We had a peach tree which bore gorgeous pink flowers in the spring and billions of tiny, bland peaches which fell to the ground in the summer. No matter what I did to prune and thin and water, those little peaches never got any better. I finally concluded that the tree was most likely a volunteer, probably planted by a squirrel. So I was planning to cut it down and try to dig out its roots to plant another when I suddenly had a brain flash. Why not graft some known fruiting varieties onto this vigorous rootstock? After all, most fruit trees are produced that way, rootstock + fruiting scions.

Conveniently, the California Rare Fruit Growers was sponsoring a scion exchange taking place just a couple weeks after my epiphany. So you see below my efforts, grafting on scions of Eagle Beak, Rio Oso Gem, Silver Logan, and Loring. Will any of them take? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Scions of the Times.