Hi Kelogs. Not to worry about your language abilities. You do quite well. Your understanding of cleft grafting is accurate- it is often done on trunks or branches that are almost just stumps. I had imagined a tree more like my apple: quite a few well-established branches that I intend to keep, and a few that I would like to shift over. In my particular case I will have better luck changing over the branches that are higher up in the tree because they will be less affected by hormones which the tips of branches secrete and which drain down the tree to inhibit competition. Since you will remove those higher branches they need not concern you. I did not appreciate how much of the tree you intended to remove. One approach that has worked for me is to work over two or three branches on a fairly young tree and work my way up the tree over a period of a few years to continue converting branches, but not the main trunk, to a variety of fruit. I keep most of the tree unchanged in any given year but change some part of it every year. If I have a variety down below that's appealing I cut scions from it and graft them onto the higher scaffolds. I obviously can't keep that up forever, but it is quite workable now. I simply keep the lower scaffolds if I like their fruit. Hope I didn't make this too confusing.

For commercial production I expect its pollination. There is a much bigger chance a variety will lose its pollinator and make it useless. I have a bunch of those I grafted myself. I have not had any problems with compatibility but some combos are supposed to be problematic. In particular Euro on Asian is more problematic than the other way. Most of mine are with both on rootstock but I also have some Asian on Euro that are doing well. One combo failed, Olympic on some Euro I don't remember now. I then put Olympic on a different Euro and its doing fine. Scott

When a city tree crew removes a tree, mot only do they cut the whole tree down to the ground, they also grind the stump and usually grind it quite a ways down. It's a rare tree that can come back from that. Although magnolias are notorious for suckering, especially from a stump, they almost never send up shoots from "leftover" roots. The left-behind roots will eventually rot away. The only thing you need to worry about is a good crop of mushrooms over the next many years. Joe

Not really... >>and this makes more sense to me: cut off all the tips and there'll be nowhere for the fruit to form.<< There are enough pruning videos in youtube....all you need to keep in mind is that the tips bear fruits and prune accordingly. Doesn't mean you leave all tips alone, cut some long branches back where a fruit load can be a problem, new branches will from and these will fruit the following year. The basic pruning still remains...keep it open for light etc.