Welcome to the Urban Forestry Radio Show here on Reality Radio 1 0 1. In this radio show and podcast, we learn about fruit trees, permaculture, arboriculture, and so much more. So if you love trees and especially fruit trees, or if you're interested in living a more sustainable life, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Susan Poizner of the Fruit Tree Care training website, orchard people.com. Thanks for tuning in. And enjoy the show.
Welcome to the Urban Forestry Radio Show with your host Susan Poizner. To contact Susan Live right now, send her an email in studio101@gbe.com, and now right to your host of the Urban Forestry Radio Show, Susan Poizner. Hi everyone. When I started to grow fruit trees, I had no clue that each and every fruit tree was made up of two separate trees.
The roots come from one tree and they determine the size of the tree when it's mature, and the upper part of the tree is called the fruit wood and it determines the type of fruit that you are going to grow. Now all you have to do is stick those two parts together through a process called grafting, and if it works, those two trees fuse together just like magic.
What's amazing is that grafting lets you create trees with different types of fruit, for instance, like an apple tree with 10 different types of apples growing on it. Or you can make a fruit salad tree that grows different types of stone fruits on the same tree. It's also possible to use grafting to create trees that can survive and grow in places that you wouldn't expect them to. Like growing apple trees in parts of Florida, who knows?
Maybe one day we can use grafting to create more resilient fruit trees that can cope with a changing climate. So today we are going to talk about the potential of grafting with Javier Rivera. For Javier grafting is a passion. He's the owner of the Stone River Fruit Tree nursery in central Florida. And Javier is also pursuing his PhD in Horticultural sciences at the University of Florida. And I'll talk to him in just a minute.
But first, I would love to hear from you, send in your questions, your comments, or just an email to say hello, and we will enter you into today's contest to win a terrific prize. This month's prize is Color Point Bypass Pro Pruners by Duran. They're valued at $28 and 62 cents, and these lovely pruners come in six vibrant colors, and the winner of this month's contest will be able to choose the color of their choice. So do you wanna win those hand pruners?
Then enter today's contest by sending an email right now to intu 1 0 1 gmail.com. That's in studio101@gmail.com. And do remember to include your first name and where you're writing from. I look forward to hearing from you soon. So now, Javier, welcome to the show today. Thank you very much, Susan, for inviting me. It is wonderful to have you. And in the introduction I mentioned that we can, that you're working to graft apple trees that will survive and thrive in Florida.
But tell me a little bit about where you're located in Florida. What's the plant hardiness zone and what types of fruit will easily grow there? Okay, so I live in the most southern part of the city of Orlando in Orange County in central Florida, and we are classified as U S D A zone nine B. So this area is famous for citrus.
A lot of people that come from different parts of the Caribbean will also incorporate plants like mangoes and avocados, some tropicals that due to our mild winters can actually grow very well and produce fruit year after year. Ah-huh. So here you are in an area where citrus grows nicely and you are trying to grow apple trees. Now apple trees, are there some cultivars that will grow in your zone? Oh, absolutely.
The information that is provided by most agricultural extensions in our area recommend a few cultivars such as Anna and Dorsett Golden, maybe Ein Shimmer. There's a recent release by the University of Florida with Texas NI a and m that is called Tropic Suite. That's another one that does well in our area. And there are a few others, but not very many.
And the main reason for that is because part of that information tells us that due to our mild winter climate, we don't get a lot of what's known as chill hours. And they are different models that classify what a chill hour is. But Simply speaking, the number of hours before 45 degrees Fahrenheit that occurred during the coldest months of the year or during the later part of the fall season into winter season.
So here in Orlando, at best, for the past few years, we've gotten an average of about a hundred to about 125 chill hours, which is very mild. So cultivars that require many more chill hours than that are not even considered by most people. Unless you want to do something different. Okay. Sorry, I'm just gonna go back for a second.
You guys have, let's say 150, you said 150 chill hours, hundred 50 cold days, and these apple trees need some cold days in order to what, to produce fruit in order to be consistent. What is it about these cold chill hours that allow you to grow apple trees? Will the apple trees die if they don't get enough cold? What is, what are the ramifications?
Yeah, so the main information that we get is that if a tree does not receive enough chill hours during the winter season, it may not survive as it tries to cope with the changes in the conditions. During the daytime, whereas we go into spring, it didn't receive enough energy for it to go ahead and blossom or produce leaves at a certain time of the year.
However, one of the things that I have discovered recently and ins inspired by different people, folks like Tom Spellman of Dave Wilson nursery out in California, Kevin Houser of Kael Creek Capital Nursery my spouse, who is a Michigander and she has known apples, for pretty much all of her life. Why don't we actually try to grow certain apple varieties besides what we know besides Deanna, the Dorson Golden. Let's go ahead and stick 'em at the ground and see what happens.
