I’m not sure why your experience is not lining up with what I have seen. Grafting the earliest possible is great in the sense that you get much better growth. Particularly on apples, there is a huge difference between early and late growth. But if its too early the bark will not be slipping and there will be no good results. For persimmons I have been ruined many times by grafting when there are nice fat buds showing - the bark still was not slipping well and every graft failed.
I am starting to wonder if there is something in the temperature fluctuations that causes the bark to get slipping earlier where you are compared to on the east - we are more consistently cold and you have bouts of really warm weather to get things going. Trees don’t revert, once the bark is slipping it stays that way.
The ideal callous temps for peaches is around 55-75F, and unlike most other fruits they callous very little when it gets colder. Still, if the bark is slipping well they will be doing some callousing on days with highs in the 60’s.
Obviously if its working for you keep doing it, but I have done many peach grafts exactly when you are mentioning to do it and got near 100% failures. So, there are some things here we don’t completely understand; I think it is related to how well the bark is slipping and that is based on temps in the recent past.
I am sure you don’t mean to have it taken in a negative light, but statements like
“I myself feel I got terrible advice to wait for warmer temps.”
“I’ve given up on expert advice. it cost me 2 years of time.”
came across as you were blaming someone else.
I do not believe anyone here intend to give “terrible” advice. We give our input, suggestions, advice, based on our experience or what we learn from studies/research, etc. Any advice I read here or anywhere, if I like it and think it makes sense to me, I try it. If it works, good. If not, it’s a bummer. No one forces me to follow their advice.
I agree, it was harsh, I have to be responsible for my own actions. If I offended anybody my apologies. I certainly have given out bad advice myself. I learned my lesson, I will not depend on any advice but my own experience.
'When I said experts, i didn’t mean anybody here, (I don’t consider anybody here experts, no offense meant,) I meant the universities, just so that is clear. As what people are saying is what is believed to be the current best practice.And I still think it’s wrong, and not good, and even to go so far as to say terrible. I always consult with MSU and other info from other universities on anything I do, but I’m rethinking that now.
@mamuang summed it up nicely… For me the grafting process has been one big experiment, and with any experiment there are successes and failures…that’s what I enjoy the most about it.
There might be something in my climate that helps, but I encourage everyone to try early grafting and see if it works. I am glad that it worked for @Drew51.
About persimmons, I hate to sound like a jerk, but I did early grafting with persimmons last year and it worked too. All three grafts took. In the beginning of this thread there are a couple of my pictures with the persimmon grafts. http://www.growingfruit.org/t/anyone-grafting-persimmons-yet/5791/40
I grafted persimmons this year already a little late. The main trees has swollen buds and the scions do not show much yet. We’ll see if it works this year.
This to me gives even more evidence that your bark is slipping earlier. It is impossible for me to do early bark grafts on persimmons because the bark won’t even peel back! Its glued on. When I did my persimmons last weekend I had the opposite problem, half an inch of bark would pop up when I gave it a little nudge.
That may work for you now that you’ve got some experience, but in the beginning advice from others gives you a place to start. Then push the boundaries and expand/experiment from there. I’m all for experimentation, like the 4 new-to-me methods I’m trying this year(see post 424 above). But it’s good to have a baseline of something that has worked for someone.
Thinking about my failures on persimmons from two years ago, several of them were whip and tongue grafts - I had put some backups high up that way. They all failed. My guess is your bark was slipping even though you didn’t need it to for the graft you were doing.
I re-grafted things a month later and I got 100% takes, so the wood and stocks were viable; I was just too early. The buds were almost 1" in size when I did the first grafts - ready to pop any day.
I had good luck with grafts during bloom last year (3rd week of April). And I think I grafted some onto rootstocks the first week of April too, but in pots that I could bring in if need be (and did).
However, my contrary evidence was that I lost a graft of Williams Pride done the 3rd week of April to the grabby hands of a 1.5 year old.
I cut the branch back to a stub and T-budded a chip of Williams Pride onto that stub on May 24 last year. That was my strongest growing graft (vigorous scion on vigorous Zestar on loves-to-put-out-vegatative-growth M7 roots). The benefit of this method looks to be a well healed graft union after a summer’s growth. I have no issues about fruiting this WP graft this year.
I’m late to graft this year, so I’m thinking of doing more of this hybrid T/chip bud method.
Yeah I’m venting! I try to do as much research as possible. I used to do research on other subjects for other people. I recently was asked to do more (Music related). I agree with you, just venting, it took me so long to figure this out. I put high expectations on myself. Not happy with the loss in time. I guess I should be happy as it’s working, funny now that I think about it! Dolt!
I know this has been answered before, but now that I have good grafts, and I used electrical tape, when can I take it off? In some cases with figs, I used that orange tape used for various tagging and such, tied it. Worried it might be very tight. When can I remove this stuff?
It depends on what type you used. Did you use vinyl or rubber? If you used the rubber, it will just stretch until it breaks (I like this!). If you used vinyl, I’d treat it the same way you would the orange garden tape.
Of course,I forgot to remove some of the garden tape from a couple years ago and while a bit deformed, the branch seems fine. Not that I recommend it. I think I got away with it because it was a slow growing apple. I bet a vigorous pear/plum would have been ruined. I just use the rubber electric tape now. It’s easier to apply and doesn’t need to be removed.
What variety is the other one? I know you said one is Capilano. I had never heard of that variety. Do you mind me asking where you get it and what you know about it? Just curious. Thanks if you can answer.
