Modern fruit trees are made possible through the art of grafting. By attaching hardy roots into a tree with tasty fruits, horticulturalists have created fruit trees which are more productive and have a higher resistance to disease than trees growing on their own roots. Sometimes, it’s helpful to graft other fruit trees onto the main tree for assistance with pollination or to expand the growing season and these trees are generally called fruit salad trees.
Fruit Salad Trees
Fruit salad trees would be the answer to a gardener’s problem of too many fruit varieties and inadequate room to plant them. On one rootstock, a gardener can develop a virtually unlimited variety of varieties of harmonious fruits, but five or six is frequently the realistic limit. These grafted wonders are a blessing to small yards, creating an orchard at the space one tree would normally occupy.
Compatible Grafts
The trick to fruit salad trees is grafting harmonious trees together. Most often, just closely related varieties at the same genus can be grafted with them. It is possible to graft apples into a apple rootstock, graft plums, peaches, nectarines, apricots and almonds to peach rootstocks, or multiple types of pears to pear rootstocks. Most types of citrus will graft together fairly well, since they are tightly related. Incompatible grafts may initially show some growth, but the grafted department soon dies.
Making Multiple Grafts
Numerous grafts are stressful to a tree, so gardeners frequently perform budding grafts to make fruit salad trees. Having a budding graft, just a small incision is made in the bark of the recipient tree and one bud is placed in before being bound tightly in place. This operation can be repeated many times with very little stress to the rootstock. Budding is a quick process and each limb will mature at around the same time since they were grafted in the same season.
Fruit Salad Tree Care
Fruit salad trees, such as other trees that are overgrown, require more care while the grafts are recovery and through the first time. About a month later bud grafting the new limb buds into the rootstock, remove the bands holding the flames in place to prevent them from girdling. Maintain the rootstock well watered and give it a shot of fertilizer to help accelerate recovery. You must resist trimming your fruit salad tree until the first dormant season.