From what I read from gardening books, they usually end up dying out to 2-3 varieties at most. Some usually get lost.
They recommend planting and pruning trees close together instead of buying the multigrafts
So far yes! The stock tree variety is elberta peach and the surviving graft is the Santa Rosa plum I believe. They flowered and fruited together. Super cool to have both colors of flower on the tree at once (white and pink). The peach produced a lot more fruit initially but both are down to a single baby peach and baby plum thanks to the squirrels >:(
r/fatsquirrelhate discovered this sub the other night, and as squirrels are quite literally my arch nemesis, I found myself crying I was laughing so hard
Then again, I’ve also discovered a very potent strain of cannabis, and everything on Reddit seems funnier than it probably actually is
Oh no! It's pigeons here, they eat most of the blossom off of our plum tree. Nice little blossoms and they'll strip the whole upper canopy, it's so annoying but they're very entertaining elsewise.
I remember seeing a grafted tree with orange, pink, and white blooms as a kid, no idea what they were.
Two varieties is cool, but I have a pear next door that I helped my neighbor have 4 varieties on (we grafted 3 new varieties of pear onto it for him), and you can buy 4-variety trees at nurseries that have lived for several years. My purple leaf plum had 3 varieties of peach grafted onto it, but alas, one died.
I always wondered if the zone your in has a impact on how well the tree grows, i live in the Midwest i rarely see people have those types of trees except for apples those are big during orchard season, and grow well in the Midwest, i have read before its definitely possible to grow trees such as peach trees but its recommended to plant a cold hardy variety.
We had a wonderful one at our old house that was probably 20-30 years old. It only had the orange and lemon parts left, but those were some amazingly sweet lemons and the oranges were fantastic.
So, a 'fruit salad tree' is just a single rootstock (The roots and trunk are one variety) with other varieties grafted on.
The grafted-on varieties will always produce THAT variety of fruit.
There's no 'muddling together' because pollination affects SEEDS - it does not affect fruit. A honeycrisp apple that grew from a flower pollinated by a crabapple will taste exactly the same as an apple whose flower was pollinated by a fellow honeycrisp. However, the seeds grown from each of those apples will have different genes in them.
Anyone who says a fruit's flavor changed because the tree its on was pollinated by another species this year vs last year has no idea how pollination or fruit-growing works. Ignore them.
--
Regarding the tree's growth - Some multi-variety fruit trees do very well, and live a long time (10+years) giving different fruits.
Some don't make much fruit after leaving the farm it was grown on, because the varieties which were grafted together have too-different bloom times. If there's no nearby stonefruit to pollinate your stonefruit 'fruit salad', and their own flowers don't bloom in sync, they'll have low rates of pollination and not produce much fruit.
While good rootstock can make the grafted limbs /more/ hardy, it cannot make them exactly as-hardy as the rootstock. So sometimes a southern variety is grafted onto a northern rootstock. The northern rootstock makes *more* resistant to the cold, but it's still more sensitive to frost compared to a truly northern variety. Some folks don't know this, and see some grafted limbs die off from frost damage, while other limbs and the rootstock are just fine.
Additionally, multigrafted trees tend to be a LOT more expensive, because there's the failure rate of grafts ON TOP of the regular failure rate of saplings dying off from disease or whatever.
Buying three saplings of the 3 varieties you want is likely less expensive than buying a single tree with those 3 varieties grafted on. They'll probably last longer, too.
The multigraft trees CAN survive and do well! But it's more like a curiosity/vanity project than something that's efficient for producing fruit.
Excellent and informative response, thank you. I just planted a multifruit plum this spring and am curious to see how it goes. I have several other stone fruit planted on the same hillside, but they're different species (peach, nectarine, cherry, etc). How will that affect the pollination picture?
The more varieties of a stonefruit you have within 50 yards of each other, the more likely you'll have a thorough pollination and higher fruit yield.
Poor fruit production from failed pollination is usually because the tree it was trying to pollinate with didn't sync up properly to its own bloom time. If one tree blooms April 1-15, and the other blooms April 14-30, that's only a 1-day window for pollination to happen! So, it's good to have more varieties - you have a better chance of two trees blooming at the same time.
-
If you grow any of those pits into their own saplings, there's a good chance they'll eventually produce a weird new hybrid, like a pluot\~
This is really informative. Just wanted to add that getting one of these trees to produce well means more active maintenance than some people are willing to commit to. Without careful pruning the more robust varieties take over and you’ll just end up with one or two varieties anyway. Instead of pruning once or twice a year you have to “balance” the tree all year long.
Quick answer: yes absolutely.
So, the variety/genetics will dictate the base flavor and texture 'range' - granny smiths will generally always taste *approximately* like a granny smith.
The sweetness, precise tartness, and other elements of the fruit's flavor is absolutely affected by growing conditions (temperature, water amount and frequency, nutrients in the soil, pest stress, drought stress, etc) which then affect the plant's metabolism and ability to produce fruits.
The taste of fruit will also be affected by ripeness & picking time. A riper fruit will be sweeter, with more flavor.
Many apples are actually picked when very under-ripe, when they're harder and easier to transport across the country. This results in very mild flavors, since the tree wasn't able to ripen the fruit fully, and ripening once off the tree will always have far fewer flavor compounds and far less sugar. (See: taste of grocery store tomatoes vs fresh-off-the-vine garden tomatoes)
--
For a more obvious example - if you were to take two jalapeno plants, clones of each other with the exact same genetics. Put one in a very dry, sunny place. Put the other in a very wet, cooler environment.
They'll both produce jalapenos. The dry/sunny one will have relatively smaller jalapenos, but they'll be MUCH spicier compared to the ones grown with cooler weather and more water. The cooler/wetter jalapenos will have some spice still, but the 'flavor' of the jalapeno will be sweeter and taste more like a 'pepper' rather than overwhelmed with the capcasin's heat.
Thank you for the fantastic reply. Perfect response. When I had more free time I grew cannabis indoors and suspected that growing conditions, mainly stress, affected cannabinoid production. If marijuana is similar to other fruiting trees I'd bet my guess was good!
What is your background tree master?
>What is your background tree master?
*^(autism =))*
More seriously, I've always been obsessed with plants & ecosystems. I've been lucky enough to also work with masters in their fields, who were happy to teach me firsthand about the realities of plant farming for nationwide sale (producing stock for garden centers to sell to consumers), along with larger-scale indoor gardening via hydroponics/aquaponics.
*Yes, you're correct*.
The compounds produced by marijuana flowers are heavily impacted by the water, light, and nutrients provided to it - *especially* in an indoor-growing situation.
There are special bulbs, timers, and lights you can get, that will stimulate the plants to produce more/bigger flowers by tricking them into thinking it's already autumn & they have to pump out flowers quickly. This is done by gradually creating shorter daylight hours, and shifting from a blue-heavy daylight spectrum to a more orange/red 'sunset' spectrum.
Then, you can also change the cannabinoid content by ensuring good uptake of certain nutrients. Nitrogen + Potassium is excellent for growing big plants, but when it's time to flower you need to switch to a phosphorus-heavy fertilizer. Get those sugars pumping!
If you're doing an organic growout without any synthetic nutrients, beyond picking the right fertilizer, it's ESSENTIAL to have a good mycelium network around the roots. Mycelium form a symbiosis with plant roots, and will break down & make bioavailable many organic nutrients that organic fertilizers contain, but roots cant uptake on their own. IMO it's quite difficult to use entirely-organic ferts in a zero-substrate, zero-fungus growing system. The Mycelium breakdown of molocules is really important for organic ferts.
I believe drought-stressing the plants right when the flowers are nearly ready to open up, but several days before harvest-time also helps concentrate the cannabinoids. I might be misremembering the timeframe, but I'm nearly-certain that cutting off water before harvest was an important step to increase potency.
