Hey Bagrat;

First, I’d better switch my Seasons! I know ‘Springs still Spring’ in Australia… but my grafts are just now hardening off for winter. I grow Bramleys, too, but don’t know if they’re “tip bearers” or not..? If so, ‘bud wood’ or scions would be their ‘bearing wood.’ I’d grafted mine to the limb of another tree, cleft graft I believe, and they took like any other set of scions.

I wonder if your trees were beginning to ‘shut down’ for winter and were no longer sending the growth hormone necessary to spark vegetative growth, as opposed to a fruiting spur..? I’ve made bark grafts too low on the tree to receive such hormones (or sunlight for that matter) and all they did was bloom – year after year. Instead of becoming the ‘branches’ I’d hoped for, they remained fruit spurs.

If you’ve budded to small diameter rootstock it seems you could simply snip off everything above the Bramley and ‘force’ next (or this) seasons growth and hormones into it and see what happens… Or whack it off and do a whip & tongue graft of another Bramley (AKA: “Bramley’s Seedling”).

You ask: “And finally, is a bourse bud (The little bud at the bottom of the 1 year old fruiting spur) a vegetative or fruiting bud?” -- I don’t know, but did a little looking… and found this:

“During fruit set, spurs of some cultivars swell forming a bourse or cluster base. The bourse is more prevalent on terminal bearing cultivars. In the axil of the top leaf on the flowering/fruiting spur, a bud will develop. If the bud elongates, it is called a bourse shoot. The bud may not elongate and is thus referred to as the bourse bud. Spurs on stone fruits (e.g. cherry) will generally have 1-5 flowering buds and are terminated by a vegetative bud. On the spur the flowers open followed soon by the opening of the terminal bud which may elongate 1-5cm. In the axils of the spur leaves on the new spur, buds develop for fruiting the following year.”

From: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:ADG ... cd=3&gl=us

Too confusing for me… I like to leave some amount of mystery to it " title="Wink" /> Good luck!