And doing a little bit of research about root stocks that would be able to survive the conditions that we have in our area. We have discovered that many varieties that come from different places all over the world. We're talking about France, we're talking about England, we're talking about the Northern United States. They have been not only growing well, but they have been producing fruit.
And I'm like, wait a minute, but r and these apples from these places, they get thousands of chill hours, or they're supposed to get thousands of chill hours and they're growing here just fine with 150. So what is really going on? And of course there is a method to the madness. So there are cultural practices that are applied in order to ensure that the trees are managing with that small number of chill hours.
One of the things that is done in, not just by me but in different parts of the world, in the tropics places like Uganda, Rwanda, and Central Africa, is that there's a time of the year when the trees get defoliated. So by defoliating the trees. You are sending a signal to the buds. Don't count cold hours in order to get prepared for when you have to go and wake up and produce leaves and balloons. So we're just gonna let you like rest for a little bit.
And then when the next season comes on, when winter is going away, days are getting longer, temperatures are getting warmer, those are gonna be the signals you're gonna pay attention to and that's what you're gonna use as your guide to awaken. So interesting. So I just wanna clarify. You're saying like how do you communicate to the tree to say, Hey tree, by the way, listen, don't count chill hours, just hang in there. Listen to me. How can you communicate to the fruit tree to tell it?
I know you're used to having lots of chill hours, but don't worry about this here. We don't need to offer that to you. So it's a process that, believe it or not, doesn't really begin in wintertime alone. It starts getting ready in late summer. So dormancy, those folks know, oh yeah, that's when it's wintertime and the trees are sleeping. There's actually different stages to dormancy. During the summertime.
You have the para dormancy in which buds under a certain level of the tree are basically not growing out. So they're not producing leaves. They're just like staying put. And then when the temperatures are getting colder, the trees enter into a stage that's known as endo dormancy. The endo dormancy is the critical part because once the trees get into that stage, the bugs are gonna start counting cold and they say, you know what? I'm not gonna awaken until I get the cold that I need.
So if we can skip that process, if we are able to reprogram. Those buds into don't follow the endo dormancy, you're gonna be okay. Then we can get them to produce even if you have areas where there is not enough winter chill according to the information that we got as of today. So we are trying to change the paradigm on how these apples are grown simply by doing those cultural practices that allow us to let the trees manage in the different climates, which they are grown. That's incredible.
Let's just have a look here at an e. We've got one email here from Greg. Hello, Susan. I was waiting for this show today. Thanks. Listening to you from San Diego, California. So thank you so much for rating in Greg. Okay, so you, this is what you're working on. How are you using grafting in order to achieve the that goal? Yes. I was very fortunate to find a series of rootstocks that works well for me in my area.
And those are the rootstocks from the Geneva series they developed by Cornell and Dr. Jim Cummins. So I use the Polish three root stocks of that series, which are Geneva 9 69, Geneva two 10, and Geneva eight 90. And of course, Geneva eight 90 is my favorite. Because they are able to tolerate the excessive rains that we get during silver. So when you plant a tree, you don't want a tree that will die when it's not able to be plant like. It's not able to drain water away properly.
Of course, trees need to breathe. So if you're putting the roots in an area that doesn't drain well the tree is gonna die. And there are root stocks that will absolutely. Go and die if that's the case. But with the Geneva Series, they are tolerant to water logging, so that's one big advantage. Another one is that they are disease resistant. So there are many Pests and diseases that will leave those trees alone simply by the rootstock that you're grafting your trees onto.
So you're not gonna have to worry about Willy apple afis with the tallest three trees of the Geneva Series. You don't have to worry about phyto for root rod, so you don't have to worry about a colds spell That will come out of nowhere and oh my God, it's going to die because it's gonna get too cold. No, no worries at all.
So it's just a fantastic series of rootstocks and for the most part, those are the ones that, that I use for my personal collection as well as for part of the project that we're doing as part of my doctoral dissertation. And then lastly, when you are planting a tree, whether it's from a seed or even grafted in a seedling, there's gonna be a long wait time before that tree. Passes the ity period and is able to be reproductive competent.
But when you're grafting it onto those root stocks, the average turnaround for fruit production is two to three years, sometimes the very next year after you graft them, depending on the variety and the conditions where the tree is growing it. So for me, that is a time saver because if I want to evaluate something, let me know, graft it on a ceiling that's gonna take possibly eight to 10 years, let me graft it here, and then you can get a quicker response time and see how it manages.
