might find.
You can get a lot of information off of our website, DaveWulson.com.
And we'll tell you what the zones are for a certain type of fruit.
Everyone thinks certain varieties are just, oh, I can only do that in California.
But once you start trialing some of these varieties, you'll realize there are a lot of
different varieties that you could do in the Midwest and back east.
That it's just people haven't done them in the past, so they haven't.
It takes a little bit of ground movement to try to get some of these new varieties, especially
some of the new varieties that DaveWulson Nursery has introduced into these areas.
We know that they can do.
They do well in colder climates.
But there are a lot of internet suppliers that will go ahead and get yourself a little bit
more unique varieties out there that you can try to.
So that you can get a little bit more of a farmer market feel in your backyard than
maybe your neighbors.
Nicky mentioned in the letter that she wrote that she has a rather small yard just like
many suburban homes are.
But she was going to keep her fruit trees at six to seven feet tall.
Backyard orchard culture, that's a great idea for growing fruit trees.
How far apart can you space fruit trees that are only getting six or seven feet tall and
wide?
We've experimented at DaveWulson Nursery and you are from two feet apart much further.
In my own personal backyard orchard, my trees are spaced six feet apart.
And I keep them at the maximum about seven, seven and a half feet tall.
At six feet, that still allows me to maneuver around each tree so I can do spraying and
my pruning and all that.
And it still gives me a nice high density orchard so I can get a lot of different variety
in a relatively small area.
I'm looking at Nicky's relatively small backyard in Columbus, Ohio.
She sent pictures.
Yes.
That would be considered an expansive, huge lot in California now.
Because if this is a small, small backyard, oh, oh my, I don't even want to know what
a big backyard in the Midwest looks like because this is huge compared to what we're
used to out here, which is post-a-stamped for a backyard, which that's why our multi-potted
fruit trees are so popular because most California new backyards now have room for one tree.
Yeah.
Just backyards are big.
One of Nicky's concerns and it's a valid concern even despite the size of her yard are the
utility lines that are running through her backyard.
She mentioned the gas line, the cable line, the water line.
Yeah, you have to take that into consideration before you start digging and mark those lines.
The other thing I'm looking at with her backyard, a lot of people don't take this in consideration
is that she had about five or six mature shade trees there.
Decentous fruit trees need as much sun as possible and not knowing how these shade trees
are situated whether it's north or south.
That's something to take into consideration when you're planning that even though you
think you have room, but if that's the area that you have is shady, you're probably not
going to have a lot of success with apple or peach tree.
They need as much sun as possible.
Think about that before you go out and plant a tree or try to grasp the tree and spend that
kind of time.
Make sure you have that the proper condition for having success with you for a tree.
Nicky mentioned in her letter that they've lived in this house for only six months and
I always advise new homeowners live with the property for a year, see where the sun is,
see how long the sun stays in those areas month after month after month.
Of course, in the wintertime, you're going to get less sun in the summertime.
More sun, the sun is higher in the sky.
But notice those areas that during prime growing season, say from April through October, where
the most sun is in your yard.
Note the shady areas as well and then plant accordingly.
That's fantastic advice right there.
You don't really realize some exposure how important it is for a successful orchard or
even just a vegetable garden.
In regards to the utility lines that's running under Nicky's property and her reluctance to
start digging, I don't blame her for having that reluctance at all.
Like I say, mark the lines.
She says our front yard could also support a fruit tree, but we would need to wait a
few years since the tree I do have there is dead and would need to decompose.
I was thinking about that sentence going, that's something the Amish might practice.
Nicky can't be Amish.
She emailed me.
That involved electricity.
No.
But yeah, it would take decades for that tree to decompose.
It would.
It's more than just a few years, boy.
If you have a mature tree, which she does, that root system is extensive under her current
lawn.
Right.
Yeah, it's and even grinding down that stump.
You still have to be wary of where those utility lines are.
Exactly.
Of course, the wild card in all this, as far as planting the appropriate varieties for
your area, let's face it, the weather has changed.
It's called climate change.
You can cover that square on your farmer Fred Bingo card now because things are wacky
and growing areas are changing as we speak in that the cherry blossoms in Washington,
D.C. were early because of a winter heat wave.
Whereas we're shivering cold still in early April here in California.
It doesn't quite make sense.
That's not to say it's permanent.
But I think we're going to have wild swings in the weather and we're going to be basically
learning as we go along here of what plants will actually do well in our area.
The California farmer has really started really started cooling in on this the last
10, 15 years.
Even in California, it's chilly right now.
We know overall that the chill hours have really subsided.
The farmers, when they're planting lower chill cherries in Northern California, where
you use a regular bean cherry produced like crazy, it's not producing like it has in
the past.
Decades down the line, the Midwest will have more of a California shield to it and California
will have more of a Hawaii shield to it.
