It seams to be an ongoing battle against something for my apple trees. The most annoying and devastating has been the root borers. I've had them in the past years, but luckily last year they were mostly untouched, but this year they seam to be in a couple trees.

One tree is almost girdled so I went on limb and tried out this technique, not sure it will take but I though I'd give it a try!

I'll start by telling you about my borer battles before we get into my fancy bypass graft attempt to save the tree.

Here's what the borer damage looks like to start. There is this small entry whole where it crawled up inside, then all this little pasty shavings called "frass" are outside of the hole. I try to check it out every few days looking for areas with fresh frass. I'll move everything away so I can keep a close eye.

Once I find the a spot, I'll poke gently and look for defects in the bark where they have undermined the area then carefully cut a smaller whole with a razor so that I can go in with a wire and try to fish or stab the culprit up inside the tree.

I have a few different wires of different lengths, thicknesses and shapes. I'll bend them and work them into the hole, trying to follow the paths of the tunnels into the trees. Often the travel quite far but I'm usually always able to find the end.

Often I'll pull out the borer on the end of the wire, or get some goop on my wire that it's from the tree then I'm satisfied I've got him.

This is one of the larger ones I got out a few years ago, the other day I wasn't able to remove any of them but did see the squished portion from a couple.

This poor trees has seen quite a bit of borer activity around the roots and I really think the one side of the tree is starting to girdle, which I can usually tell by the amount of suckers the roots start putting up just below that portion.

This is when I decided to attempt a bypass or bridge graft on the tree. I think the suckers may have been a bit too young to pull it off yet, but I felt it was a good chance to give it a try.

This first place I tried directly into one of the lower borers holes that was just under the outer bark. I finely cut the sucker and then took a very slight amount of the outside and tried to gently maneuver it into the hole. I covered the area with some wax. I don't have any of the fancy grafting wax and just use the wax seal you can buy from the hardware store for assembling toilets. It works just fine and is way cheaper in my experience.

Next I tried two other places higher up. I made on vertical slit in the bark at the tree truck and then cut the sucker to the same size. Once again gently shaved the outside bark then pressed it into the small slit. It seamed to seal very well into the slit and I actually have some high hoped for the success of this graft. I did another very similar in a slightly different spot as well.

Once again I sealed that up with a little bit of wax.

Lastly I secured the suckers up against the tree. I used a bit of floral wire up high to hold it nice and tight. I usually try not to use wire or rope/string on the trees unless its going to be semi-permanent since the trees can grow over top of it quite quickly at times. So I also used some elastics which are my preferred for any grafts, since they generally rot off within a couple months, by the time the graft has finally taken. I also like to use panty hose or socks for tying the tree, since the fabric is stretchy and flexible and can usually be cut into a flat strip so it doesn't apply to much pressure or cut into the trees.

Here's hoping it works out, and I'll definitely let you guys know. PS if anyone has any more tips I'd be glad to hear them.

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