19/08/2026
Great information!
🌱 FRUIT TREE ROOTSTOCKS — WHY THE ROOTSTOCK MATTERS
When you graft a fruit tree, you're really combining two different plants:
🌳 The rootstock — provides the root system and strongly influences vigour, eventual tree size, anchorage, soil tolerance, disease resistance and how quickly the tree comes into fruit.
🍎 The scion — the variety grafted onto the rootstock that produces the fruit you actually want.
Choosing the right rootstock can be just as important as choosing the fruit variety.
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🍑 WHY I USE BLOOD PEACH AS A ROOTSTOCK
For peaches, nectarines and apricots, I generally use blood peach seedlings as my rootstock.
I've found blood peaches have excellent vigour and, importantly for Christchurch, perform well across a wide range of soils.
Christchurch has everything from heavier clay soils to free-draining sandy soils, and I've found blood peach trees will establish and thrive across these different conditions.
That's why I like them as a practical local rootstock.
Peach, nectarine and apricot are also closely related enough that peach rootstocks can be used for these different stone fruits.
So I'll generally use:
🍑 Peach → peach
🍑 Peach → nectarine
🍑 Peach → apricot
Some plum varieties can also be compatible with peach or peach-based rootstocks, and some compatible combinations can even be used to create multi-fruit trees.
However, for my own rootstock production I generally keep things simple:
🟣 Plum → plum
🍒 Cherry → cherry
The closer relationship generally gives me a more predictable graft union.
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🌱 WHY NOT JUST USE ANY SEED?
You can grow a fruit tree from a supermarket seed or pit.
But if I'm selecting seed to produce a rootstock, I'd much rather collect it from a healthy, vigorous local tree that grows well in our climate.
The seed carries the genetics of the tree that produced it.
A supermarket peach, plum or cherry may have been grown in a completely different climate, on completely different soils and under completely different conditions.
It might still grow here — but you're starting with genetics that haven't necessarily been selected by our local environment.
If you can collect seed from a healthy tree that's already thriving in your local conditions, you're starting with genetics that have already demonstrated they can perform here.
That's why local, healthy and vigorous seed trees are my preference.
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🌳 SEEDLING TREES VS CLONAL ROOTSTOCKS
A seed-grown fruit tree will generally want to grow towards its natural size and vigour.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
A vigorous tree can be managed through pruning, training and canopy management.
A larger root system can also provide strong anchorage and a resilient tree.
Commercial nurseries also use clonal rootstocks to deliberately control tree size and provide other specific characteristics.
For apples, for example, you commonly see:
🍎 M27 — very dwarf
🍎 M9 — dwarf
🍎 M26 — semi-dwarf
🍎 MM106 — medium
🍎 MM111 — larger and more vigorous
The choice isn't simply about making a tree smaller.
Different rootstocks can also offer differences in:
• Vigour
• Disease resistance
• Soil tolerance
• Drought tolerance
• Anchorage
• Precocity — how quickly the tree starts fruiting
• Tolerance of heavier or lighter soils
So a dwarf rootstock isn't automatically "better".
It depends on what you're growing, where you're planting it and how much space you have.
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🌱 WHAT IS A CLONAL ROOTSTOCK?
A clonal rootstock is produced vegetatively rather than from seed.
Instead of planting a seed and getting a genetically different seedling, we take a particular rootstock plant and reproduce it from that plant.
This gives us plants with the same genetics as the original rootstock.
This is especially important with apples and pears because we can select a particular rootstock for its characteristics and then reproduce that exact rootstock over and over.
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🌱 HOW STOOL BEDS WORK
This is where stool beds come in.
A stool bed contains mother plants of the rootstock.
The mother plant produces new shoots, and those shoots are encouraged to grow outwards.
The shoots can then be laid down towards the ground and covered with soil or suitable growing material around their bases.
The buried sections develop their own roots.
Once they've produced a good root system, the rooted shoots can be separated from the mother plant and lifted as individual rootstocks.
Because they're produced vegetatively rather than from seed, they're genetically identical clones of the original rootstock.
The mother plant can continue producing new shoots year after year, making stool beds a very efficient way of producing large numbers of consistent rootstocks.
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🍎 WHY APPLE AND PEAR ROOTSTOCKS ARE OFTEN CLONAL
Apple and pear rootstocks have growth habits that make this stool-bed propagation system practical.
You can repeatedly produce rooted shoots from the same mother plants while maintaining the exact characteristics of the selected rootstock.
That gives nurseries a very consistent product.
If you're buying an M9 apple rootstock, for example, you're not buying a random apple seedling that happens to be small.
You're buying a specific clonal rootstock with known characteristics.
That's why named apple rootstocks can be so useful.
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🍑 STONE FRUIT IS DIFFERENT
Peach, plum and cherry don't have the same growth habit as these clonal apple and pear rootstocks.
You can't simply take a peach, plum or cherry shoot, lay it on the ground, bury it and expect it to reliably produce a rooted plant in the same way.
Their growth habit isn't suited to that type of stool-bed propagation.
That's one of the reasons peach, plum and cherry rootstocks are commonly grown from seed or pits.
There is a trade-off.
A seed-grown rootstock won't be genetically identical to the parent tree. Each seedling is genetically different.
But for producing vigorous stone-fruit rootstocks, growing them from seed is practical and works well.
