THE HUNT: TRUNK SHOW
Dennis Vroomen is not out of his tree. The arborist merely argues that, with a little grafting, the humble crabapple in your backyard can supply a variety of fruit.
Dennis Vroomen is not out of his tree. The arborist merely argues that, with a little grafting, the humble crabapple in your backyard can supply a variety of fruit.
it’s astonishing enough to learn that Calgary has everything it takes to be transformed into a massive, urban fruit orchard. But the fact that such a thing could happen in well under a decade? Nowthat’s amazing. Yet this is exactly what I’m learning from Dennis Vroomen, a certified arborist and proprietor of a two- year- old firm called Royal Dutch Tree Services ( royaldutchtreeservices.ca, 403- 462- 9262). Wemet recently at March’s annual Seedy Saturday event, where Vroomen was pitching a service that, to his knowledge, nobody else in the city is offering.
“For $ 100,” he says, “I will come to your house, examine your fruit trees, and then give a hands- on demonstration that will teach you how to graft new varieties onto existing branches.” The payoff? Instead of your old tree producing tiny crabapples that just litter the lawn come autumn, the same tree can be altered to produce one or even several different varieties of superlative eating apples.
“Calgary is unique in a lot of ways, and not just with the cold winters mixed with chinooks,” says Vroomen, who has practised silviculture ( the propagation of trees) in Europe, Asia and Central America. “What we have here are tens of thousands of strong, well- established fruit trees. The only problem is that they were planted at a time when people didn’t have modern varieties that have been cultivated for both hardiness and edibility.”
If you have ever tried to establish one of these newer varieties, you know it takes a lot of time. Grafting, however, offers a serious shortcut that Vroomen believes more Calgarians need to know about. “Everybody’s getting more interested in being sustainable in terms of food production,” he says, “and this is one of the easiest ways to do it.”
Although many trees are eligible for grafting, apples make the best point of departure. According to Vrooman, “All the apples in our world are some variety of
Malus domestica,” which ensures their compatibility. ( They’re actually in the same family as roses.) He also points out that a similar process can be used in the genus Prunus, also known as stone fruits. “You can take an ornamental cherry and graft on an Evans or Valentine sour cherry, or even plums like a Brookgold or Pembina.”
For my grafting lesson I brought along some freshly cut stems of last year’s growth on our delightful Norland, which produces an extraordinarily versatile apple, with sweet yellow flesh and a bright red colour. In grafting lingo these donor branches are referred to as “scions.” Vroomen encourages grafters to ask around among neighbours to find the most desirable varieties of apple to replicate. Once you get permission, use stems that need to be pruned anyway, such as the small ones that have sprouted towards the trunk. Scions can be bought online, but those risk being unsuitable for our climate.
Tools you need: pruning shears, pruning saw, sharp knife, surveyor’s tape and a commercially available wax specifically designed for sealing cuts. Vroomen showed me the most common of several styles of graft, the cleft. On a crabapple tree, he sawed off a branch of around broomstick size and sliced it down the middle about five centimetres deep, careful not to put fingers on exposed material. Then he took my scions, cut two of about pencil size, and carved the connecting end in the shape of a wedge. Hethen slipped them into the cleft, being careful that each one’s cambium— the green ring just below the bark— was in direct contact with the same feature on the host. “Connecting the cambium is the key to a successful graft,” he says. Then he applied wax over the surgery, wrapped it snugly with the tape, and marked it “Norland.”
Although spring grafts sometimes yield fruit in the first season, production doesn’t normally begin until the second. You can replace up to a quarter of the canopy in one grafting season, which is prime from early spring until June.