It's hard to say.
But the fruit trees are going to react differently.
You mentioned chill hours.
Let's talk a minute about chill hours.
That is basically the sleep period that trees need.
That's achieved when nighttime temperatures fall below 45 degrees, ideally between 32 and
45 degrees.
Most fruit trees need hundreds of chill hours every winter in that temperature range in
order for them to go dormant and then wake up again as the weather gets warmer, as the
soil gets warmer, either in late winter or early spring.
There's been less chill hours in California.
There's been a lot of reasons for less chill hours, including the lack of fog that is now
part of California.
It used to be the Central Valley was just covered in fog for months on end in the winter time.
And now it's either raining or sunny.
Yeah.
I mean, it's something that I've noticed even on my daily drive into Dave Wilson nursery,
which is in the heart of the Central Valley.
It's from 10 years ago when I'd go through the farmland and in the dairy land, and it
was just foggy every single morning in December and January.
I can't remember the last time I've seen fog.
In that fog is something, it covers the sun, keeps the temperatures cool, and it adds the
chill hours.
And even with our breeder, the zakers, they've noticed that 20 years ago, they averaged
between 800 and 1000 chill hours at the location of Modesto.
Now they're into that 400 chill hour.
That's a substantial screen in 20 years.
Yeah, it used to be that most fruit trees needed that 800 to 1000 chill hours.
And now the search is on, like you mentioned, for trees that don't require as many chill
hours and yet still have that flavor.
That's something that they're definitely working on.
The reality is there and the all the breeders out there understand that they need to get
varieties, new varieties in there that's going to succeed with less chill hours out there.
So to wrap this up, Nikki, I think you ought to do both.
You ought to buy a pre-multibutted fruit tree and practice grafting on your own with another
tree and see what you get and see if you like it.
It's really an encyclopedia of information you're going to find at the Dave Wilson dot
com YouTube page where there is all sorts of great information about growing fruit trees,
how to choose them, how to grow them, how to graft them, how to harvest them.
It's a wonderful site that is on at Dave Wilson dot com.
Phil Priscilla, thanks for a few minutes of your time.
Thanks for having me on.
We still haven't answered the question from Nikki about grafting.
What is the easiest grafting method to use?
What is a grafting method to be worried about?
We're talking with Sacramento County Master Gardener, Vicki Marie Parker Ward.
We are standing in the orchard section of the Faroaks Horticulture Center.
Vicki, you've done a lot of grafting.
What's an easy method to use?
What's one that you really don't want to recommend?
Well, there are quite a few different types depending on what it is you're trying to achieve
and what tree and the age and so forth.
So throwing those all out, the two easiest are scion grafting or cleft grafting.
It's the same thing, which is basically where you create a dovetail of sorts and take a
small scion and attach it to an existing live tree.
That's to me is the easiest because it's not tiny.
The other, which is equally easy, but it's micro by comparison, is the bud graft or tea
graft where you actually cut a tea slit in the skin and create a little envelope-like
flap and you open that flap up and you insert a bud.
The bud must be prepared a certain way so that you end up with either way with no matter
what kind of graft you do.
You need to end up with cambium layer against cambium layer or it's not going to take.
That's the main thing is matching that cambium layer up so that it's got enough substance
that it can grow together.
So you're following the grain basically?
Yeah, exactly.
And you need to be careful of which way you're aiming things so that the new growth doesn't
go in a strange, weird direction and also you need to do some prep work.
So basically, I would recommend that if you can take a class, great.
If you can view something online, one of the Master Gardener YouTube versions, something
like that would be excellent.
There are some books out.
I can't, for the life of me, think of the name of any of them right at the moment, but
there are some excellent books on grafting.
One of my favorites is by the American Horticultural Society.
It's called plant propagation.
They have a lot of great pictures and a lot of easy explanations for trying a lot of
grafting techniques.
Is there one grafting technique that you don't want to get into for people because it just
is a little too difficult or unsuccessful?
Well, I don't know about that, but there's one and I can't think of the name of it, but
it's the one that they use in orchards when they cut back the orchard and they take back
the, just plainy cut down the tree, but leave a viable stump and they basically take scions
that they are that are larger and they cut them into a point and insert them into the
cambium layer, cambium layer next to cambium layer.
But the problem with that one is that it's ugly.
It's not a good backyard choice.
And it also can have other issues because it's easy to bump things out of wax so that you
tear it and frequently what they will do is they will use more than one scion of sorts.
I don't know if that's what they call it when they do that particular type.
And it can be very sort of messy and tricky to deal with.
So I would not recommend that one for home use.
There are some other ones that are really good with plants like figs that have a messy
substance inside and that you don't really want to deal with where you put them together
next to each other and then cut off the one you don't want.