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🌳 SEEDLING ROOTSTOCKS STILL HAVE ADVANTAGES
A seedling rootstock isn't a "cheap" or inferior version of a clonal rootstock.
It gives you a genetically variable population, but it can also provide:
🌱 Strong vigour
🌱 Large root systems
🌱 Good anchorage
🌱 Potential adaptability
🌱 A naturally larger tree
For the right situation, that can be exactly what you want.
And remember — tree size can be managed.
Good pruning and training can keep a vigorous tree at a practical size without necessarily needing to put it onto a dwarfing rootstock.
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🌱 WHY LOCAL SEED MATTERS
This is why I think it's worth looking around your local area when collecting seed.
If you're going to grow a peach, plum or cherry rootstock from a pit, choose seed from a healthy, vigorous tree that is already thriving in your local climate and soil.
That tree has already demonstrated that its genetics can perform in your environment.
A supermarket fruit could still produce a perfectly good tree.
I'm not saying it won't grow.
But the tree that produced that fruit may have been grown thousands of kilometres away in completely different conditions.
The seed carries genetics from that tree.
So if you have access to a healthy local fruit tree that's been performing well for years, that's generally a much better place to source seed for your local rootstocks.
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🍎 APPLES → APPLES
Apples are grafted onto compatible apple rootstocks.
The different apple rootstocks are specifically selected to work with apple varieties while providing different levels of vigour and other characteristics.
That's why you can have the same apple variety grafted onto M9, M26, MM106 or MM111 and end up with trees of very different size and behaviour.
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🍐 PEARS → PEARS OR QUINCE
Pears are generally grafted onto compatible pear or quince rootstocks.
Again, the rootstock changes the behaviour of the tree.
It's not simply a case of finding any plant with a similar fruit and putting a graft on it.
The plants need to be sufficiently related and compatible for the graft union to form and remain healthy.
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🍑 STONE-FRUIT COMPATIBILITY
Stone fruit gives us more flexibility.
Peaches, nectarines and apricots are closely related enough that peach rootstocks can be used for these different fruit types.
Some plum varieties can also be grafted successfully onto peach or peach-based rootstocks, and peach, plum and interspecific Prunus rootstocks are all used in different situations.
But compatibility isn't universal.
That's where the really interesting part of grafting begins.
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🌳 THE EXPERT LEVEL — COMPATIBILITY GETS MORE COMPLICATED
For someone starting out, these broad rules are a good place to begin:
🍎 Apple → apple
🍐 Pear → pear or quince
🍑 Peach → peach, nectarine or apricot
🟣 Plum → plum
🍒 Cherry → cherry
But once you get deeper into grafting, compatibility becomes much more specific.
There are particular plum and cherry varieties that can be quite fussy about which rootstock they'll successfully grow on.
A graft can even appear to take initially and then develop compatibility problems later at the graft union. Research has demonstrated cultivar-specific incompatibilities between particular plum scions and rootstocks.
Plums are a particularly good example.
There are European plums and Japanese plums, and individual cultivars within those groups can behave differently on different rootstocks.
For example, studies have found some plum cultivars that were compatible with a wide range of rootstocks, while others showed incompatibility with particular Myrobalan or hybrid rootstocks.
So don't assume:
"It's a plum, so it'll graft onto any plum."
Usually there are plenty of compatible combinations — but occasionally you'll find a variety that's particularly picky.
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🔎 WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU'RE UNSURE?
If you've got a variety you've never grafted before, look up the specific scion variety and rootstock combination before grafting a whole batch.
For example:
"[plum variety] graft compatibility [rootstock]"
or:
"[plum variety] compatible rootstocks"
You want to find out:
🌱 Is it compatible with a seed-grown rootstock?
🌱 Will it graft onto Myrobalan?
🌱 Does it prefer a particular plum rootstock?
🌱 Will it grow on peach?
🌱 Is it better on a peach-plum or another interspecific hybrid?
🌱 Is it a European or Japanese plum?
🌱 Are there known incompatibility problems?
There are published rootstock compatibility trials and recommendations that can help when you're working with an unusual cultivar.
And remember that graft compatibility and pollination compatibility are two different things. A tree can successfully graft onto another rootstock while the varieties may still have different pollination requirements.
That's the difference between the basic grafting rules and the really technical side of fruit-tree propagation.
Start with the broad genetic relationships.
Then, if you're working with a particular cultivar, check the actual scion-to-rootstock compatibility before you graft a whole batch.
A little research beforehand can save you years of waiting to find out that a particular combination wasn't compatible.
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🌱 SO WHAT ROOTSTOCK SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?
There isn't one "best" rootstock.
The right choice depends on:
📍 Your climate
🌱 Your soil
💧 Your water availability
🌳 The space you have
🍎 The fruit variety
🦠 Disease pressures
✂️ How much pruning and management you want to do
A sandy site might require different considerations from a heavy clay soil.
A small backyard might suit a dwarfing apple rootstock.
A large food forest might benefit from a more vigorous tree.
And a locally adapted seedling rootstock can be an excellent choice where you want a strong, naturally vigorous tree.
The important thing is understanding what you're putting into the ground and why.
You're not just choosing a fruit variety.
You're choosing the root system that will support that tree for decades.
🌱 The scion determines the fruit.
🌳 The rootstock determines a lot of what happens underneath it.
Understanding both is what makes a better fruit tree.