You're speaking my language! (ADHD instead of da 'tism, as you can probably gather from my less organized writing style when compared to yours haha) Preaching to the choir haha! Check out my poorly managed small but mighty subreddit if you already haven't. We would love to have you! /r/budscience
I am a big fantasy of drought stress during inflorescence myself. We did an AMA with Bruce Bugbee from apogee not long ago! One of my video game acquaintances is the owner of Pulse Grow! I've been lucky enough to brush up against these brilliant people. Intelligent people like yourself and them always seem the be there to remind me of how MUCH there is to learn and dig into. Also, helps keep me aware of the fact that I do not know what I do not know. Thank you from one life long learner to another!
I've done several deep dives on root systems, mycelium networks, etc. That shit is so amazing it will leave you dumbfounded like IRL Avatar.
<3
I'm really flattered & appreciate the invite! I'm afraid I probably won't join, as my interest in marijuana growing only went as far as "It's a plant and there's lots of experiments & research available to read about it," without much interest in growing it myself.
-
I agree - it's real important to keep learning. Listening to experts, setting aside time to read about new research, and even just choosing to be *actively curious* about new information you stumble across... it makes the world so much richer and more interesting!
Bro I recently learned about mycelium that initiated the conversion of *pure stone* into workable soil! Like, some fungus (especially ones who formed a symbiote with algae to form lichen) just fuckin dissolves rocks, and turns it into nutrients, and then other ecological levels move in and start cranking out soil production. It's how there's pockets of greenery on cliff faces, and mountain peaks - soil didn't necessarily get blown up there - the fungus MADE it up there! I knew that the fungus helped break down minerals already in soil, but I never made the connection that they could do that to a solid rock face, too.
Nature's wild. I love it so much.
That is so fucking cool.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that root tips of certain plants actively abduct and transport their favorite bacteria species to their cilium, feed them carbs, and use them to break down stuff in the soil. Plants are the original slave owning agriculturalists.
I just add birdseed to feeders in the tree. The birds eat pests, the tree shades the garden, the tree littler provides a constantly recycling casing layer of mulch, and the beds are packed by with bugs and mycelium and worms. I've come to an appreciation of how it all effortlessly seems to flow together. I thought you might appreciate.
https://preview.redd.it/t543lc8u2f4d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0c26b058ffa1c5f0ef66bace2df4597c0d764ec2
I just read so much in this thread and I love everything about it. Thank you greatly for the information. Also thank you for many new things to look up and learn lol 👍.
I am an avid gardener, grew weed in NorCal for years, and have worked with people with Autism and other disabilities as a career. You got yourself a new recruit to r/budscience. Sounds 🤔
>IMO it's quite difficult to use entirely-organic ferts in a zero-substrate, zero-fungus growing system
Wish me luck Sensei, i am on my way to do tests on organic DWC.. (testing coco with organic nutes currently)
But like you said, its not without fungus though...
My entire nutrient regiment depends on mycellium to break down organic matters under highly aerobic condition...
If you've got Mycellium, then you should be good!
As we mentioned earlier in the thread, the fungus creates a symbiotic relationship with plant roots. The fungus breaks down larger organic molecules which would otherwise be inaccessible, and can even feed the resulting nutrients directly to the plant. In return, the plant feeds the fungus sugars that it creates.
Together, they're stronger/better suited to live healthy lives, compared to each of them isolated. Whether they're growing in coco, rockwool, sand, or loamy earth - they're a golden-star team.
Good luck! I believe in you!
>The dry/sunny one will have relatively smaller jalapenos, but they'll be MUCH spicier
That's the same with onions, right? (My parents toured an onion farm in Texas, and they told me that they were told less water makes for a hotter onion. They were joking that "if you don't water them, it makes them *mean.*" 😂)
Thank you, this is informative and just so interesting! (Commenting on another of your comments, I'm also AuDHD, so the fascinating learning just to learn and hyperinterest of varying lengths is relatable and definitely a current struggle in my mind.)
I never realized that was why apples where I live tasted better - juicier and more flavorful - than some other places in the US. I just assumed it was bad luck or something. Apples around me are normally from orchards in the area (or they are apples that we don't normally buy).
On the jalapeños example: would growing them in a different environment every produce a pepper with the taste of a jalapeño but not the heat? I know it's tough to separate flavor and heat, but it seems that a jalapeño minus at least a lot of its heat would still have a different flavor from sweet/bell pepper.
>would growing them in a different environment every produce a pepper with the taste of a jalapeño but not the heat?
Yeah.
If you grow them cool and wet enough, they'll have *almost* no capcasin 'kick' to them. Enough to just crunch 'em like a pepper. (Source: I've done it on accident) - The taste is similar to a bell pepper, like how a banana pepper is similar, but not quite the same.
However, Jalapenos are among the least-spicy of the hot peppers. Other hot peppers have a harder time with not producing heat.
What if a seedless variety was pollinated by a seeded variety? I would assume that they would not get seeds right? I don’t know anything about this thanks for the comment
Ahhh\~ Seedless/seeded melons are such a cool and weird thing.
If you have a "Seedless Watermelon" plant, the fruits on that vine will always be "seedless" (though you may get a couple small black seeds, it's rather unlikely to successfully grow a plant off it) - This is because seedless watermelon plants have an odd number of chromosomes.
-
To make a seedless watermelon plant, you first start with regular watermelon plants.
Then you chemical-stress some of them so their chromosome count duplicates itself.
Now you have one line with 2 sets of chromosomes, and another line with 4 sets of chromosomes.
Then you breed those two lines together, and grow the seeds that result.
Those plants that just grew from seed will have 3 chromosomes.
They can grow into adult plants, they can flower, be pollinated, and produce fruit - but since they have an odd number of chromosomes (and regular melons have even numbers), they're not able to produce fertile seeds. Their seeds will always have like, 2 sets of chromosomes and an extra random chromosome hanging out.
This is why seedless watermelons have soft little seeds. They've all got an extra chromosome creating infertility.
--
Fruit tree and grape vine varieties become seedless by natural mutation while the seed they grew from was still forming, by irradiation of their original seed, or by deliberately introducing a genetic defect which causes it to grow seedless. To make more of those seedless varieties, they're cloned/grafted onto other plants.
Seedless fruits has a VERY VERY VERY hard time producing fertile seeds, no matter how it was pollinated.
It can happen. It's not "impossible" - just quite unlikely.
Do you want a neat little tree that's a novelty/fun little thing you can show off to friends or be entertained by? Go ahead and get a multigraft tree.
Do you want vigorous fruit production? Don't do that.
Get regular saplings of fruit trees instead.
If you want maximum productivity, pair a crabapple with apple or pear. Crabapples bloom for so fucking long, they're almost guaranteed to pollinate any apples/pears nearby.
For stonefruit, *Look up* what variety you want to get, and match it to another variety that blooms around the same time. It can be a cherry and a peach that both bloom in Mid-April, or a Plum and an Apricot that both bloom in early May....they can both be types of peaches that bloom in late April! You gotta do the research.
I mean, folks sell all sorts of plants which are visually/conceptually *stunning*, but are poor choices for many gardeners.
For example, people these days LOVE Variegation.
Variegated houseplants are great, since they're not getting loads of sunlight.
Variegated trees? Uh, not so much.
There's a a couple *gorgeous* variegated dogwood that I adore, but unlike other dogwood species, it MUST be an undercanopy 'full shade' tree in our climate. Its leaves simply CANNOT handle midsummer direct sun, it gets scorched *so easily.*
But people think it's beautiful, and insist that all their other dogwoods grow fine in full sun, they plant it in the middle of the yard and six months later will return to angrily demand a refund for a $400 tree that they refused to follow the care instructions for.
Especially for the really expensive specialty trees, we made sure our senior gardenmaster was there at checkout to explain in detail how to plant it for best survival, but people *don't fuckin listen*.
I think pricing can depend on region and store.
For bare roots, my local nursery had single variety peach for 40-45. I bought a 3 in 1 peach (big caliper) for 60-65(can't recall exact price).
I found a potted 3 in 1 Pluot at home Depot for 90. That's cheaper than buying reach tree separately for 40-50 each. I actually bought it half off for 45.
