You know how the male/female thing works with Persimmons, Mulberries, Blackgum, etc? These species are dioecious. Which means half of the trees will only produce male flowers, and the other half produces female flowers and resulting tasty fruits. So gamekeepers who are knowledgeable of this phenomenon cringe knowing only roughly half of the seedlings they plant will ever produce a fruit crop. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simple solution to this problem?
What about that apple tree on the old homeplace down the road from your farm? The tree that, for whatever reason, produces tons of fruit every year despite the fact it’s never fertilized or sprayed. How cool would it be to have five or six of those in the corner of every food plot?
There has always been a solution to this problem, but for some reason it has become an almost dead art except in the nursery trade. It’s called grafting and is as easy (well almost) as sharpening a pencil. In laymen’s terms, grafting is connecting a portion of your favorite, desirable tree to the roots of another tree. So take that apple for example; you can plant a common apple seedling as your rootstock, and then come back and add a stem or a bud (called a scion or scionwood) from that favorite apple tree of yours that will in little time become the exact same desirable tree.
Anyone capable of whittling with a knife can do this. To learn more, check out this video.
In a few weeks we’ll post another video on our progress.
This tip is courtesy of the GameKeepers Field Notes, a weekly wildlife and land management email newsletter produced by the Mossy Oak GameKeepers.
A GameKeeper by definition is someone who truly loves AND lives the land, the critters and nature…not just during hunting season but all the time. A GameKeeper wants to be outdoors every day and work the dirt while living their personal “obsession”.
Find out more about what makes a GameKeeper by visiting our website.
