New Scion Wood Exchange Site for Fruit Tree Enthusiasts

FREELAND, Wash. - Jan. 10, 2015 - PRLog -- Budding horticulturists (sorry about that), and even orchardists well past their bloom, have a new site on which to trade scion wood and rootstocks. Muscle and Arm Farm (www.MuscleAndArmFarm.com), based in Freeland, WA, has new website with space devoted to matching up folks looking for a strange and wonderful apple or peach, and who have scion wood to offer. The service is free.

Most fruit trees nowadays are made by joining fruiting wood of a certain cultivar - say "Jonagold" apple - onto a dwarfing or semidwarfing rootstock. If, instead of using dwarfing rootstock, an orchardist were to plant a seed from a Jonagold purchased at the grocery store, the resulting tree would grow to be perhaps 30 or 40 feet tall, would take 10 or 12 years to begin fruiting, and would have apples very different from the Jonagold whose seeds were planted.

The fruiting wood selected for grafting is called "scion wood", and is ideally selected from a healthy tree, using last season's new growth. Scion wood may be grafted to an existing tree, or to rootstock with special (often dwarfing, among other things) characteristics. To make a hardwood or stem graft, seasonal timing is important. The scion wood buds should be dormant, so that the joined tissues have a chance to heal before the scion wood buds begin to sprout and demand moisture from the roots.

Fruit tree enthusiasts can create trees using cultivars that are not available at the local nursery, and grow fruit not available at the grocery store. A local "scion wood exchange" is a useful tool for anyone wishing to build their own trees. A local exchange makes sense because of seasonal variations across the country. For example, apple buds begin to swell - and are therefore unsuitable for dormant stem grafting - in the south or along the Pacific Northwest coast long before apple buds swell in the mid-plains states.