So there are many advantages to knowing what the root stock will do in your area and which is the one that's right for your situation. Which I think is interesting because let's say I, live in Florida and I order my fruit tree from a big, Nat national nursery and maybe I don't even know what rootstock they've planted it on. So they send me any oil. Maybe it's a dwarfing tree, so a smaller tree.
If I don't know what the rootstock is, it really may not thrive and it may not produce fruit in that warm climate. So that's very interesting how important it is to have control and to know what rootstock you're choosing. On the other hand, from the experimenting that you have done, does it matter which cultivars you choose? You said that possibly in Florida you can grow cultivars that need hundreds of chill hours rather than a hundred or 150.
Are there some cultivars that are just stubborn and won't go for it and others that are more flexible? Absolutely every cultivar will have its own flexibility, so to speak. So there are cultivars that will be better adapted. For example, we're talking about Gold Rush, which is a release from the P R I program, and many people think it needs 800 to about a thousand chill hours. It does very well here.
And many people tell me, what, here's the thing, you're getting a Scion sent from a nursery, and that Scion is dormant. You're gonna graft it, it's gonna wake up, it'll give you fruit that one year, and that's it. That was a fluke. And it's just okay, it's possible. But then what happens is the next year comes about, and that same scion that you grafted sprouts again and starts giving you flowers and it can give you fruit.
So that's not a fluke, that's just that the cultivar was able to become adapted. To the conditions where it's growing. And it does that with the motivation of the rootstock as well.
There, there are physiological situations that are coming in play and, they, we can definitely go down a rabbit hole and talk about those, but because we have limited time the idea is that the rootstock is a propeller and then the scion is going to have an adaptability based on what that rootstock is doing and how you're doing the horticultural practices to make sure that it thrives and produces in the environment that it's in. Fantastic explanation and you make it so clear.
I really appreciate that. We have an email here from Tom. Tom says, Susan, I love the term chill hours. My teenage son is here and he heard this coming from your show and he thought, Ooh, this is cool. I can chill out and not do any work wrong. I live in Dallas, Texas, so yeah, chilling. The chill hours, yeah, I guess the tree chills out a little bit. It's not doing a lot but it's very important. Now you talk about the horticultural practices.
So again, let's say in my situation, let's say I lived in Florida and I think, okay, I'm gonna graph myself a tree, going to take those recommendations. I know which root stocks to choose. I am gonna choose the cultivar. What are the fancy horticultural practices that I then need to do in order to encourage my tree to grow in a climate that it wouldn't ordinarily be growing in? That's an excellent question and it can be a little bit complicated to address.
Now, folks that have been tinkering with crops like apples for example, they have discovered, as I mentioned a little bit ago, that defoliation is a process that will tell the tree, let's go ahead and override these signals in which you require this amount of coal to wake up and produce fruit. So by doing that, the tree gets redirected or reprogrammed to produce. That's one way. Sometimes folks use water stress in order to make the trees produce.
For example, if there's a period of time where the trees are not getting any water, that will send a signal to the tree that, Hey, I'm running low on these resources. Better go ahead and produce my fruits right now. That's something that happens as well treatments with GI giin or GI acid, that's another way in which trees can be triggered into fruit production. So they are different ways and it, there, there isn't really like a manual for every single variety.
So you have to discover what works and what doesn't. Sometimes by trial and error, that's what researchers are constantly doing. We're trying as scientists to figure out, Hey, we're doing this. What are gonna be the consequences? What do we observe? And based on that constant application of scientific concepts, we are able to determine what will be useful for a particular location.
I wanna clarify, just when you talk about defoliation, that is the natural process of all the nutrients coming out of the leaves. The leaves go brown as those green lovely nutrients go into the root system, and then the leaves just fall off. Is that what you are talking about? Or are you talking about go pull off the leaves from your trees and it'll give the tree a signal? It can be in either way.
So sometimes the affiliation happens by applying a chemical and basically the trees are shaken off and then the leaves fall. Sometimes you can just go ahead and do it manually. So I'll just go before a cold spell in the latter part of the year, and I will go ahead and manually defoliate my own trees. And the reason I can do that is because I grow my trees so I can reach them from the ground.
So all of my trees are sometime probably around Eight feet tall at most, so I can reach them from the ground. And even though Geneva eight 90 is a rootstock that if you set it and forget it, it's gonna produce a tree somewhere between 15 to 20 feet tall. I can always control the size of the tree myself by pruning. So that's one of the things that, as someone who promotes the philosophy of backyard or culture, we can do that in order to make it more manageable for the home garden. Incredible.