And that can get pretty messy too and I wouldn't recommend that for somebody just starting.
When it comes to figs I just like cutting off a branch and stick it in the ground.
Well you can.
Yeah.
You can.
It's time of year and what you're trying to do with it.
That brings up a very good question about grafting because grafting is really limited in the time
span you can do it.
Yes.
It's in the spring but not always because that depends on the tree itself.
And when the tree is putting out new branches and when it's the substance of the tree is
such that you can slice it easily to make those cuts that you need to insert.
In other words it's got to have fresh cambium layer in there so that you can reach it with
another piece of new cambium layer.
And at the time it has to be actively growing too.
Yes.
Very much so.
So that's why these scions that you might pick up at a rare fruit grower scion exchange
in the dead of winter are best kept refrigerated until spring and the tree is starting to show
signs of growth.
Exactly.
And that's exactly how I started my first one that I ever did which was a multi-graft
apple which was pretty simple.
Alright grafting.
There's a lot of good videos online.
I still like the two that are up on the Dave Wilson Nursery YouTube page where Tom Spellman
will take you through not only for the home fruit tree graft or how to do it but also
what you were talking about about the difficult one showing their professional workers doing
it.
Right exactly.
And it makes a difference you know that you match your scion or what you're trying
to put on the tree to the variety of tree.
You can't for instance graft apples to peaches.
They've got to be the same type of plant and they have to be compatible with each other.
You can however and we have an example here put an almond on a plum because they're both
stone fruits.
Yeah they're both in the same genus Prunus so you can get away with it but you couldn't
put a pear on it.
No.
No different genus.
And not only that you want to know the growth habit of each one of the trees because for
instance most almonds tend to be a lot more pushy than the plum tree you put them on and
they try to kill off the plum tree.
They outgrow it, take the nourishment from it and can be rampant so you've got to be
careful.
Yes that is the little secret about doing grafting.
There's one that could take over and shade out the rest.
A lot of good tips about grafting from Sacramento County Master Gardener Vicki Marie Parker Ward
here in the Orchard at the Farrok's Horticulture Center.
Vicki I still see you have all your fingers so your grafting has been successful.
Oh yeah I still have 100% rating on what I've done which was amazed a few people including
me because that's not normal.
Normally you've got about a 50-50 chance of getting it right but I'm picky.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
I'm talking to you Fred.
You have a small yard and you think you don't have the room for fruit trees?
Well maybe you better think again because Dave Wilson Nursery wants to show you how to
grow great tasting fruits like peaches, apples, pluots and nut trees plus they have potted
fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, boys and berries, figs, grapes,
hops, kiwi, olives and pomegranates.
These are all plants that you can grow in small areas.
You can even grow many of them in containers on patios as well.
It's called backyard orchard culture and you can get step by step information via the
Dave Wilson YouTube videos.
So where do you find those?
Well just go to Dave Wilson dot com, click on the home garden tab at the top of the page.
Also in that home garden tab you're going to find a link to their fruit and nut harvest
chart you can be picking delicious healthy fruits from your own yard from May to December
here in USDA 0-9 and something else you're going to find in that home garden tab.
You're going to find the closest nursery to you that carries Dave Wilson's quality fruit
trees and they're in nurseries from coast to coast.
So start the backyard orchard of your dreams at Dave Wilson dot com.
Do you think you're learning something new every time you listen to the Garden Basics
podcast?
Heck I learned something new in each episode as well.
Such an episode was way back in July of 2020, episode number 27.
It had the rather vague title.
I did not know that.
If you're a Garden Basics podcast binge listener you may have skipped right past that episode
because well frankly that title offered no clue as to what you might learn.
So I tell you what if you skipped past that episode go back and give it a listen.
Episode 27.
It's this week's flashback episode.
You will learn things that will definitely make you a better gardener and a better food
shopper.
America's favorite retired college horticulture professor Debbie Flower talks about the benefits
of cutting the roots of plants before you stick them in the ground and most importantly
it's how you cut those roots.
That chili pepper expert Dave Dewitt talks about the myth of the hatch chili and how
those oversized jalapeno peppers that you might see at the grocery store just may not
be packed with very much heat which actually for many of us might be a good thing.
Give it a listen or give it a read.
It's episode 27 of the Garden Basics with farmer Fred podcast entitled I Did Not Know That.
Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
You can get both the audio and for those of you that like to read we have the transcript
available.
It's from our homepage gardenbasics.net.
The Garden Basics with farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week on Fridays plus the newsletter
podcast that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter continues and that will also
be released on Fridays.
Both are free and they're brought to you by SmartPods and Dave Wilson Nursery.
The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out and that includes our
homepage gardenbasics.net and that's where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden
Basics newsletter and podcast that's gardenbasics.net or you can use the links in today's show
notes and thank you so much for listening.
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