Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Many tree fruit varieties originate as sports or, more correctly, bud
sport mutations. These mutations occur naturally in plants. With
apples, for example, you may discover yellow fruit on a tree that nor-
mally bears red fruits. If the mutation is stable, wood from the affected
branch can be propagated to produce the yellow fruit.
Plants that we have propagated vegetatively are clones. The term
simply refers to the fact that an individual organism is genetically
identical to one or more other individuals. Every 'Fuji' apple, for ex-
ample, is theoretically identical to all other 'Fuji' apples of the same
strain, regardless of where they are grown. The term “clone” does not,
inanyway,indicatethatatreeisageneticallymodifiedorganism(GMO).
As an organic grower, you do not need to shy away from clonal vari-
eties, nor should you be locked into using old heirloom varieties. As
a practical matter, we have been cloning fruit crops for thousands of
years using the grafting, budding, and layering techniques described in
chapter 3 .
Where space is limited, such as in a home orchard, you can often pro-
duce trees bearing several different fruit varieties by budding or graft-
ing those varieties onto established trees. You can produce a single
tree with an assortment of apple varieties that successfully cross-pol-
linate one another. Sometimes, the varieties need to be the same crop.
You cannot successfully bud or graft pears onto apples or vice versa.
Quince rootstocks can be used for pear and some hawthorn species
can be used for mayhaw.
You may wish to graft bud wood from an established tree onto a root-
stock in order to create a new tree. For example, you may have a large,
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