Saturday, September 22, 2012

Apple Rootstock Stooling

So you've bought too many apple root stocks have you? Well to be accurate, you've bought the minimum order possible from the ONLY commercial nursery you could find that sells root stocks AT ALL. That amount turns out to be 20, and if they are feeling generous or haven't mastered basic numeracy, 23. Then you graft interesting things onto them, every single one of them has taken successfully and you've got twenty three apple trees to get rid of. Well one of the options available to you is to make more bloody root stocks by a process called stooling. Why it's called that I can't say, it seems faintly inappropriate. While I can't see myself needing any more root stocks ever again, the logic of propagation simply doesn't work that way. The argument goes: I have a plant, I don't need or want any more of them, but because it's possible to make more of them I'd better get on with it and work out what to do with them when it becomes an issue.

This is an excellent 'how to' for root stock stooling. It looks like it's a scan from an old book, but if its copyrighted I'll take it down. Not really, come and take me on eh? I'm the Night Gardener, you've heard about what I like to do.
I managed to find a nice sunny spot for the process. Can you spot the stock?
Here's a closeup. Sheared off at ground level and basted in bitumen, Stooling is brutal!

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