Okay, so if you are actually going to defoliate your tree and pull off all those leaves, do you wanna make sure that they are not green anymore? Because if you're pulling off green leaves, you're pulling off nutrition that the tree actually needs to stash away its roots over the colder season. What's interesting is that sometimes, depending on the use of the nitrates that are still found in the ground, it can be later in the season or later in the year, and the trees will not wanna change color.
They will stay, still, stay green. We'll still do it that way just to make sure that we can trigger the signal on the trees. Gotcha. Okay. We've got an email from Tina. Tina writes Susan Does Mr. Rivera have a website? Do you? We currently don't have a website, but we do have a Facebook page. For the small operation that we run, that's called Stone River Nursery. So you can find that on Facebook and you can also find those on Instagram.
So the Instagram page is a little bit more active as of the time. My spouse, who is my better half, is the one that does all the updates, and she takes videos of the fruits that we are growing and make sure that we can have chronological progression of what's happening in our yard. And it's incredible. Sometimes when you see the pictures like from one year ago to where we're at right now, the changes are just incredible.
And I am so happy that we are able to put that in a perspective for different people because if we are able to do it, then so can everybody else. So there's nothing really hard science that we're doing. We're just applying some practices that are scientifically based, but they're also common sense and everybody can get them done if they know where to go and just to follow the guidance on how to do it. That's great. Okay. Thank you for the question. That was fantastic.
Now, I know another passion of yours is creating multi fru trees. So that's about kicking it up a notch here. So here you are creating, using grafting to create fruit trees that can grow outside a climate zone that you, that we think we can grow them. I want to talk about fruit variety. Trees. Trees where you can grow, I don't know, apricots and plums and cherries all on the same tree. I'd love to do that after the commercial break. Can you hold on the line just for a minute? Absolutely Susan.
Okay, so that's what we're gonna do. We are gonna dive into multi fruit trees in just a minute. But in the meantime, you are listening to the Urban Forestry Radio Show and podcast, brought to you by the Fruit Tree Care training website, orchard people.com. This is Reality Radio 1 0 1, and I'm Susan Poizner, author of the Fruit Tree Care Books, growing Urban Orchards and Grow Fruit Trees Fast and we'll be back right after the break. Hi, I'm Susan Poizner from Orchard people.com.
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Welcome back to the Urban Forestry Radio Show with your host Susan Poizner, right here on Reality Radio 1 0 1. To get on board right now, send us an email. Our email address is in studio101@gmail.com. And now right back to your host of the Urban Forestry Radio Show, Susan Poizner. Hi, there you are listening to the Urban Forestry Radio Show and podcast brought to you by the Fruit Tree Care Training website. Orchard people.com. This is Reality Radio 1 0 1, and I'm your host, Susan Poisoner.
In the show, we've been talking about the potential of fruit tree grafting, and in the first part of the show we talked about grafting apple trees that can survive and thrive in Florida. But one of the most exciting types of grafting projects that we can do is creating a fruit tree that can produce multiple different kinds of fruits. So for instance, on one tree you might have peaches and apricots and plums all growing together on a single tree. So how do you do that?
We'll find out with my guest today have your Rivera owner of Stone River Nursery in central Florida, who is also pursuing his PhD in Horticultural Sciences at the University of Florida. And by the way, anyone can learn to graph fruit trees. You can learn how in my new online course Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone, which you can find on my website@orchardpeople.com. But before we continue chatting today, I want to hear from you.
If you're listening to this show live, why not enter today's contest and you can win this month's amazing prize. It is color by Color Point bypass Pro pruners by dram. They're valued at $28 and 62 cents, and the pruners come in six vibrant colors. The winner of this month's contest will be able to choose the color of their choice. So why not enter the contest right now? Just send us an email. Send the email to intu 1 0 1 gmail.com and include your question, a comment, or just email us to say hi.
Be sure to include your first name and where you're writing from. So now back to Javier. Are you still with me? I'm still here with you. That's great. Okay, so next let's talk about creating malf fruit trees with various different types of fruit on one tree. Can you tell me a story? When did you start doing this stuff? Wow. So I guess my first experience getting the idea of what it would be like was back in 2 20 14 when I got my very first orchard established.
And that time it was only stone fruits and different types of stone fruit hybrids. As time went on, and I noticed that even though I got flowers from these different trees, I noticed that many of those flowers that were supposed to produce because the trees were considered self fruitful, really didn't, and they needed a pollination partner in order to produce.
Some of them, whether they're considered self fruitful or not, will always do better when you have a pollinator, a pollinating variety, a colonizer, and I think, wait a minute some folks have. Multiple varieties of fruit in a single tree. And they have the multi grafted ones or the fruit cocktails or the fruit salads. There's different names for them, so why can't we do this? And of course, one impediment is whether the variety that you want to put on the tree is patented or not.