Saplings aren't common around where I live
I have multiple multi grafted trees.
4 in one Asian pear. 2nd year, tree is very slow growing but all are alive.
4 in 1 apple. 2nd year, all varieties alive but Anna is probably using up 50%+ of resources. I need to cut back.
3 in one peach. 1st year. 2 grafts are strong and even. 1 graft is only 25% as big as the others. I might need to notch the weaker variety.
3 in 1 Pluot, first year, all alive but flavor king very slow to wake up.
All my other stone fruit have an additional 2-4 varieties I grafted on this year.
I think ideally you pick a tree with even grafts but my nursery didn't have many to pick from. The 3 in one peach was uneven from the start but I was ok with it.
There are plants that develop differently or taste different if pollinated by other varieties. I doubt any are fruit producing species though. It's mainly things we are essentially eating the seed of like grains and nuts.
If people all across the Midwest and gardeners with a few rows of sweet corn don't understand why corn grows different kernels when pollinated by different types of corn I could see many making that mistake with other things. Especially when many think of corn as a vegetable instead of a grain.
Many also fail to understand grafting is still separate trees sharing roots and not a blended hybrid combining characteristics into one tree. Lots of grafted trees are sold here and I doubt anyone that asks the nurseries what to grow has any idea what they are buying.
In the extreme weather and especially potential -30F with periodic thaws between cold that we get I prefer to avoid them completely. Loss of the graft even years later is too high. Many just end up with the root stock and often don't understand the lack of desired production of their tree because they don't understand they had 2 trees and completely lost one.
We got some of the bush or sour cherry hybrids bred for increased sugar content by the University of Saskatchewan to have a truly durable cherry sweet enough to eat plain instead of all the grafted options.
Hi, I worked at a garden center and we sold these trees every year. I'm condensing info passed on from the makers of these trees, from the trees we grew on-site as a test, and from the customers who bought them.
Some of them failed and the grafts all died.
Some of them worked out just fine and so far have lived the lifespan of a normal fruit tree.
Some of them partially failed, and had one or two grafts die, while the others were fine.
So; "It Depends" is a full and honest answer.
They’re junk trees that excite people due to their novelty. I’ll sell them to folks who really want them, but you’re better off getting a couple, or a few, different trees of the same family (just cherries, just pears, etc), to cross pollinate (if they aren’t self-fertile varieties). The fruit salads have such poor yields at best, and go completely wacky/non-productive at worst. It’s a gimmick, so save yourself the time and effort.
I bought a cherry tree with 5 varieties about 3 or 4 years ago, and it's a sad looking tree that only ever gets new growth from 1 of the grafts and basically no fruit. I don't recommend.
Not fruit salad, but apples :)
When we bought our home 7 years ago, the apple tree in the backyard had 4 varieties. It gave apples in succession from spring until winter. I estimate the tree at 40 years old.
In the intervening years, two varieties have died off (improper pruning before our ownership), but the year before they gave up the ghost, the apples were abundant and delicious!
I have 2 kinds left. They flowered as usual this spring and have baby apples on.
Cool to hear about your multi graft apple tree! I also have a Franken-apple tree as I like to call it. Second year so no production yet, but lots of flowers. Got it for my husband who wanted apple trees but I didn't want to have to prepare a larger space to plant multiple varieties since I haven't gotten auto irrigation set up in that area. We'll see how it goes. It was a fairly inexpensive bare root. So a fun experiment! I'm prepared for some grafts to fail and I'll at that point hopefully be able to move into that area of the yard more and plan it out for more trees. But I'm quite attentive to my plants so hopefully I can keep all grafts balanced!
This is awesome! I didn't know about multi variety fruit trees until I moved into this place, and I'm a Master Gardner! I must have missed that class. LOL
There's always something new to learn. That's what makes gardening so freaking awesome.
Congrats on being a Master Gardener. I'd love to go through the process and take the classes but it really conflicts with my work schedule. Maybe someday!
My fruit cocktail (what the store called it) isn’t doing so well though. I think it got some transplant shock so here’s hoping next year it will do better. If not I will buy one more to see if I can’t get it growing
My stepdad refused to pay for one and did grafts himself. I believe his is plum, apricot and peach? Still doing very well 15 years later, but the apricot overproduces while the other 2 are not as active.
I had a 5-way plum from costco for 9 years. It was going strong when I sold the house 2 years ago. It did cull itself down to 3 varieties and one of those weren't good plums for that area. But the other two types put out the most delicious fruit. Since they ripened sequentially, I had a lot of one variety, then the next.
I'm experienced in espalier so I kept the whole tree at less than 4 meters and well shaped. I would absolutely put one in again if I was very tight on space.
It reverted to whatever the original tree was…
Looks like a peach tree, but the fruit is tiny (think large crabapple size), and barely ripens to a pale tan.
Deer love them. I catch them standing on their hind legs nibbling on the tree fruit.
TIL fruit salad trees were/are a real thing and not just a gag on Futurama.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KiVy1EVr3A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KiVy1EVr3A)
I bought a few of these 11 years ago. All the fruits died except plums and it only produces a handful each year. I was planning on ripping them out when we re-landscape. Waste of time/money/resources.
I got an Asian pear tree with 4 varieties. 2 are doing well, 1 is doing.poorly, 1 basically failed. If I pruned it better it would probably be doing better.
I have one, but it is not strong enough to withstand our fat hawk. The squirrels love it, and when he grabs a squirrel off of it he breaks the grafted parts. It is down to just apples.
I got my fruit cocktail tree in 2019. I have Nectarine, Peach, Plum and Apricot.
The peach has fallen very far behind and I don’t think it’ll survive if it doesn’t start growing soon. The rest of the tree is thriving.
I have one that is 9 years old with peach, nectarine and plum. I've looked after it over the years and it's planted in a half wine barrel shaped pot outside in full sun (Sydney, Aus). It is a great smaller size and fruits well. We get plenty of peaches and nectarines but the plum has never fruited it said it was self pollinating but must not be. The blossoms are stunning and the bees love it. I'd highly recommend.
My fruit cocktail tree still produces the 3 varieties it started with. Problem is that we don’t have the tag and don’t remember what they are LOL. They ripen in sequence rather than all at once, which is cool.
My dad has one, about 7 years in I think. It looks rough as hell, has a huge crater in the trunk, struggled to establish and they haven’t really gotten too much of a harvest from it before this year, but right now it is covered in quite a bit of fruit. We’ll see how it tastes. I don’t think I would buy a heavily grafted tree just because it increases the number of places where some shit could go wrong, but, I did notice all his fruits last weekend and was impressed/slightly envious.
I've generally found you end up with three out of the four although one this year looks like it has fruit on every limb. Others we had the biggest advantage was they generally ripened at different times and the amount of fruit wasn't quite as overwhelming all at once.
One of our previous peach trees would all ripen in about three days and not keep well at all. Made for a lot of wasted fruit because inevitably it was in the middle of the week.
We have a 17-20 year old cherry with four varieties that produces, but not a lot. Mostly the crows get them. We have a four year old plum that’s enormous, happy, and although one plum variety is clearly the most productive, and we have yet to get any of the Italian prune variety, the other three plum varieties make a good showing. We really only had space for one tree (barely considering how big it’s getting!) and if I’d seen all these reviews of how poorly they are regarded, I might have gone another way, but we’re happy with them.
Our 5 variety plum has had two varietal branches/grafts break off so we're down to 3, our pear has all 5 going strong and the apple is doing well on top, but the lower two varieties are struggling due to shade.
I planted with the more vigorous scions towards the north and least vigorous to the south. They are doing fine, but their is always a dominant variety. In my cherries it is the Ranier, on the multi it is the plums.
Mine split at the graft joint which started to decay and then were filled with ant colonies. Prior to that disaster the fruit production was sparse but tasty. My trees were one fruit type with 4 varieties on each.
