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Our cider apple trees are in their first year of growth, in a nursery (not orchard) setting. We grafted these trees (mostly) in April 2015 and have enjoyed watching them grow. We have grafted more than 15,000 trees (on dwarfing rootstocks) in 20+ traditional English, French and American cider varieties, such as Dabinett, Yarlington Mill, Brown’s Apple, Sweet Coppin, Brown Snout, Marie Menard, Reines des Pommes, Vilberie, Marechal, Porter’s Perfection, Golden Russet, Amere de Berthecourt, and so on.

Why in the world would we do this ourselves? We’re talking about 15,000 trees! Not exactly your hobby backyard nursery. Short answer: we tried, but were unable to find a commercial nursery that would do this for us – with so much scion wood (not verified virus free, etc), so many species to manage, etc. Maybe we didn’t look hard enough (we talked to 9 or 10 fruit tree nurseries)? Anyway, since we couldn’t find a “pro” to do it for us, we decided to take the plunge and do it ourselves.

Hoping for great results, and so far, things are looking good.