So we wanna respect the industry. We wanna make sure that we are not propagating varieties that are patented cuz otherwise that would be infringement. And we wanna make sure that the folks that spend the time developing those varieties have the respect, have the income for the royalties that they get from those patents. So I don't do that, but any material that the patent has already expired or that is a variety that has been for many years ago. Heirlooms, all of those are fair game.
When I moved from my first property where I established the orchard, I had to sell it. And then I bought my next property. We started from scratch and I was gonna start with stone fruits again. But then my wife said, you know what is one thing that we may want to do that a lot of people aren't doing? And we have tinkered with apples before we've and that was something that we started doing months before we left the other property. So my wife suggested, why not do it with apples?
And for the most part, because that would be something more exclusive. Not a lot of people are doing it and being smarter than me. I was just like, okay, fine. I will just go ahead and do it. And that's how we started our own Apple orchard slash investigation slash research into everything that we have developed into today. So when I grafted multiple. Varieties into one tree. I wanted to make sure that I had pollinating varieties or varieties that when they wake up around the same time.
So when the bees visit the trees, they can go from one flower type to another flower type, and then the pollen can be exchanged. That in principle sounds very straightforward. For some reason, my experience has been that the bees don't like to visit those flowers, so I become the bee. So I will take a small stemc cell brush and then when I know that they are flowers from different trees that are coming on, I will go ahead and move the pollen around and it works. So it is it ideal?
No, but it's a way that we can have a little bit of backup just in case that you don't have the pollen exchange that you would require for having fruit. So let's, so we're starting off with apples and you're creating, you're putting on these different cultivars of apples on one tree. You're thinking, the bees aren't cooperating. So you go around with a paintbrush, you dust the little open flowers and you're moving the sort of the pollen from one flower to the next. Absolutely.
So that's when you are doing multi grafted apple trees. What about stone fruit trees where you have many different types of stone fruits that wouldn't even cross pollinate with each other? Like you can't, you can have one tree with plums and apricots on it, but those plums and apricots won't cross pollinate. It's interesting that you say that because zer Genetics, which is a company out in California I think that they are located in Modesto.
They have created different hybrids of stone fruits by crossing the pollen, say from an apricot into a plum. And then they can get either an apron, they can get a plum Cot, they can get a flu o. And depends on the percentages of the fruit resembling either one of the parents. So if it's more apricot than plum, it's an apron. If it's about the same, it will be a plum cot. If it's more of the plum, it will be alu, ot. It doesn't always happen, but that's what they're dedicated into doing.
They're trying to find the best attributes from different types of fruits. And then those pollen crosses create natural hybrids that will enhance the fruit content of the crops. And then they will have different types of flavor profiles. And I have tasted some of them. They are amazing. So it's really great. That sounds great. And so if you have like this, one of these crosses in your orchard, It will the pollen from like the, a apron or whatever the, a plum.
Apricot plum can possibly crosspollinate with your apricot cultivars. Yes. Or with your plum cultivars. Oh, boy. Yes. That's amazing. Yep. Okay. We have an interesting question here from Spencer. I'm listening from Kaysville, ut Utah, I would like to know what recommended combos are for multi grafted horizontal cordon trees. I would like to graft one row of apple cultivar and then another row of a complimentary apple cultivar that will grow at the same rate.
As my first row, my horizontal cordon trees will have three or four horizontal rows, and I'm interested in having one cultivar on the odd number horizontal rows and a different cultivar on the even numbered horizontal roads, any perfect combos, so that even an odd rose looks similar in growth rate. Thanks, Spencer. Wow. So basically Spencer is doing some beautiful, interesting bolier growing his fruit trees up a flat two dimensionally against a fence.
He wants to intermesh these two varieties, but he wants them to blossom at the same time and grow at the same rate. Any suggestions? Okay L aside from the somewhat complicated schematics one thing that I could recommend is to make sure that you become informed of the varieties that grow in your area.
Because since you live in Utah and you will get the cold, there's more likely records by the county extensions promoted by the universities that provide the information to the rest of the state on what cultivars grow at the same time. So if you have like different ones, that's how you want to do.
In order to ensure that they have the same growth, they have to be planted in an area where they're gonna receive equal amounts of sunlight, that the ground is gonna have the same type of composition, and that the root stock that you're using to propagate them is the same. So the more equal you can create the conditions for those cultivars.
The uniformity that you can provide, then it's gonna work better for the plants that you have laid out in your question, saying, that's a great answer, saying that. However, I know that in our orchard we have, for instance, liberty apple, oh my gosh, that thing is so vigorous and grows so quickly compared to, a rusted apple tree that we have that is just, you could sit there and watch it for a hundred years and you'd see maybe an inch of growth. So I guess you're right.