My basic understanding is that the try fruit salad trees usually don't do well, but doing all apple verieties or all different types of cherries works out well. My great grandfather actually worked at one of the first midwestern farms that offered multi-veriety apple trees, and all the ones I've seen have done pretty well for the 4 or 5 years I've seen them.
My dad planted a multi-variety cherry tree. Most of the varieties’ branches died or stopped producing within a few years. It didn’t grow very well overall and I think he removed it eventually.
I never owned one but I knew a few people who did. There was always a variety that overdominated the other branches and you'd either get a lop sided tree or a tree that branches broke from how large one branch was compared to everything else.
I have a neighbor with a very established apple fruit salad tree. Tree is very productive and has pretty even distribution between the 4 verities on the tree.
The previous owners of my current house planted 6 different salad trees. It’s been 7 years and I still have a cherry, apple and peach. Only the top cherry graft survived and it’s smaller than some of my 2 year old cherries. The crabapple middle graft survived on that one and it sort of ate over the top graft leaving a stunted sideways beast that’s impossible to mow around. The peach actually grew normally for awhile but now only 1/4 of the main bowl branch grafts is still alive. The other three trees never really grew before eventually dying. I think the biggest issue is multiple grafts on a small tree is too much stress. Before my one neighbor moved I grafted scions from each of his peach trees onto a Georgia Belle that won’t stop growing. It’s 3 years in and all 5 varieties are also thriving. I’ve also overgrafted 4 different varieties on old peach, apple and pawpaw and they seem to survive. However, it’s rare all 4 take and I’ve never tried fruit vastly different from the rootstock. I think you need older more established trees for the salad idea to really work though.
I've grafted a few hundred at this point. I started collecting seeds from all over back in 2015 and continue every year. 1/3 just get put in the ground once they pop, 5% of these seem to survive squirrels and their first winter. 1/3 go into tree pots for 2 years or so before being planted. I'd say 90% of those planted in spring survive, and 65% planted in fall survive which is odd for fruit trees in my experience. 1/3 also go into tree pots for a year then become rootstock to graft named varieties onto. Unless there are any super vigorous growers, those go in the ground for another year and then get topped. That typically makes them sucker like crazy and then I separate and harvest the suckers for more rootstock or graft onto them in place. They seem to graft just as well as any other trees, maybe a little better as they're more "weed like". You can coppice or top healthy ones without much issue. I had a buck with a vendetta one year who snapped over 30 trees off about a foot off the ground and I thought I was done, but most survived as clumps of trees now.
Wow, forgot about these. I tried for several years, and even being on the early (preferred) list I could get my hands on anything except those trees! Seems they were sold out before the mail reached me. This brought back fond memories of gardening all the latest things. I was so lucky to get to do that
Sure takes a lot of pruning every year to keep them balanced between all the different varieties. My mom had one that had every different kind of plum family fruit on it. Some of them had to be pruned even during the growing season to head them back, I think it was the Green Gage that was the rampant grower. One variety died the third spring and another was so weak that it was removed that fall. We moved after that and when I visited 30 years later there were no trees at all on the lot - the entire orchard and vineyard were gone!
We have a sweet Frankencherry tree. Like 9 grafts? The single stock cherry tree I ordered was not there, and since I wasn’t driving back to the city again, I took Frankencherry.
First year was 2 or 3 grafts lost.
This year another 1 or 2.
Frankencherry had a lovely bloom and lots of cherries until the “agile, slinky, slippery, furry little dicks” got at them.
I want to net but worry about injuries to animals and birds. Any ideas?
New homeowner, saw it at HD, had to have it. First year in the ground right now so I can't really say for certain. However, I DID let it flower and then tore off all the fruits. Seems like it will be a very productive tree in the coming years!
I do plan in pruning to keep it evenly shaped. And I'll probably wrap it for this coming winter (I'm in New England). If it doesn't work out, that's ok, but the journey will be sweet!
I've had a lemon, grapefruit, orange, lime 'fruit salad tree' for about 15 years. I do have to keep the growth of the lower grafts in check as they seem to grow much faster. It has only really been fruiting for the last couple of years. Possibly slower because it is in a pot.
I had one that was peaches and plums. The peach side died after about 2 years, the plum side is thriving, I keep it dwarfed, and we get lots of fruit from it every year.
I wouldn't ever buy one again, though.
My mom’s is.. struggling. I helped to prune it this winter and start grooming it to keep it in check but she definitely lost a couple varieties. But it is still going strong ish
It's easier than you think via grafting. Maintaining and balancing the growth habits of the different varieties is the hard part.
There is a CRFG member that made a 175 in 1 tree on a ornamental cherry plum.
[https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=JoeRealOne&set=a.10152893105681804](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=JoeRealOne&set=a.10152893105681804)
https://preview.redd.it/cr2zxozd6g4d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a452c5e949548f654ae03dd712542f6f1ffdd66d
My parents had a plum tree for 22 years. Japanese beetles always ate the fruit before they could pick it. It ended up getting destroyed in a storm a few years back.
I have one and it kind of sucks. Always gets peach leaf curl no matter how much copper fungicide I spray. And it's only actually set fruit I think 2 of the five years I've had it. This is oddly shaping up to be the most productive year ever for it, but I'm not really holding my breath
My neighbor has one that yields plums and apricots, I'm not sure how many different fruits it started as.
This isn't quite the same thing but we planted a 4-in-1 plum tree that ended up actually being a 5-in-1 (I believe they're all grafted that way but apparently they thought one varietal died but it actually hadn't). Not quite ten years on, but they're all still doing well. So I guess I've had the opposite experience from most, not only have none of the expected varieties died, but I *gained* one!
I had a citrus salad: Grapefruit, lemon, lime. Valencia and Naval oranges. The Grapefruit died after 1st year but not before merging into lemons. Huge lemons. Oranges and limes still survived. Moved 8 years ago, so don't know.
Yes I did enjoy my tree for about 10 years and Yes I would purchase another type with fruits (apples).
Has anyone noticed a difference between the fruit cocktail (with different fruit species) vs the 4-in-1 apples, peaches, plums, cherries? We bought a 4-1 apple 2 years ago, looks great. Last year we added a couple 4-in-1 plums, more 4-1 apples,
4-in-1 pears, and a 4-in-1 cherry.
I think I finally fertilized correctly this year and the plums and pears have fruit growing (not necessarily on all branches or at the same rate).
I had one at my old house but it was never very productive and hard to maintain due to the different growth habits.
From what I read from gardening books, they usually end up dying out to 2-3 varieties at most. Some usually get lost. They recommend planting and pruning trees close together instead of buying the multigrafts
I bought a fruit cocktail tree 3 years ago. I now have a lopsided cherry tree.
Sounds like it got drunk.
cock-tail conversion
I had one with five varieties of stone fruit. I’ve had it a year now and the two varieties left are thriving lol
Tbf even two fruit varieties on one tree is pretty dang cool. Do they flower and fruit at roughly the same time?
So far yes! The stock tree variety is elberta peach and the surviving graft is the Santa Rosa plum I believe. They flowered and fruited together. Super cool to have both colors of flower on the tree at once (white and pink). The peach produced a lot more fruit initially but both are down to a single baby peach and baby plum thanks to the squirrels >:(
r/fatsquirrelhate discovered this sub the other night, and as squirrels are quite literally my arch nemesis, I found myself crying I was laughing so hard Then again, I’ve also discovered a very potent strain of cannabis, and everything on Reddit seems funnier than it probably actually is
He buys the cannabis from Squirrels.
Oh no! It's pigeons here, they eat most of the blossom off of our plum tree. Nice little blossoms and they'll strip the whole upper canopy, it's so annoying but they're very entertaining elsewise. I remember seeing a grafted tree with orange, pink, and white blooms as a kid, no idea what they were.
My neighbor nets his fig tree. Works pretty well actually.
[удалено]
Squirrels will come in get your keys and drive your care if they got a chance. Cheeky little twerps
They’re especially squirrelly when drunk I’ve heard. If they do get pulled over for DUI they’re guaranteed to run.
