Creating our own apple trees

Hi there,

Had a great day today running an apple grafting working bee.  Gathered scion wood 6 weeks ago and put it in the fridge, hit up a friend with contacts to source 35 apple root stock (MM106) and spent this morning with friends grafting the trees (saddle grafts) in a working bee production line, fortified by wicked chocolate cake and good coffee. (Someone grafted and taped them, someone else potted up, staked and labelled them).

The cost per tree, even figuring in potting mix and pots is about $NZ6 - a huge difference from $NZ25 or so commercially.  I would do this again.  Good fun and a great way to get apples.  I worked out our virtual orchard is about 1500-2000 kg of apples per year once the trees come on stream.  Here's hoping on the grafts taking.

10 different sorts of apple varieties, from heirloom types such as Merton Russet and Early Strawberry through to some recent NZ discoveries including Monty's Surprise which has been scientifically tested for various anti-cancer compounds and comes out tops. 

Would recommend doing this with friends or for a community garden, as a good way to get very cheap apple trees, or as a way to create apple trees for subsequent fund raisers. 

- Pip

Well... this is where guerilla gardening comes in.  One of our apple grafting group is wanting to grow fruit trees to plant in various areas of unused land, to just get more fruit trees out there in the cityscape.  And I must admit, as a wait for the train in the morning I do eye up the adjacent strip of grass and start calculating how many fruit trees could be put on it. At 300 metres long and about 6 metres wide I'll bet it would make a serious contribution to the local fresh food supply.

On a more legit note, another of the group hit up their local fire brigade a couple of years ago about a sloping piece of land next to the fire station, in rough grass, and is growing on fruit trees to plant there. And their recent project has been a scrappy bit of council land running next to a public path, that the locals now have a a 2 year old mixed orchard on.  I think this site if now full (if everything survives), hence the chatting up of the firemen. :happy:

Or maybe urban NZ has truck loads more "spare" land than urban UK?

How come you lot know more stats about NZ than we do? Cracks me up!

-Pip