It's really about the research, but I love how you say the most important thing is to find out what thrives in your community that is so important. Got a couple of other quick questions here. One is from John from Toronto. John says, hi Susan. It's John just joined in listening regarding triggering blooming. Has our host ever triggered blooming by scoring the trunk? Of course, I have to ask. I have not done it that way, so I'd probably be afraid of doing that.
But that is something that is applied in order. It's one of the practices that sometimes gets applied in order to encourage production from fruit trees. I haven't per, I haven't personally done it. The management that I provide is simply defoliation at the specific time of the year, and also providing nutrition that's going to encourage fruit production and root stability.
So when I use a fertilizer at ufs, a fertilizer that's slightly lower in nitrogen compared to phosphorus and potassium, because the phosphorus and potassium will trigger or help with the production of flowers rather than vegetative growth. So if I get more vegetative growth, I'm not getting as many flowers. There's a competition. Be between the resources of the tree. What are we gonna use for Vegeta vegetative growth? What are we gonna use for fruit production?
What are we gonna use as research for the next year? So this pie of sorts, it's getting split into different parts, but I wanted more dedicated to one particular mission. And if it's gonna be for flowering and fruit production, then I'm gonna feed according to what I want the tree to do. If I want the tree to grow big, go with nitrogen. If you want the tree to stay small, but be a little bit more productive, switch gears on the nitrogen and go a little bit more on phosphorus and potassium.
That's again, a great answer because I know John has been struggling with his tree that just doesn't flower. It's a tree, it's an heirloom, and he's just so frustrated. So maybe he's using too much nitrogen, who knows? It's awesome. So John, yeah, I'm sure you'll get back to us about that at some point. We've got an email from Dawn from Michigan. Hi Susan. Great subject today, backyard Orchard culture and multi graph trees are my favorites.
Thank you, Dawn. Okay. Oh, and we have another email here. Oh, also from John, we're hearing back again from John in Toronto. I, Susan, as your guest ever successfully hand pollinated an apple Triplo. Any advice? Yeah, so it, it's a great question and yes, because I have a few trips in my collection of apples. Probably the most The most productive one of them is Bramley Seedling, which is an apple variety from England.
If you ask any English person, which is the pie apple that you want to use, is gonna be bramleys a beautiful tree, and it is a triploid. So what happens is that it's pollen sterile. So the pollen due to the number of chromosomes that it has, is not able to pollinate itself and it's not able to pollinate other varieties. So you'll need pollen from a deployed variety, and that's probably where the majority of the apple trees are at.
So you'll take the pollen safe from a Coxs orange Pippen, or see granny Smith. You can take it from Gold Rush, any variety that is deployed, and then you can pollinate the flowers of the Brandley. It will produce fruit and currently we were successful. It's just starting to wake up from a few weeks ago and we have a few fruit clusters already in development. Oh, fantastic.
So back to, we were talking about multi graft trees and we were talking about stone fruit trees, and I know that you do multi graph stone fruit trees. What types, what type of root stock works, works best for that purpose in order to accommodate different types of fruit? Okay, so in the industry, the one that happens to be used the most is nemaguard. So nemaguard is a peach seedling because peach has great compatibility with the majority of the stone fruits.
It's compatible with itself, is compatible with nectarine, plums and apricots. So it, it's very commonly used for multiple grafted trees. With my situation, it's. Problematic because both properties that I acquire here in the state of Florida, they don't have the sandy soil that is so famous in most of the households. I have soil that is compacted that when it rains in the summertime, it's always soupy, it's always wet. Petros do not like wet feet. They will not tolerate the excessive rainwater.
So if I do have something on nemaguard, which absolutely I must have, I will plant it in a raised bed. But to go to the question, what do I use because I have soil that is wet, the plum rootstocks are more adaptable to be planted in areas where the soil stays moist for a prolonged period of time. Things like my Roblan 29 C Mariana 26 24. But then they don't have the compatibility with say, like a peach or an nectarine that you would like. So there is one solution.
There is a root stop that is known as citation. It was developed in California probably more than 20, 30 years ago. The patent on it expired already. And for plums and apricots, it's good on its own, but for peaches and nectarines, if it rains, it is susceptible to transmitting viruses and then the tr the case quickly. Otherwise, it's a fantastic rootstock.
So if you live in an area where it's not gonna be constantly moist by rain, so the irrigation can be there, it likes the irrigation, but it doesn't like the water when it remains in the soil for a long period of time. So maybe we can take a cutting of that citation, connect it with. The plum rootstock, and it can be connected because citation is a plum peach hybrid. So there is plum in the genetics of the citation.
