I was just noting something similar. Almost every apple graft from last year has flowers.
The only apple grafts which don’t are:
1.) Wood grafted from young seedlings. Even seedlings grafted 2 years ago don’t have flowers (though they have grown a lot).
2.) Grafts made in late May and early June. It seems they didn’t have time/energy to set flower buds
3.) Vanilla Pippin- I’m not sure why, but none of the 3 grafts (2 in Aplril and 1 in mid May, which all took) have flowers.
Edit: even with the above list which didn’t flower, that leaves 28-29 of the 30 non-seedling varieties to sample, assuming that they set and mature fruit (a big assumption).
For some strange reason most of apple grafts that I received from Bob Purvis last year look unhealthy: Ginger Gold, Cox’s Orange, Frostbite and something else that I forgot. They did not flower. Cox’s orange graft produced small undeveloped flowers with green petals, the other graft did not wake up and a couple of them have randomly positioned dead buds on the brunches. I actually began to worry that they are sick with a virus or fireblight. By contrast the grafts from the GRIN scions are robust and they set fruits, which I hopefully will taste. Many A. and E. plums, sweet and sour cherries grafts set fruits. Even apricots which were not frozen, set fruits. It is nice to try fruits on the second year.
Maria, I’m having the same problem with tart cherry grafts from ARS scionwood as you described last year. The leaves wilt and seem like they suffer from a disease, and understock branches below the grafts also appear affected. I have already removed most of the tart cherry grafts I made from the ARS scions. The only exception is “Pamyati Vavilova” (which incidentally were the tiniest of the received ARS sticks) — those grafts look ok so far.
@Stan this year I sprayed with wettable sulfur 3 times during the flowering time.
It seems to help. The first strikes before spraying claimed my Carmine Jewel and Erde Jubileum grafts. The leaves and flowers wilted and I removed the whole grafts to stop infection. The other strikes were mostly on the very top brunches where I did not spray very well. Yes, this year this disease is all over the tree not only grafts, but it seems that the sulfur helps. My last year graft from Studencheskaya, Kelleris 16, Sumadinka, Montmorency survived, flowered (and were sprayed vigorously) and they seems OK so far. Every day I walk around the tree checking for the wilted leaves and remove them promptly. This is why I began to be so paranoid about bringing diseases with the other peoples scions.
By the way, last year in June we visited our relatives in Russia and Moniliniosis was all over their sour cherries, they looked yellow all over. When I grew up we did not have any of this problems with cherries as well as fireblight.
I grafted the ARS scionwood on stand-alone Krymsk-5 rootstocks (planted last year), so in the worst case I will loose a few one-year-old rootstocks and not a big tree.
For those who might be wondering what happened with my cherry. Moniliniosis in cherries
I actually think that GRIN should not send the scions spreading this disease all around the country.
I got back up to the mountain today. We’ve had rain on and off for the past four days and the trees are lush with leaves now. I surveyed my recent grafts to see if they’re showing signs of life. Here are some highlights:
@skillcult Steven Edholm’s new California-bred Wickson apple seedling called “BITE ME!” appears to have found a new home across the country in Maryland:
A few other grafts also appeared like they might take, including:
-Parfum de Septembre mirabelle plum (forum donor!)
-@BobVance’s Kokuso and Oscar mulberries
-Elliot and Belle Lucrative pears from USDA
-Frostbite and Calville Blanc D’Hiver apples from USDA
Additional grafts are too close to call, but don’t look completely dead at this juncture.
Could be a banner year for grafts! It is such a thrill to collect these varieties.
I just grafted mine about a week ago, top-working a Northstar. The NorthStar has had that exact issue (wilting blooms) for several years now and I’m hoping to find something more resistant.
Either way, I can’t blame any issue on ARS, as the host tree has the issue already. I’m planning to leave all the grafts in place- if none take (something I’m not expecting), I’m finding something else for this spot.
Some of my plums set fruit the year after grafting, but it wasn’t as universal as with apples. Only two (Chojuro and Shinseiki) of the pear grafts from last year flowered (of 16 varieties, 5 of which were Asian pears).
The Euros take longer. In fact, I think only Elliot was the only Euro grafted in 2015 which flowered (all 3 of the Asians did). I still have a red fleshed pear which I grafted in 2013, which still hasn’t flowered. It must be competing with the nearby Magness, which is finally covered in bloom.
surprised the black ice took off so fast…may want to watch loosely to make sure it isn’t leafing faster than callusing, but I have my fingers crossed for ya
I could use some tips for grafting mulberries. I’m having trouble getting them to take. I tried dormant cleft grafts, doing morus nigra onto morus alba stock with very limited success. Are you grafting early or late? Is the bleeding problematic when grafting late?
I also tried bud grafts last summer and had no success at all. They doesn’t callous very good. The stock tends to dry back around the graft…
Is veneer grafting to activ growing stock a valid option?
I am having very good success with apples and stonefruit but am struggling when grafting mulberry.
The ars grin wood I’ve got from Corvalis is extremely healthy as is what I received from Geneva. They are exceptional in all ways and the program is very valuable to many of us planting test crops for a hopefully better future. Your aware Corvalis does pears and Geneva does apples. I’ve never ordered cherry scions but I’m assuming those come from Davis. Stone fruit in my area is a true game of çhance because there are so many diseases. Canker is a devastating disease and it’s everywhere here in Kansas. Never saw an orchard or tree in this state without it for very long. I have a friend in an isolated site growing a reliance peach I got him that shows no sign of canker.
Clark I agree that USDA apple and scions are really great and I am very grateful for them. The sour cherry scions would be very good too if they did not spread diseases. They do not come from Davis. Davis is a place of its own. They have very good cultivars of sour cherries which are not available anywhere else. I think this disease is one of the reasons why we have so few sour cherry cultivars available in USA despite of the very good USDA collection. In Corvallis they receive pears free from viruses by the tissue propagation. They should do something about sour cherries too. At least to study the resistance of different cultivars to Moniliniosis as they do it with fireblight.
Last year my clef grafts on IE grew nicely, formed leaves, and then died a few weeks after that, This year I’ll try at bud swell (this week) and then again in May when leaves have formed. If I have enough scion I’ll try clef, bark and bud graft. I’ll report my results.
I graft at about 1" leaves and have had very good luck. I had thought the sap would be a problem but its not. My guess is you may have been too early. I had a lot of failures on dormant grafts so I stopped doing that. Which reminds me, I still have to graft my persimmons - those guys I like several inches of leaves on, even if they are showing some green and big buds, thats still too early as far as I am concerned.
@danzeb, @scottfsmith, Thanks for the answers/tips. I could try to regraft now. Thats leading to my next question. Are mulberry scions similar forgiving as apple scions when it comes to questionable conditions of the buds? In other words, do the buds need to be absolutely dormant or can I try grafting when buds already are swollen and show some green color? If that isn’t recommendable with mulberry I will wait til late summer.
Maybe you’ve done this already, but if you think the USDA sent you infected scionwood, I definitely think you should let them know ASAP! Let them know what’s happening and take them some pictures so they can see.
Sometimes there is no way to know you have a problem until someone complains. Or if you just get one complaint, it can be hard to know if there’s actually a problem, or if it’s just that person. The more information they have, the closer they are to addressing the problem.
I’m sorry so many of your Cherry scions were unhealthy…
