Now I understand what you mean Hank and thanks for your PM. I decided to answer your question here instead of by PM in case any other members wanted to add any comments.

You could try grafting your cooking apple scion onto the trunk of your eating apple tree, but as I said before, I'm not too sure what might happen as grafting is usually done onto rootstock of a particular species with a scion from the donor tree. The leaves, fruit and all the other characteristics of the donor tree then takes over and the rootstock is just there to provide a good foundation for the new species to grow on. This could be that the rootstock is more disease tolerant, a dwarf variety, frost resistant, etc.

The rootstock is usually cut right back to a foot or two in height and is devoid of leaves or branches as this can grow and take over the donor plant. So, you would in effect be grafting a scion onto a rootstock that already has leaves and branches on so I'm not sure how that will pan out.

Regarding your failure to get the graft to take, it took me some years to get it right. I grow citrus from seeds to use as rootstock and had many failures along the way. You need to take your time, use a very sharp blade, make sure you sterilize the blade and only use sound cuttings. There are other things that you need to be aware of, like the scion needs to be cut just below a bud.

I also think that you might run into problems grafting onto your established tree because the scion needs to be about the same diameter as the rootstock branch that you are grafting onto. The relatively small size of a 1 - 2 year old rootstock doesn't present much problem as it's only about the width of a pencil. Yours will be much bigger and so I would imagine it would be harder to obtain a successful graft.

My advise to you Hank would be to read up on grafting and go ahead and try it. Maybe try 2 or 3 grafts in case some fail. You could always remove one or two if they all take.

An interesting thing I read in The Daily Mail the other day was a story about someone that has an apple tree. Over the last 24 years he has successfully grafted 250 different species of apple onto one tree. The only way that he could have done this is by grafting them onto an established tree. I don't know how, but if he did it proves it can be done.

I hope this helps? Good luck and let me know how you get on.

Thanks M, I look forward to having a go at grafting. I'll be much more careful this time.