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HERITAGE SCION WOOD SHOP
Shop Open Now For The 2025 Grafting Season
Rare heritage orchard apple scions for grafting only. Scion wood are hardwood cuttings, not trees! You’ll have to graft or bud onto either appropriate rootstocks or established trees for the scions to survive & thrive.
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We cut and ship the scion wood from the 1st February 2025 in line with traditional West Country grafting procedure. Each scion will be approximately the length & thickness of a pencil on the most viable wood from that particular variety. There will be slight differences in thickness, shape, texture & colour as most heritage varieties are unique. For example the Bramley 1st year wood is thick, stout & a deep bronze hue, whereas the ancient Cornish Gyllyflower is thin, whippy & misty grey.
Are primary aim is to preserve rare heirloom trees for future generations in our own specialist traditional orchards & also by spreading genetic material of rare or critically endangered varieties around the country. All profits help toward the upkeep of the traditional orchards in the heritage collection.
Scion Wood Shop Open
We cut and ship the scion wood from the 1st February 2025
Current Heritage Stock
SCION WOOD CARE
The deadline for ordering scion wood for 2025 is 15th Dec 2024. We will cut and ship the scion wood from 1st February til 15th March 2025 in tradition to the old ways which results in the highest success rate.
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If you would like to order more than 150 scions, we can offer quantity discount pricing. Contact us for further details.
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We recommend in-situ whip and tongue grafting in the orchard on healthy, virile trees. In particularly windy locations we opt for grafting on top healthy rootstock which are already potted then kept inside an unheated greenhouse or cold frame until late spring when they can be planted out into position.
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Scions come from our orchards with no herbicides or preservative sprays resulting on only the most vigorous scions sent to you as nature intended.
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Although not ideal, properly stored scion wood can keep in your fridge for months! Just keep the scion wood slightly damp, in a plastic bag with holes so it can breathe (as it is a living thing after all), kept cool in the fridge. Just make sure it is never in the presence of other apples or other high ethylene producing fruit such as bananas.
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Remember to keep your newly grafted trees labelled! Nearly all juvenile fruit trees look incredibly similar to each other when they are in the ground without labels!
We are a small family run traditional farm & currently run as mail order only. We hold a British Plant Passport Number & sadly currently do not ship abroad at the present.
Largely speaking heritage fruit trees are social beings, if in doubt plant two. This all to do with the P word.. Pollination.
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It is important to remember that if you wish to have optimal fruit production than your rare heirloom variety relies on another (sometimes two other in case of the famous Bramley Apple tree) to pollinated it. Don’t worry about going around painstakingly extracting the pollen from one & dusting another, the bees will do that for you, all you have to make sure is that there is a tree of the same group (called the pollinator group) is flowering at the same, or similar times for the blossom to be fertilised & the delicious fruit starts to form. For example, a B pollinator group apple such as the Devonshire Quarrenden needs a pollinator partner planted nearby that is either an A e.g. Wild Crab Apple, B such as Golden Spire or C such as Exeter Cross.
The flowering period of each variety is given so that you can select trees that will pollinate each other. A few varieties will produce fruits without help from another tree, being self-fertile, or partially self-fertile. This feature is a fairly rare occurrence in nature but is clearly indicated where it applies.
A touch on before with the famous Bramley, some apple and pears are triploid varieties, so ideally need the help of two different varieties to set fruit. So we make sure 2 trees are planted nearby with the same or adjacent flowering periods. This feature is also mentioned where it applies.
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THE P WORD...POLLINATION
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