Grafting is one of Mankind’s ancient technologies, generally done in Spring onto rootstocks planted a full year ago
Grafting two plants together happens naturally when compatible species jam up against each other, rubbing their bark off and then getting stuck long enough to fuse together.
You see this quite often when inspecting old willows, whose whippy stems readily graft onto themselves where they tangle, which is half of what makes willow so perfect for making a living fence-hedge, or fedge (the other half is that they grow so blooming fast).
Named cultivars (e.g. a Granny Smith apple tree) of ornamental and fruit trees are the most commonly grafted, whether new trees that you buy from plant nurseries staffed by well-dressed, healthy looking people like us; or healthy old trees that you want to give a new lease of life as a different variety.
When selecting a video to help you learn about grafting, we put a lot of effort into making sure it has the essentials: chilled background music, a nice exotic narrating voice, and gorgeously sunny Portuguese surroundings that make grafting seem even more attractive to all the impressionable young people that must be reading this.
Earth’s greatest orchard owners, Mr & Mrs Hayes at Fruitwise, retired from the public scene some years ago (barring the occasional cider tasting video: cheers).
Their lovely old orchard maintenance videos rich in wisdom and experience, and the camera work is good given their age, especially in their later videos. Their prolific work show you lots of different sizes, shapes, and age of tree, so you can see how it is to work on what you got.
They never made a playlist for all their grafting videos, but you can start with this search on their channel and rootle around.
But you know who does have a full playlist on grafting? Our strapping old parasocial friend Skill Cult Steve, who bring his usual mix of competence, study, experimentation, and … hard graft to the subject.
As luck would have it, we just so happen to sell fruit tree rootstocks for apple, pear, cherry, and all the plums (so that includes damson, mirabelle, gage, etc).
At the time of writing, buying one maiden fruit tree (i.e. grafted about one year ago) costs about £25, while a rootstock is only £3.24, so that’s seven rootstocks and change per ready-made fruit tree: not a bad deal given that the only other cost is waiting one year.
For best results, you want to give a rootstock a full year to settle in before grafting onto it.
However, if you want to rush it, plant your rootstock into a container of good potting compost, graft onto it a bit late in the season, and take great care of it! It should be fine, and if the graft fails you can still plant the rootstock and try again the following year.