TODAY IN THE ORCHARD

Interested in grafting your own trees this spring? Check out our list of available cultivars. You can purchase scions through our on-line store.

Now a word or two about shipping scionwood. Seems like a simple thing to send a stick through the mail, but there is definitely a right and wrong way to do it. Recently friends received some extremely rare, at-risk cultivars for their preservation efforts. The scions arrived moldy and unusable. This was because some well-meaning person had wrapped the scionwood in wet paper towels. Such a common error and SO unnecessary!

I cut the one-year-old growth, label it and successfully send it all over the US. Scionwood is alive, resilient and tough--it doesn't need additional moisture. When I ship scionwood, I cut it and put it in a plastic bag with NO added moisture. I do “double-bag” it to insure that it doesn’t dry out as it travels. Some people dip the ends of the sticks in wax to minimize drying out. That’s a fine strategy although I don’t bother. Others wipe the scions in a diluted bleach solution. This also makes sense, although I have never done so. I do typically cut a bit of extra wood if there is enough growth to do so. Then, when we graft, we cut a little wood off the butt end of the scion to make sure we are getting green, not dried out, wood. I have never had a problem with scionwood arriving at its destination dried out. For more information about cutting and storing scionwood, click here.

Here’s an apple Haiku for today. This one from Brooke Kulaga;

Seed sprouts into tree
limbs chopped off for something new
Seedlings fruit unknown

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