If it works better for you, it is absolutely fine to do so. I myself do like the technic Tom Spellman showed in the video. You don’t have to slit the blade under the bark. You just make the first cut down onto the hardwood and then twist the knive. This does the job for me very reliably plus it doesn’t hurt the bark to much since with that twisting motion the blade lifts up the bark a little and dosn’t just push it aside.
But actually the trick is to do a bark graft at the right time. The tree has to have broken dormancy. Only when it already pulls sap the bark will slip. If you hit this condition you shouldn’t have problems lifting the bark. When I realise the bark doesn’t slip properly I then wait some days to do a bark graft or simply change technic. E.g. you then could do a side graft or another one we call “Geißfusspropfen” as shown in this video. Both those technics don’t require the bark to slip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4ReeuSPGh4
I should mention it isn’t necessary to use such a heavy blade and a hammer with thinner limbs. But of course that technic is much more challenging than a bark graft. I rarely use it and don’t feel comfortable yet doing it cause I’m not very good at it.
I think that’s the proper recommendation, but I unwrap mine at about three weeks, and take pictures and geek out about them, and occasionally pick them up off the ground at five weeks because the labs broke them off hauling ass through the trees to bark at the fence…
There is really no good reason to unwrap a graft until at least mid summer unless you’ve used something that is incredibly restrictive that could restrict the graft. There aren’t many grafting supplies that do that as most have some type of elasticity and will easily expand enough to prevent girdling the growth. I use rubber splicing tape over parafilm and in the fall I make a slit down the side of the tape and usually it peels right off.
I grafted 50 apples tree rootstock about two weeks ago and one of the last grafts I did, I thought I would try something out of the box, at least for me. I connected three different scions together, the first was a Winter Banana, then a Suncrisp and then I think it was a Wickson. I know you normally would pick one good shoot off of ONE scion and let that grow up and build from there. Has anyone had experience with this type of graft? BTW so far it is doing well, all three scions have growth.
I can’t tell from experience. It might work. I would guess though the danger of failure rises, cause in a normal graft the rootstock callouses faster than the scion. Thats leading to a faster supply of the scion. In your case not only the second but also the third graft has to be selfsustaining for a longer period of time.
But I really think it might work. Did you seal the whole scions with wax or parafilm?
You got that right. My grafting this year is running at about 98% success, and it may go to 100%. Some are only 2 weeks old and growing (figs). I finally got it, so next year I’m going to be hitting you all up! I had so many cool scions my first two years that failed. Although I don’t have much room left. I need mostly peaches. Yes even the peaches took!
Question: Is it OK to let grafts done this year to fruit next year? Or should I remove fruit?
You can absolutely let them fruit next year. Here’s a tree I topworked about this time last year. Got over 10 foot growth in one year and I’m letting it fruit, however not heavily. I will leave tape on these until they fruit, when I will prune.
I did something similar. I had extra apple scions but no space on my two year old tree. So I decided to joint two scions together and graft it to the tree. One of the joints consisted of winter banana Apple and harrow sweet pear. Winter banana is showing growth but HS is still dormant. We’ll see how it goes .
PEAR!!