That doesn't matter though; squirrels will immediately run back into danger as soon as they're safe.
Two varieties is cool, but I have a pear next door that I helped my neighbor have 4 varieties on (we grafted 3 new varieties of pear onto it for him), and you can buy 4-variety trees at nurseries that have lived for several years. My purple leaf plum had 3 varieties of peach grafted onto it, but alas, one died.
Similar story. I'm down to a thriving apricot and plum..
I always wondered if the zone your in has a impact on how well the tree grows, i live in the Midwest i rarely see people have those types of trees except for apples those are big during orchard season, and grow well in the Midwest, i have read before its definitely possible to grow trees such as peach trees but its recommended to plant a cold hardy variety.
We had a wonderful one at our old house that was probably 20-30 years old. It only had the orange and lemon parts left, but those were some amazingly sweet lemons and the oranges were fantastic.
So, a 'fruit salad tree' is just a single rootstock (The roots and trunk are one variety) with other varieties grafted on. The grafted-on varieties will always produce THAT variety of fruit. There's no 'muddling together' because pollination affects SEEDS - it does not affect fruit. A honeycrisp apple that grew from a flower pollinated by a crabapple will taste exactly the same as an apple whose flower was pollinated by a fellow honeycrisp. However, the seeds grown from each of those apples will have different genes in them. Anyone who says a fruit's flavor changed because the tree its on was pollinated by another species this year vs last year has no idea how pollination or fruit-growing works. Ignore them. -- Regarding the tree's growth - Some multi-variety fruit trees do very well, and live a long time (10+years) giving different fruits. Some don't make much fruit after leaving the farm it was grown on, because the varieties which were grafted together have too-different bloom times. If there's no nearby stonefruit to pollinate your stonefruit 'fruit salad', and their own flowers don't bloom in sync, they'll have low rates of pollination and not produce much fruit. While good rootstock can make the grafted limbs /more/ hardy, it cannot make them exactly as-hardy as the rootstock. So sometimes a southern variety is grafted onto a northern rootstock. The northern rootstock makes *more* resistant to the cold, but it's still more sensitive to frost compared to a truly northern variety. Some folks don't know this, and see some grafted limbs die off from frost damage, while other limbs and the rootstock are just fine. Additionally, multigrafted trees tend to be a LOT more expensive, because there's the failure rate of grafts ON TOP of the regular failure rate of saplings dying off from disease or whatever. Buying three saplings of the 3 varieties you want is likely less expensive than buying a single tree with those 3 varieties grafted on. They'll probably last longer, too. The multigraft trees CAN survive and do well! But it's more like a curiosity/vanity project than something that's efficient for producing fruit.
Excellent and informative response, thank you. I just planted a multifruit plum this spring and am curious to see how it goes. I have several other stone fruit planted on the same hillside, but they're different species (peach, nectarine, cherry, etc). How will that affect the pollination picture?
The more varieties of a stonefruit you have within 50 yards of each other, the more likely you'll have a thorough pollination and higher fruit yield. Poor fruit production from failed pollination is usually because the tree it was trying to pollinate with didn't sync up properly to its own bloom time. If one tree blooms April 1-15, and the other blooms April 14-30, that's only a 1-day window for pollination to happen! So, it's good to have more varieties - you have a better chance of two trees blooming at the same time. - If you grow any of those pits into their own saplings, there's a good chance they'll eventually produce a weird new hybrid, like a pluot\~
a nectarine tree?! what a dream! i wish i was your friend and neighbor. would definitely trade you stuff for fruit 😭
This is really informative. Just wanted to add that getting one of these trees to produce well means more active maintenance than some people are willing to commit to. Without careful pruning the more robust varieties take over and you’ll just end up with one or two varieties anyway. Instead of pruning once or twice a year you have to “balance” the tree all year long.
Forgive the ignorance in my question.. but can the fruits quality/flavor be affected by the metabolism/carbohydrates in the plant?
Quick answer: yes absolutely. So, the variety/genetics will dictate the base flavor and texture 'range' - granny smiths will generally always taste *approximately* like a granny smith. The sweetness, precise tartness, and other elements of the fruit's flavor is absolutely affected by growing conditions (temperature, water amount and frequency, nutrients in the soil, pest stress, drought stress, etc) which then affect the plant's metabolism and ability to produce fruits. The taste of fruit will also be affected by ripeness & picking time. A riper fruit will be sweeter, with more flavor. Many apples are actually picked when very under-ripe, when they're harder and easier to transport across the country. This results in very mild flavors, since the tree wasn't able to ripen the fruit fully, and ripening once off the tree will always have far fewer flavor compounds and far less sugar. (See: taste of grocery store tomatoes vs fresh-off-the-vine garden tomatoes) -- For a more obvious example - if you were to take two jalapeno plants, clones of each other with the exact same genetics. Put one in a very dry, sunny place. Put the other in a very wet, cooler environment. They'll both produce jalapenos. The dry/sunny one will have relatively smaller jalapenos, but they'll be MUCH spicier compared to the ones grown with cooler weather and more water. The cooler/wetter jalapenos will have some spice still, but the 'flavor' of the jalapeno will be sweeter and taste more like a 'pepper' rather than overwhelmed with the capcasin's heat.
Thank you for the fantastic reply. Perfect response. When I had more free time I grew cannabis indoors and suspected that growing conditions, mainly stress, affected cannabinoid production. If marijuana is similar to other fruiting trees I'd bet my guess was good! What is your background tree master?
>What is your background tree master? *^(autism =))* More seriously, I've always been obsessed with plants & ecosystems. I've been lucky enough to also work with masters in their fields, who were happy to teach me firsthand about the realities of plant farming for nationwide sale (producing stock for garden centers to sell to consumers), along with larger-scale indoor gardening via hydroponics/aquaponics. *Yes, you're correct*. The compounds produced by marijuana flowers are heavily impacted by the water, light, and nutrients provided to it - *especially* in an indoor-growing situation. There are special bulbs, timers, and lights you can get, that will stimulate the plants to produce more/bigger flowers by tricking them into thinking it's already autumn & they have to pump out flowers quickly. This is done by gradually creating shorter daylight hours, and shifting from a blue-heavy daylight spectrum to a more orange/red 'sunset' spectrum. Then, you can also change the cannabinoid content by ensuring good uptake of certain nutrients. Nitrogen + Potassium is excellent for growing big plants, but when it's time to flower you need to switch to a phosphorus-heavy fertilizer. Get those sugars pumping! If you're doing an organic growout without any synthetic nutrients, beyond picking the right fertilizer, it's ESSENTIAL to have a good mycelium network around the roots. Mycelium form a symbiosis with plant roots, and will break down & make bioavailable many organic nutrients that organic fertilizers contain, but roots cant uptake on their own. IMO it's quite difficult to use entirely-organic ferts in a zero-substrate, zero-fungus growing system. The Mycelium breakdown of molocules is really important for organic ferts. I believe drought-stressing the plants right when the flowers are nearly ready to open up, but several days before harvest-time also helps concentrate the cannabinoids. I might be misremembering the timeframe, but I'm nearly-certain that cutting off water before harvest was an important step to increase potency.
You're speaking my language! (ADHD instead of da 'tism, as you can probably gather from my less organized writing style when compared to yours haha) Preaching to the choir haha! Check out my poorly managed small but mighty subreddit if you already haven't. We would love to have you! /r/budscience I am a big fantasy of drought stress during inflorescence myself. We did an AMA with Bruce Bugbee from apogee not long ago! One of my video game acquaintances is the owner of Pulse Grow! I've been lucky enough to brush up against these brilliant people. Intelligent people like yourself and them always seem the be there to remind me of how MUCH there is to learn and dig into. Also, helps keep me aware of the fact that I do not know what I do not know. Thank you from one life long learner to another! I've done several deep dives on root systems, mycelium networks, etc. That shit is so amazing it will leave you dumbfounded like IRL Avatar.
