I wanted to update everyone or at least Drew about my grafting of Peaches, Plums, and Apricots. The pictures I posted earlier show all the grafts taking off really well… and they did. The temps were in the 70s early on HOWEVER, we had a cool spell that lasted at least a week if not longer and after that those graft that looked so well are now not taking and have failed, at least at this point unless there is a miracle and they come back. Several did make it but not the numbers initially… JUST WANTED TO UPDATE… since we are talking about temps and if grafting earlier is better.
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Thanks, peaches are problematic for sure. I agree that at least 70F would be better if not ideal, with plums, it doesn’t matter. Out of about 20 plum grafts one may fail, it’s still not dead, the bud swelled, turned green, and is just sitting there. My other plum grafts are now branching. With my peaches i would say about 75%, which I consider very good, actually more than I thought didn’t make it. A few others failed since I last posted. And as you say still may not make it? Some failures still may grow too. They are slower to grow, but still look fine. I have a few where wood is good, but not growing. I need to try again next year for peaches and I will wait a bit longer, but still plan on doing early.
Bob, in your case since you grafted when warm, that may be the problem, why they ultimately failed. The cooler temps just made it worse. You may blame the cool weather, but the time of grafting is more important, if they had good connections they should not have failed in cooler temps. Those failures have to be counted when temps were in the 70’s,
@BobC at least you have several takes versus zero. Peaches, nectarines and apricots are more difficult, I guess if you have 50% takes or higher it is considered to be good. I also had several failed grafts but the majority are doing fine. My grafts usually take if they start to grow leaves or they do not take if they do nothing. Very few if any have false takes meaning that they start to grow and then fail. May be it is something in the grafting technique that I do is different which helps with higher rate of takes.
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I have a thought about why the wood is pushing the growth before making the graft union that seems obvious. Some scions were less dormant when they were grafted and they quickly accumulated the sum of positive temperatures and started to grow. I noticed quite a difference in the scion wood dormancy this year. Some scions which were sent to me by the members from Southern parts broke dormancy in refrigerator. This is why I was so eager to graft them in early March. They were the first to push the leaves too, but they took and grew fine. I did not notice any less dormant scions in peaches, but as I said before I had no false takes in peaches this year. But the longer scion wood stays in refrigerator, the more probability of it to break dormancy or dry out or get moldy, etc.
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@Drew51 and @Antmary, All the rootstock is alive and doing well. I grafted to three different rootstocks and will have to report back what grew on what and what really took off. Keep you posted and pictures to come. Now in the 80s here in S.E. Ohio. Btw, my apple trees are doing better than ever before they are LOADED… going to be a good year for apples… knocking on wood.
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I agree its difficult to isolate exactly why a graft succeeded or failed, there are many variables involved. The whole up and down temperature for about two weeks after is a factor. My feeling is any abnormally-hot or abnormally-cold can be bad in that period, especially for the hard things like peaches, apricots, and persimmons.
Technique is also a factor. @Antmary, I am wondering if your wrappings are not helping warm things up - they are creating literal “greenhouses” in how the light enters the clear material but will not come back out. So this will improve your cool-temps odds. I use Doc Farwells on most of my grafts, it does not do that so is probably better for weather on the warm side.
I have had peaches start and then stall and die. My memory of these cases is there was a temperature shift of some sort, but a few times it was something else, e.g. the wrapping got exposed and it dried out, the graft got hit, etc.
Last night I was out in the orchard and found a 1’ apricot graft had broken off. Fortunately it was hanging on by a bark thread and not dead yet so I put a splint on. It should be fine by the end of the season.
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I’m wondering if this messed with fruit set too? Some have few peaches but loads of plums, and I have loads of peaches, but many of the plums fell off. Although my trees are young. Dapple Dandy works well here, it has to be thinned heavily. The rest I don’t need to thin at all. Flavor King set fairly well too. Next year I’ll have 12 other plums as grafts flowering. That should help with any pollination issues. Three plum grafts, I only did one of each cultivar as I was running out of room. All three made it.
Yes weather really affects plum set. I don’t understand the exact effect but some plums are very inconsistent from year to year. Santa Rosa was the main one, it would go from just a couple to a full set and back to just a couple. I don’t think its pollinators as I hand-pollinated and didn’t notice any difference. Its now gone and replaced with Weeping Santa Rosa which is a very similar plum but is much more consistent. The Euro plums are also more regular, they may take forever to start fruiting but once they start they are consistent.
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Yes interesting. I skipped Santa Rosa and just went to the weeping one. The 3rd tree I planted made it through the winter, so this one looks here to stay, and the third time is a charm! It’s growing really well too.
