SPG - Fruit tree grafting

Post date: Aug 9, 2015

Today, Stanthorpe Permaculture Group was fortunate enough to have Tom come and share his grafting knowledge, tools, and enthusiasm with us. Tom has had an orchard on the edge of Stanthorpe for almost 40 years so his local expertise is phenomenal. Because his orchard has a large diversification of trees, both commercial and hobbyist, he brought along about a dozen varieties to graft on to some wild peach trees at Sugarloaf Permaculture.

Peach rootstock can be compatible with almond, apricot, cherry, plum, nectarine, plumcot, and of course desirable peaches. Our introduction covered the basic concept of grafting - joining the active cells of each tree (between the bark and wood is the cambia layer – where the growth happens). Tom demonstrated the first couple of grafts of a good eating jujube onto jujube rootstock and also an apple onto another apple. Then we headed to the large wild peach tree for a bit more demonstration and a chance to try a few times each:

Thanks so much to Tom for giving up his time and sharing his know-how! Inspired to graft more soon and look out for results in the next quarterly video update in Sept.