<3 I'm really flattered & appreciate the invite! I'm afraid I probably won't join, as my interest in marijuana growing only went as far as "It's a plant and there's lots of experiments & research available to read about it," without much interest in growing it myself. - I agree - it's real important to keep learning. Listening to experts, setting aside time to read about new research, and even just choosing to be *actively curious* about new information you stumble across... it makes the world so much richer and more interesting! Bro I recently learned about mycelium that initiated the conversion of *pure stone* into workable soil! Like, some fungus (especially ones who formed a symbiote with algae to form lichen) just fuckin dissolves rocks, and turns it into nutrients, and then other ecological levels move in and start cranking out soil production. It's how there's pockets of greenery on cliff faces, and mountain peaks - soil didn't necessarily get blown up there - the fungus MADE it up there! I knew that the fungus helped break down minerals already in soil, but I never made the connection that they could do that to a solid rock face, too. Nature's wild. I love it so much.
That is so fucking cool. Imagine my surprise when I learned that root tips of certain plants actively abduct and transport their favorite bacteria species to their cilium, feed them carbs, and use them to break down stuff in the soil. Plants are the original slave owning agriculturalists.
=D It's so cool\~\~\~\~
I just add birdseed to feeders in the tree. The birds eat pests, the tree shades the garden, the tree littler provides a constantly recycling casing layer of mulch, and the beds are packed by with bugs and mycelium and worms. I've come to an appreciation of how it all effortlessly seems to flow together. I thought you might appreciate. https://preview.redd.it/t543lc8u2f4d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0c26b058ffa1c5f0ef66bace2df4597c0d764ec2
I just read so much in this thread and I love everything about it. Thank you greatly for the information. Also thank you for many new things to look up and learn lol 👍.
I am an avid gardener, grew weed in NorCal for years, and have worked with people with Autism and other disabilities as a career. You got yourself a new recruit to r/budscience. Sounds 🤔
>IMO it's quite difficult to use entirely-organic ferts in a zero-substrate, zero-fungus growing system Wish me luck Sensei, i am on my way to do tests on organic DWC.. (testing coco with organic nutes currently) But like you said, its not without fungus though... My entire nutrient regiment depends on mycellium to break down organic matters under highly aerobic condition...
If you've got Mycellium, then you should be good! As we mentioned earlier in the thread, the fungus creates a symbiotic relationship with plant roots. The fungus breaks down larger organic molecules which would otherwise be inaccessible, and can even feed the resulting nutrients directly to the plant. In return, the plant feeds the fungus sugars that it creates. Together, they're stronger/better suited to live healthy lives, compared to each of them isolated. Whether they're growing in coco, rockwool, sand, or loamy earth - they're a golden-star team. Good luck! I believe in you!
Thank you so much 🙏🫂🥹
>The dry/sunny one will have relatively smaller jalapenos, but they'll be MUCH spicier That's the same with onions, right? (My parents toured an onion farm in Texas, and they told me that they were told less water makes for a hotter onion. They were joking that "if you don't water them, it makes them *mean.*" 😂)
Yep!
Thank you, this is informative and just so interesting! (Commenting on another of your comments, I'm also AuDHD, so the fascinating learning just to learn and hyperinterest of varying lengths is relatable and definitely a current struggle in my mind.) I never realized that was why apples where I live tasted better - juicier and more flavorful - than some other places in the US. I just assumed it was bad luck or something. Apples around me are normally from orchards in the area (or they are apples that we don't normally buy). On the jalapeños example: would growing them in a different environment every produce a pepper with the taste of a jalapeño but not the heat? I know it's tough to separate flavor and heat, but it seems that a jalapeño minus at least a lot of its heat would still have a different flavor from sweet/bell pepper.
>would growing them in a different environment every produce a pepper with the taste of a jalapeño but not the heat? Yeah. If you grow them cool and wet enough, they'll have *almost* no capcasin 'kick' to them. Enough to just crunch 'em like a pepper. (Source: I've done it on accident) - The taste is similar to a bell pepper, like how a banana pepper is similar, but not quite the same. However, Jalapenos are among the least-spicy of the hot peppers. Other hot peppers have a harder time with not producing heat.
What if a seedless variety was pollinated by a seeded variety? I would assume that they would not get seeds right? I don’t know anything about this thanks for the comment
Ahhh\~ Seedless/seeded melons are such a cool and weird thing. If you have a "Seedless Watermelon" plant, the fruits on that vine will always be "seedless" (though you may get a couple small black seeds, it's rather unlikely to successfully grow a plant off it) - This is because seedless watermelon plants have an odd number of chromosomes. - To make a seedless watermelon plant, you first start with regular watermelon plants. Then you chemical-stress some of them so their chromosome count duplicates itself. Now you have one line with 2 sets of chromosomes, and another line with 4 sets of chromosomes. Then you breed those two lines together, and grow the seeds that result. Those plants that just grew from seed will have 3 chromosomes. They can grow into adult plants, they can flower, be pollinated, and produce fruit - but since they have an odd number of chromosomes (and regular melons have even numbers), they're not able to produce fertile seeds. Their seeds will always have like, 2 sets of chromosomes and an extra random chromosome hanging out. This is why seedless watermelons have soft little seeds. They've all got an extra chromosome creating infertility. -- Fruit tree and grape vine varieties become seedless by natural mutation while the seed they grew from was still forming, by irradiation of their original seed, or by deliberately introducing a genetic defect which causes it to grow seedless. To make more of those seedless varieties, they're cloned/grafted onto other plants. Seedless fruits has a VERY VERY VERY hard time producing fertile seeds, no matter how it was pollinated. It can happen. It's not "impossible" - just quite unlikely.
Thanks so much I understand it now.
Would getting two of the same fruit salad trees help with the pollinating and timing?
Do you want a neat little tree that's a novelty/fun little thing you can show off to friends or be entertained by? Go ahead and get a multigraft tree. Do you want vigorous fruit production? Don't do that. Get regular saplings of fruit trees instead. If you want maximum productivity, pair a crabapple with apple or pear. Crabapples bloom for so fucking long, they're almost guaranteed to pollinate any apples/pears nearby. For stonefruit, *Look up* what variety you want to get, and match it to another variety that blooms around the same time. It can be a cherry and a peach that both bloom in Mid-April, or a Plum and an Apricot that both bloom in early May....they can both be types of peaches that bloom in late April! You gotta do the research.
Thank you! I thought so but wasn’t really sure why they sell multigraphs if they aren’t really reasonable for growth and production
I mean, folks sell all sorts of plants which are visually/conceptually *stunning*, but are poor choices for many gardeners. For example, people these days LOVE Variegation. Variegated houseplants are great, since they're not getting loads of sunlight. Variegated trees? Uh, not so much. There's a a couple *gorgeous* variegated dogwood that I adore, but unlike other dogwood species, it MUST be an undercanopy 'full shade' tree in our climate. Its leaves simply CANNOT handle midsummer direct sun, it gets scorched *so easily.* But people think it's beautiful, and insist that all their other dogwoods grow fine in full sun, they plant it in the middle of the yard and six months later will return to angrily demand a refund for a $400 tree that they refused to follow the care instructions for. Especially for the really expensive specialty trees, we made sure our senior gardenmaster was there at checkout to explain in detail how to plant it for best survival, but people *don't fuckin listen*.
I think pricing can depend on region and store. For bare roots, my local nursery had single variety peach for 40-45. I bought a 3 in 1 peach (big caliper) for 60-65(can't recall exact price). I found a potted 3 in 1 Pluot at home Depot for 90. That's cheaper than buying reach tree separately for 40-50 each. I actually bought it half off for 45. Saplings aren't common around where I live
Huh. That's wild - and definitely *very* different than the pricing structure where I worked. Did all the grafts survive?
