I commenced some long term garden experiments this weekend. 

My first experiment involves planting some newly grafted apple trees. Mutus, Cox's Orange Pippin and Ribston Pippin. The aim is to create stepovers , a sort of espalier that only has one branch 30cm above the ground. The apples were purchased at the rare fruit society's grafting night, a very cheap way to obtain trees, however, you run the risk of the root stock not taking off or the graft not taking. I need to wait a year, until the tree is  a maiden whip, and then cut it off near the wire its to be trained onto.

The second experiment involves some grape cuttings and our  very old and large infertile grape vine. I'm told that grafting grapes is very difficult, which is hard to believe when vineyards routinely graft thousands of vines at a time! But who am I to argue? So I am taking the fail safe route and doing approach grafts. First I have to wait to see if my cuttings take and then I will graft them, still attached to their roots to our big old vine.

 And the last experiment is to grow Avocadoes. Again with the help of the rare fruit society. I'm planting all the seeds from the avocadoes I've been eating with the object of budding named cultivars onto them in the summer.