Bridge Grafting

This little article on my very first bridge graft attempt ended up in Plymouth Tree Partnership's newsletter as well as Orchard Link's newsletter so it only seems right to share it with you too. Enjoy!

It is amazing how this humble conference pear tree in Central Park Community Orchard, Plymouth, Devon has garnered so much interest. Let me tell its story.

It begins back in November 2021 when I began volunteering as an Orchard Keeper for Plymouth Tree Partnership. While tending the Community Orchard’s young trees, a constant battle against brambles, this particular pear caught my eye. 

It possessed a nasty injury, from canker perhaps, almost girdling the trunk. Only a pinkie finger’s worth of bark remained. My first thought was simply to prune the tree back below this point. But, loppers in hand, I simply could not bring myself to do it. The tree just looked so alive above the wound.

That is when I thought a bridge graft might just give this tree a fighting chance. I’d never seen more than a few faded photos of such a technique before but what had I got to lose? If all else failed, the pruning option was still available.

So, I patiently waited till March and, taking a deep breath one clear day, gave it my best shot. To side-step compatibility issues, I harvested a healthy piece of scion wood from the pear tree itself. I then cut it down to size to bridge across the wound and nipped off the buds because, well, it just seemed like a sensible thing to do. To graft it to the tree, I used what the grafting guru R.J. Garner, might have called a modified side graft… if he was feeling generous.

At the time I just followed my instincts and it felt, to be brutally honest, like a hack job at best… I remember thinking, cripes that grafting tape hides a myriad of sins. After packing the two grafted ends as best I could with homemade beeswax based grafting wax cooling far too quickly in the fresh March air, I crossed my fingers, waited, and watched.
 

Spring turned to summer and to my astonished delight the tree flowered, came into leaf, and quite frankly thrived. Now, the bridge itself even has leaves and the branches above dangle with fruit. In our current drought, I doubt the pears will mature but, honestly, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

What a tree!

Next spring, I plan to add a second bridge to strengthen across the divide further. 

What this humble young pear has taught me is the true resilience of fruit trees. If you want to learn from them, just give your wild-eyed experiments a go! The results may surprise you, and your trees might even thank you for it.