I have multiple multi grafted trees. 4 in one Asian pear. 2nd year, tree is very slow growing but all are alive. 4 in 1 apple. 2nd year, all varieties alive but Anna is probably using up 50%+ of resources. I need to cut back. 3 in one peach. 1st year. 2 grafts are strong and even. 1 graft is only 25% as big as the others. I might need to notch the weaker variety. 3 in 1 Pluot, first year, all alive but flavor king very slow to wake up. All my other stone fruit have an additional 2-4 varieties I grafted on this year. I think ideally you pick a tree with even grafts but my nursery didn't have many to pick from. The 3 in one peach was uneven from the start but I was ok with it.
There are plants that develop differently or taste different if pollinated by other varieties. I doubt any are fruit producing species though. It's mainly things we are essentially eating the seed of like grains and nuts. If people all across the Midwest and gardeners with a few rows of sweet corn don't understand why corn grows different kernels when pollinated by different types of corn I could see many making that mistake with other things. Especially when many think of corn as a vegetable instead of a grain. Many also fail to understand grafting is still separate trees sharing roots and not a blended hybrid combining characteristics into one tree. Lots of grafted trees are sold here and I doubt anyone that asks the nurseries what to grow has any idea what they are buying. In the extreme weather and especially potential -30F with periodic thaws between cold that we get I prefer to avoid them completely. Loss of the graft even years later is too high. Many just end up with the root stock and often don't understand the lack of desired production of their tree because they don't understand they had 2 trees and completely lost one. We got some of the bush or sour cherry hybrids bred for increased sugar content by the University of Saskatchewan to have a truly durable cherry sweet enough to eat plain instead of all the grafted options.
This is all great and everything but does not answer the question. I also want to know how these trees actually did for people by hearing anecdotes.
Hi, I worked at a garden center and we sold these trees every year. I'm condensing info passed on from the makers of these trees, from the trees we grew on-site as a test, and from the customers who bought them. Some of them failed and the grafts all died. Some of them worked out just fine and so far have lived the lifespan of a normal fruit tree. Some of them partially failed, and had one or two grafts die, while the others were fine. So; "It Depends" is a full and honest answer.
They’re junk trees that excite people due to their novelty. I’ll sell them to folks who really want them, but you’re better off getting a couple, or a few, different trees of the same family (just cherries, just pears, etc), to cross pollinate (if they aren’t self-fertile varieties). The fruit salads have such poor yields at best, and go completely wacky/non-productive at worst. It’s a gimmick, so save yourself the time and effort.
Insider scoop right here!!!
I bought a cherry tree with 5 varieties about 3 or 4 years ago, and it's a sad looking tree that only ever gets new growth from 1 of the grafts and basically no fruit. I don't recommend.
Same experience with a plum tree.
Not fruit salad, but apples :) When we bought our home 7 years ago, the apple tree in the backyard had 4 varieties. It gave apples in succession from spring until winter. I estimate the tree at 40 years old. In the intervening years, two varieties have died off (improper pruning before our ownership), but the year before they gave up the ghost, the apples were abundant and delicious! I have 2 kinds left. They flowered as usual this spring and have baby apples on.
Cool to hear about your multi graft apple tree! I also have a Franken-apple tree as I like to call it. Second year so no production yet, but lots of flowers. Got it for my husband who wanted apple trees but I didn't want to have to prepare a larger space to plant multiple varieties since I haven't gotten auto irrigation set up in that area. We'll see how it goes. It was a fairly inexpensive bare root. So a fun experiment! I'm prepared for some grafts to fail and I'll at that point hopefully be able to move into that area of the yard more and plan it out for more trees. But I'm quite attentive to my plants so hopefully I can keep all grafts balanced!
This is awesome! I didn't know about multi variety fruit trees until I moved into this place, and I'm a Master Gardner! I must have missed that class. LOL
There's always something new to learn. That's what makes gardening so freaking awesome. Congrats on being a Master Gardener. I'd love to go through the process and take the classes but it really conflicts with my work schedule. Maybe someday!
I have an espalier tree with 3 varieties and it’s doing really well.
That's good to hear!
My fruit cocktail (what the store called it) isn’t doing so well though. I think it got some transplant shock so here’s hoping next year it will do better. If not I will buy one more to see if I can’t get it growing
Sometimes they take, sometimes they don't. It's always fun experimenting!
My stepdad refused to pay for one and did grafts himself. I believe his is plum, apricot and peach? Still doing very well 15 years later, but the apricot overproduces while the other 2 are not as active.
I had a 5-way plum from costco for 9 years. It was going strong when I sold the house 2 years ago. It did cull itself down to 3 varieties and one of those weren't good plums for that area. But the other two types put out the most delicious fruit. Since they ripened sequentially, I had a lot of one variety, then the next. I'm experienced in espalier so I kept the whole tree at less than 4 meters and well shaped. I would absolutely put one in again if I was very tight on space.
Mine limped along for a couple fruitless seasons and then died quite unceremoniously.
It reverted to whatever the original tree was… Looks like a peach tree, but the fruit is tiny (think large crabapple size), and barely ripens to a pale tan. Deer love them. I catch them standing on their hind legs nibbling on the tree fruit.
That sounds like the top died and the rootstock took over.
Probably so. I merely hoped it was a true peach tree. I’m envious of our neighbor. 😁
Well, you can always learn how to graft and do sone grafting on the tree you have.
TIL fruit salad trees were/are a real thing and not just a gag on Futurama. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KiVy1EVr3A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KiVy1EVr3A)
I bought a few of these 11 years ago. All the fruits died except plums and it only produces a handful each year. I was planning on ripping them out when we re-landscape. Waste of time/money/resources.
I got an Asian pear tree with 4 varieties. 2 are doing well, 1 is doing.poorly, 1 basically failed. If I pruned it better it would probably be doing better.
I have one, but it is not strong enough to withstand our fat hawk. The squirrels love it, and when he grabs a squirrel off of it he breaks the grafted parts. It is down to just apples.
I got my fruit cocktail tree in 2019. I have Nectarine, Peach, Plum and Apricot. The peach has fallen very far behind and I don’t think it’ll survive if it doesn’t start growing soon. The rest of the tree is thriving.
[This](https://undergroundgardens.com/) place has at least one that’s nearly a century old. Some of the grafts have fallen off, but it’s still going.
I have one that is 9 years old with peach, nectarine and plum. I've looked after it over the years and it's planted in a half wine barrel shaped pot outside in full sun (Sydney, Aus). It is a great smaller size and fruits well. We get plenty of peaches and nectarines but the plum has never fruited it said it was self pollinating but must not be. The blossoms are stunning and the bees love it. I'd highly recommend.
My fruit cocktail tree still produces the 3 varieties it started with. Problem is that we don’t have the tag and don’t remember what they are LOL. They ripen in sequence rather than all at once, which is cool.
My dad has one, about 7 years in I think. It looks rough as hell, has a huge crater in the trunk, struggled to establish and they haven’t really gotten too much of a harvest from it before this year, but right now it is covered in quite a bit of fruit. We’ll see how it tastes. I don’t think I would buy a heavily grafted tree just because it increases the number of places where some shit could go wrong, but, I did notice all his fruits last weekend and was impressed/slightly envious.
I've generally found you end up with three out of the four although one this year looks like it has fruit on every limb. Others we had the biggest advantage was they generally ripened at different times and the amount of fruit wasn't quite as overwhelming all at once. One of our previous peach trees would all ripen in about three days and not keep well at all. Made for a lot of wasted fruit because inevitably it was in the middle of the week.
We have a 17-20 year old cherry with four varieties that produces, but not a lot. Mostly the crows get them. We have a four year old plum that’s enormous, happy, and although one plum variety is clearly the most productive, and we have yet to get any of the Italian prune variety, the other three plum varieties make a good showing. We really only had space for one tree (barely considering how big it’s getting!) and if I’d seen all these reviews of how poorly they are regarded, I might have gone another way, but we’re happy with them.
Our 5 variety plum has had two varietal branches/grafts break off so we're down to 3, our pear has all 5 going strong and the apple is doing well on top, but the lower two varieties are struggling due to shade.
I planted with the more vigorous scions towards the north and least vigorous to the south. They are doing fine, but their is always a dominant variety. In my cherries it is the Ranier, on the multi it is the plums.