And then once that connection occurs, you can graft a peach or nectarine on top of the citation bridge, and that's what's known as an inter stem. And then you are able to create a tree that has the plum root stock that is resistant to the soil, and it has the adaptability to connect with the citation as part of that bridge. So the citation. Will impart properties that are positive without having to mess with the roots. So it will make it to have bigger fruit.
It will increase the sugar content and it will be compatible with the peach and the nectarine. So that is magical. Okay. That's incredible. So essentially with this interest stem, we are having more than one graft on the tree. It gives you the flexibility. My question is, let's say I want to create a tree using that system with an interstem that has five different types of fruit on it. Do I, do you know, this spring or whatever, do I do all seven grafts at the same time?
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna assemble a fruit tree. I've got my root stock, and then I'm gonna graft on the inter interstem and then I think I'll graft on something else, the my rebellion, and then I'm gonna graft on five different types of fruit. Can you assemble a tree all in one shot like that? Or is this a multi-year project that you let each graft take? See what happens, let it grow and then continue grafting onto it.
I think that if you're trying to use the inner stem to do multiple graphs at the same time, it'll take you two years because the first year you're going to graft the inter stem as if it was just a regular scion, and then you're gonna let that inter interst stem grow and develop branches.
So those branches are gonna develop for a full year, and then when the next winter comes, then you're going to select the branches that you want to keep, and then you can graph science onto those branches in order to create the multicrafted tree that you desired. And they are great advantages in doing that. For example, for folks that are short on space, having multiple varieties in one single tree, it's going to solve problems of spacing. It's also gonna give you.
An extended harvest or what's known as successive ripening because you're gonna have things that are gonna be ready at different times of the year. So instead of getting fruit two to three weeks at a time, and then that's it. You can have a tree that can give you fruit possibly for months. So it's great. You're gonna have different varieties or different types of fruits.
So you can have apricot, you can have nectarine, you can have peach, you can have plum, you can have pout all in one tree, which is fantastic. So it's conversation maker of sorts. So there are many advantages, but there's also things to watch out for when you have multiple grafted trees, just like with everything. And when you mention the situation with the liberty, which grows like a weed, and then you have the other apple that grows very little when you have multiple grafts in the same tree.
One or a few varieties will want to take over the tree and then they will shade out the rest. So when they are growing more vigorously than the others, is your job to prune them accordingly, to keep them in check with the rest of the varieties. So there isn't really like a domination or an overtake of one variety compared to the rest.
However, in reality, there are times when you buy a multiple grafted tree, say from a nursery or from a maor place, that when it arrives it will have a few thick branches. And then a couple of them will be like CUNY or thin. And if that is the case, when you're planting your tree in the ground, you want to orient the tree with the section that has the smaller or the punier branches facing the south or the southwest. And the reason you do that is because you want them to catch up.
And facing in that orientation will allow them to receive the maximum solar exposure, so they will get those nutrients, and then eventually they will catch up to the other varieties that are more vigorous. So those are important things to watch out for when dealing with multiple grafted trees. Something that I'd love to add because I have a little bit of a pet peeve for purchased multi graft trees.
What I find is that they're really not designed for people to graft the nut graft to prune these trees correctly. So if you know how, if you know have some skills in fruit tree grafting, you will be able to choose a better tree or better yet, graft your own tree. Fruit tree grafting is incredibly important to keep your tree healthy and productive.
But if you don't know how to do it, you may get a tree and you're like, oh my gosh, how do I prune this now so people can learn Grafting it orchard people.com. I've got courses on it and articles and stuff. We have a few quick emails will go through cuz believe it or not, we're coming up to the end of the show, so let's see. I know it's crazy. I know. It's crazy. It happens just like that. You're so interesting. That's why. Okay. Okay, so Hi Susan and Javier. I am so impressed by this concept.
I'm sorry if I missed this at the beginning, but how did Javier get into this research and work? And this is thanks from Olivia and your friends from Fort Ha Spirits in Brooklyn. Okay. So quick, how did you get into this? Just watching videos and just seeing, wow, I, I wanna have what they are doing right there. So I'll just learn and just watch a few things, get, some material where you can practice and practice makes perfect. Protect yourself at all times.
Grafting knives are sharp, so having an instrument like, like a cutout board where if you're doing insertions or where you're doing the cut on a rootstock so that your hae is protected in case that your knife slips. That's really important. Make sure that you're getting the right instruments. Sometimes you can get by with what you have at your house, but there's a reason why materials are specialized because they are designed to let people take advantage of.