I don;t have any Euros, maybe one day. In general too sweet for me. The gages and French plums sound worthwhile. Purple type Stanley plums do not appeal to me, maybe none will? I
I have a couple more scions with green buds in the fridge, am wondering whether to give them a try or just wait til the budding season
I have no much experience with grafting wood which broke dormancy. A. plums are easy to graft they may be OK. I think such wood will graft better when it is cool because they will grow more slowly. In hot weather they will shoot straight ahead and die, this is what I think. I am not sure about t-budding, may be somebody else have more experience with it.
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The only thing I know is that one of these sticks, with a green bud when I grafted it, still has a tiny pair of leaves emergent, yet they aren’t growing at all and don’t look likely to live. What I don’t know is if any of the other buds on that stick might take
If you can, I’d try to remove as many of the more advanced buds as you can. I grafted some with green buds last year and had some takes and one failure. But the rootstock died too, so it might have been something else.
I also had a couple scions that started pushing buds last year, the buds turned brown, and eventually fell off, but in the end another bud emerged and the graft took.
I left my scions in the fridge too long this year, and have a lot of more advanced buds. I just remove the most emerged buds and grafted the more dormant ones. I’ll cross my fingers.
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In case anyone was wondering how long it takes for a scion to have intimate contact with the cambium layer. It can be less than 4 days.
I made the decision to pull a scion from my Liberty on G.935 out of an abundance of caution on viruses affecting that rootstock.
It was a “stab graft” as Stephen Hayes calls them. When I went to remove the scion tonight I had to peel the scion away from the bark with more force than I expected. I thought that was a notable observation. It was glued to the bark side of the cut rather well, just 3 days after I made the initial graft.
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Here’s a frankentree experiment for y’all: hawthorn with quince and medlar on it. I did 6 grafts with a mix of wedge and whip&tongue and they all took. I’ll keep reporting in so we can track any delayed compatibility issues that arise.
So far, the medlar is preparing to flower, and one of the quince branches is considering it. Hopefully that’s a sign that they’re happy rather than a sign that they’re in trouble and making one last-ditch attempt to reproduce.
Medlar, with flower bud:
Quince (Aromatnaya)
Quince (Kuganskaya)
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Very nice graft work!
Hi everybody,
Just wanted to give a quick update on our grafting adventure so far. My dad and I grafted ten pears on OHxF333 and twenty-five apples on G41. Major credit and appreciation to my dad, who volunteered to do the knife work. (I’m planning to practice up for next year.) All were cleft grafts, done over a couple of days in the second week of April and planted out in our “nursery” about a month later. The rootstock was from Grandpa’s and the scions were from a variety of places: Singing Tree, Hocking Hills, Maple Valley, Fedco, and one other - Northwest Cider Supply?
Between beginner’s luck and rookie mistakes, we seem to be doing ok so far - nearly twenty leafing out, and a few more showing smaller signs of green. We had pretty cool weather up until the last two days, and I suspect that may have been slowing some things down a little.
Our big setback so far resulted from me putting the bench grafts in pots that turned out not to drain well enough. Which I’m kicking myself for, of course, but in addition to being a total novice with grafting, I am pretty much a total novice with gardening in general, so chalk it up as a learning experience, I guess. The pears bore the brunt of my education: a number of them started to poke out growth and then had it die back. However, a few are showing a little green again now, so hopefully they’ll hang in there and maybe a couple of others will follow. (Most of the rootstocks seem to have survived, so I’m thinking it’s more of a question of whether they can recover fast enough to feed the scions in time.)
Our apples did not have the same drainage problems and consequently have been doing quite a lot better. Grafts of Hoople’s Antique Gold and Kidd’s Orange Red have been two of the standouts so far. The Hoople’s has just been doing great: got going early and kept going strong, with the greenest, cleanest growth of the whole bunch. The Kidd’s exceeded my expectations (and to be honest, my just desserts): this was a graft that we did using a scion I had left out on the porch overnight on the total runt of our rootstock litter, and yet it took and has been chugging along admirably.
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Not a single one of my Lovell stock has taken. Well, initially a few did but at this point they have failed. The plum stock has done much better. There are a few scions that I really wanted to make it that haven’t. I don’t think it is the fact that the scion itself didn’t make it… it is more about members send them to me and I fail them. I hope that’s not the case.
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That was one reason for my reaction about the experts, is asking for people to go through the trouble of collecting, labeling, and packaging scion, only to have it fail is not cool. People here though get it, and Bab Vance has send me the same scion for three years, and this time it all took! Yes! So yeah I get that. I had scion I probably can’t get now too, so it sucks. This year was no exception with some super rare stuff that I’m not supposed to have, and they took! So that at least feels way good.
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I may try it - got a lot of stubs where the scions died or were broken off