- 1). Buy the rootstock to provide the roots for a new heirloom apple tree. Washington State University Extension recommends a dwarfing apple tree rootstock for ease of maintenance. A shorter tree, around 6 feet, makes fruit thinning, pruning and harvesting more practical.
- 2). Find a straight and smooth branch on the rootstock and trim its tip. A branch that grows upright works better than a horizontal one for cleft grafting.
- 3). Make a 2-inch-long cut down the center of the trimmed branch with a grafting knife. There will be a split in the bark, but both sides will remain connected. This cut is the cleft.
- 4). Get a cutting from the heirloom apple tree in early spring before the buds open. Choose a twig that grew last summer and has two or three buds. In grafting, this piece of wood is called a scion.
- 5). Taper the end of the scion that grew closest to the main trunk of the tree. Use your grafting knife to make the tapered surface 1 inch long. When this step is finished, that tip of the twig will look like a flat screwdriver's end.
- 6). Insert the tapered end of the scion into the cleft of the rootstock. If necessary, stick a flat screwdriver or another wedge into the cut to spread the two sides apart, creating space for the scion to go in.
- 7). Cover the union with grafting wax to keep the woods from drying out. If the wax breaks off after it hardens, apply another layer. The graft will fail if the exposed sections of the scion or of the rootstock become dry.
- 8). Pinch the buds on the new growth that appears on the grafted tree. This stimulates branch development in the apple tree's first year.
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