What they're trying to do with grafting and the quality is great. They're gonna last for a very long time. So just gonna watch some videos on YouTube. Do a little bit of research from local universities and also from farmers around the area that might do that type of work. And the more that you can learn and gather, you are gonna become like a more informed consumer and, enjoy more of what you do.
I really think having, being new to grafting and I'm so passionate and excited about it, I think everybody who grows fruit trees should know how to do it. Seriously, if you have a fruit tree in the back in your backyard already, there is no reason why you shouldn't have grafted branches on it with different types of compatible fruit. Okay, we've got an email here from John, our buddy John, again in Toronto.
Thanks for the advice on favoring phosphorus and potassium over nitrogen to encourage fruiting. Very helpful. That's from John. Now, let's see, we've got an email from Oscar. Hey, Susan. Oscar from New York here. Just writing to say hi. Very interesting show today. Thank you, Oscar. And who do we have here? Elaine writes, aha. Elaine writes, why don't you just use super dwarf, high density planting? In the case of multiple Apple, apple varieties. Good question from Elaine.
So why, rather than grafting, why don't you just get a lot of little super dwarf trees instead? Okay. I think that one thing that people commonly misunderstand about rootstocks is the actual size of them will they be like dwarf, semi dwarf or standard. And one of the things that I learned from the great Tom Spelman of Dave Wilson nursery, and it's absolutely true, both in practice and in theory, is that you don't wanna choose a rootstock because it's dwarf, semi dwarf or standard.
You wanna choose your rootstocks for the adaptability to your climate and to your soil. So those are the considerations. If I choose a dwarf tree, it might be dwarf, but it might be susceptible to fire blight. So I am dedicating all this time. Getting a dwarf tree in the ground, couple years it's producing yay. And all of a sudden a bad summer that's really rainy. It develops fire blight and then the trees are decimated and then I'm crying about it. I would cry.
So I would rather choose a rootstock and varieties that are gonna be susceptible to that fire blight and then I can control the size myself by bruny. So that would be per, that would not get fire blight. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay, it's time for us to find out who won the contest. Awesome. So Gary, are you gonna help us with this? I am going to help you. Now what I have Javier, we, I have. All those names that wrote in into a little bucket, I'm gonna shake the bucket.
You'll be able to hear that. And you tell me when to stop. And then what I will do is pull out that piece of paper. Now we have a studio audience. They're very excited about this. I'm trying to control them, but we'll see what happens. Are you ready? Okay. Oh, here we go right now. All right, let's pull this guy out and we will see who this is. And it looks like the winner is, Oscar of New York. It looks like. Wow. Down people Down. Take it easy. Oscar of New York is the winner of the prize.
Thank you. Wow. That studio audience, I'll tell you, they really get excited with these contests. It's amazing, isn't it? Oh my goodness. So the prize that Oscar is getting lucky Oscar, I wish I could put my own name for this prize. I want one of these bypass pro pruners. So it's a color point bypass pro pruner from Dr. Valued at $28 coming in six vibrant colors. I would, if I could choose, I would maybe choose blue or purple or something. Oh, I can't have it. It's Oscar's.
Oh and you can't have it either. I'm sorry, Jer. So it's not ours. It's Oscar. I know you're crying. That's okay. So we have our winner. We will reach out to Oscar to get his address and send him that. Prize. So thank you so much, Javier, for coming on the show. Like what? Fun to talk to you. Great to be here anytime. Yeah. And I'd look forward to checking out your Facebook page. I'm not on Instagram yet, probably never will be, but you never know. It's okay.
I get very overwhelmed by social media. But thank you for coming on this show and we will get you back someday to talk about your project and how things go. Fantastic. I'm looking forward to the opportunity. All right, so if you want to learn more about today's topic and see visuals soon, in the next few days, I will have the video version of this show ready for you. So you'll be able to see the two of us chatting.
But not only that, there will be photographs and little bits of video so that you can really get a full experience of the learning that you had in this show. If you wanna do that, if you wanna see the video or other episodes you can do, you can go to Orchard People's YouTube channel and find all the videos available there. Now if you wanna learn how to graph fruit trees, if you're ready to do this, I'm ready to teach you. Go to orchard people.com, click on courses.
There is a wonderful course that I worked on with Steph Roth of Silver Creek Nursery, and we will teach you how to do this. You can do this. I can do this, we can all do this. If you want to listen to this podcast again or download previous episodes, go to orchard people.com/podcasts. And that's all for now. We've got another great show coming up next month. I know what the topic is. It's gonna be fun and hopefully you will tune in again next month to the live show.
Thanks for tuning in everybody, and I'll see you next time. Bye for now.