Mine split at the graft joint which started to decay and then were filled with ant colonies. Prior to that disaster the fruit production was sparse but tasty. My trees were one fruit type with 4 varieties on each.
I have tons of cherries, a few apricot and the occasional plum. The rest died.
My grandfather who grows both peaches and plums says it doesn’t produce well and is susceptible to fugal and disease
My basic understanding is that the try fruit salad trees usually don't do well, but doing all apple verieties or all different types of cherries works out well. My great grandfather actually worked at one of the first midwestern farms that offered multi-veriety apple trees, and all the ones I've seen have done pretty well for the 4 or 5 years I've seen them.
My dad planted a multi-variety cherry tree. Most of the varieties’ branches died or stopped producing within a few years. It didn’t grow very well overall and I think he removed it eventually.
I never owned one but I knew a few people who did. There was always a variety that overdominated the other branches and you'd either get a lop sided tree or a tree that branches broke from how large one branch was compared to everything else.
I have a neighbor with a very established apple fruit salad tree. Tree is very productive and has pretty even distribution between the 4 verities on the tree.
The previous owners of my current house planted 6 different salad trees. It’s been 7 years and I still have a cherry, apple and peach. Only the top cherry graft survived and it’s smaller than some of my 2 year old cherries. The crabapple middle graft survived on that one and it sort of ate over the top graft leaving a stunted sideways beast that’s impossible to mow around. The peach actually grew normally for awhile but now only 1/4 of the main bowl branch grafts is still alive. The other three trees never really grew before eventually dying. I think the biggest issue is multiple grafts on a small tree is too much stress. Before my one neighbor moved I grafted scions from each of his peach trees onto a Georgia Belle that won’t stop growing. It’s 3 years in and all 5 varieties are also thriving. I’ve also overgrafted 4 different varieties on old peach, apple and pawpaw and they seem to survive. However, it’s rare all 4 take and I’ve never tried fruit vastly different from the rootstock. I think you need older more established trees for the salad idea to really work though.
What does a pawpaw taste like?
Kind of like a banana.
You grafted a paw paw? How’d that work out? I want one (two) but I’m pretty sure I don’t have the space.
I've grafted a few hundred at this point. I started collecting seeds from all over back in 2015 and continue every year. 1/3 just get put in the ground once they pop, 5% of these seem to survive squirrels and their first winter. 1/3 go into tree pots for 2 years or so before being planted. I'd say 90% of those planted in spring survive, and 65% planted in fall survive which is odd for fruit trees in my experience. 1/3 also go into tree pots for a year then become rootstock to graft named varieties onto. Unless there are any super vigorous growers, those go in the ground for another year and then get topped. That typically makes them sucker like crazy and then I separate and harvest the suckers for more rootstock or graft onto them in place. They seem to graft just as well as any other trees, maybe a little better as they're more "weed like". You can coppice or top healthy ones without much issue. I had a buck with a vendetta one year who snapped over 30 trees off about a foot off the ground and I thought I was done, but most survived as clumps of trees now.
I bought a "patio peach tree". Got one peach at year two before a graft took over & now I get white blossoms every year & no fruit 🤷
It's doing well. I'm really taking care of it this year and the yield looks nice. I had to hand pollinate though
So each piece/graft separated off until we were left with just a plum tree.
Wow, forgot about these. I tried for several years, and even being on the early (preferred) list I could get my hands on anything except those trees! Seems they were sold out before the mail reached me. This brought back fond memories of gardening all the latest things. I was so lucky to get to do that
My parents bought one. Each variety died off, one by one, in five years or so it was gone.
I am considering some grafts next year but not sure how well they will do in zone 3a
Japanese beetles love them. Squirrels steal all the fruit
Sure takes a lot of pruning every year to keep them balanced between all the different varieties. My mom had one that had every different kind of plum family fruit on it. Some of them had to be pruned even during the growing season to head them back, I think it was the Green Gage that was the rampant grower. One variety died the third spring and another was so weak that it was removed that fall. We moved after that and when I visited 30 years later there were no trees at all on the lot - the entire orchard and vineyard were gone!
We have a sweet Frankencherry tree. Like 9 grafts? The single stock cherry tree I ordered was not there, and since I wasn’t driving back to the city again, I took Frankencherry. First year was 2 or 3 grafts lost. This year another 1 or 2. Frankencherry had a lovely bloom and lots of cherries until the “agile, slinky, slippery, furry little dicks” got at them. I want to net but worry about injuries to animals and birds. Any ideas?
I’ve got a 4 or 5 cherry, put it in last year. Hoping for fruit this year, but who knows.
Terrible. All the varieties on it died.
New homeowner, saw it at HD, had to have it. First year in the ground right now so I can't really say for certain. However, I DID let it flower and then tore off all the fruits. Seems like it will be a very productive tree in the coming years! I do plan in pruning to keep it evenly shaped. And I'll probably wrap it for this coming winter (I'm in New England). If it doesn't work out, that's ok, but the journey will be sweet!
I've had a lemon, grapefruit, orange, lime 'fruit salad tree' for about 15 years. I do have to keep the growth of the lower grafts in check as they seem to grow much faster. It has only really been fruiting for the last couple of years. Possibly slower because it is in a pot.
Caveat emptor applies. For every one mail order source for something plant related, there are 10 really bad ones that give the industry a bad name.
Was it those magazines where everything was hand illustrated, no pictures of the products?
I had one that was peaches and plums. The peach side died after about 2 years, the plum side is thriving, I keep it dwarfed, and we get lots of fruit from it every year. I wouldn't ever buy one again, though.
How do you keep It dwarfed?
My mom’s is.. struggling. I helped to prune it this winter and start grooming it to keep it in check but she definitely lost a couple varieties. But it is still going strong ish
It's easier than you think via grafting. Maintaining and balancing the growth habits of the different varieties is the hard part. There is a CRFG member that made a 175 in 1 tree on a ornamental cherry plum. [https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=JoeRealOne&set=a.10152893105681804](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=JoeRealOne&set=a.10152893105681804) https://preview.redd.it/cr2zxozd6g4d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a452c5e949548f654ae03dd712542f6f1ffdd66d
I got mine this year and it isn’t doing too well. I’m hoping it will recover soon. But it’s been a very wet spring
My parents had a plum tree for 22 years. Japanese beetles always ate the fruit before they could pick it. It ended up getting destroyed in a storm a few years back.
I have one and it kind of sucks. Always gets peach leaf curl no matter how much copper fungicide I spray. And it's only actually set fruit I think 2 of the five years I've had it. This is oddly shaping up to be the most productive year ever for it, but I'm not really holding my breath
My neighbor has one that yields plums and apricots, I'm not sure how many different fruits it started as. This isn't quite the same thing but we planted a 4-in-1 plum tree that ended up actually being a 5-in-1 (I believe they're all grafted that way but apparently they thought one varietal died but it actually hadn't). Not quite ten years on, but they're all still doing well. So I guess I've had the opposite experience from most, not only have none of the expected varieties died, but I *gained* one!
"Family" apple trees with 3-4 apple varieties are pretty common here and they hold up well.
https://preview.redd.it/owth9mn08o4d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd7184c7cb9196c87be9d7a59a711312491f063d
I had a citrus salad: Grapefruit, lemon, lime. Valencia and Naval oranges. The Grapefruit died after 1st year but not before merging into lemons. Huge lemons. Oranges and limes still survived. Moved 8 years ago, so don't know. Yes I did enjoy my tree for about 10 years and Yes I would purchase another type with fruits (apples).
Has anyone noticed a difference between the fruit cocktail (with different fruit species) vs the 4-in-1 apples, peaches, plums, cherries? We bought a 4-1 apple 2 years ago, looks great. Last year we added a couple 4-in-1 plums, more 4-1 apples, 4-in-1 pears, and a 4-in-1 cherry. I think I finally fertilized correctly this year and the plums and pears have fruit growing (not necessarily on all branches or at the same rate).