Grafting Apples onto Crabapple Roots in a Riparian Zone

I plan on planting some of my first fruit trees this year. I'm a little nervous since this is my first planting. There is a creek that does overflow during the especially wet seasons, and I know a lot of fruit trees won't like that.

I'm thinking of planting Oregon Crabapple trees (page 15) from seed which are native to the area and like to be planted above the low water mark and below the high water mark of the riparian zone. My goal, once established, is to then graft my desired apple cultivar onto the crabapple.

Does this seem reasonable? Or should I use a well established apple rootstock that tolerates wet feet?

All commercial apples are grafted onto crabapple rootstock.

All of mine are.

I mostly find commercial apples grafted onto rootstock with names like ELMA 7, ELMA 111, and Budagovski 9. Are you saying these are crabapples roots?

Yes, the Elma and Budagovski strains of rootstocks are crabapples.

There are sound reasons for using crabapple root stock; very hardy, draught resistance, disease resistance are just the main ones.

There are large crab apple species and there are "dwarf" species so the orchardist can choose how large the graft will end up just by choosing the right root stock.