Speed,
That was how I felt last year. Having 90+ grafts taking made up to having NO stone fruit at all last year.
1 Like
Chris I did something similar - I grafted a peach in good weather and it was starting to take off. I didn’t foil before the recent heat wave though since it was “only” a couple days long, but it looks like it might have fried in that heat. Live and learn… I think you need to be careful for 2-3 weeks after the graft for sensitive things like peaches.
I re-grafted my persimmons today, the old ones were all black at the unions - none made it. I think it was just too consistently cool. The wood itself was surprisingly good-looking besides the union point, I even used one scion over again since I ran out of that variety.
1 Like
Actually, I did notice this but thought it’s an obvious misprint, so I kept my mouth shut to avoid being finally declared this forum’s grammar nazi. 
2 Likes
I’ve seen a lot of comments this year about failed grafts and wanted to share a trick or two I use.
#1 - when whip grafting make long cuts on scion and rootstock. If you make 3/4" or one inch cuts instead of 1/4" or 1/2" cuts your increasing the grafts chance of taking because you significantly increased the cambium contact area.
#2 - use parafilm over the entire area to prevent the graft from drying out because grafts drying out kills most grafts that fail.
#3 - once you find I out what works for you on one graft stick with it regardless of what works better for other people. Everyone has their own strengths.
#4 - never put off grafting next year what you can graft this year because smaller wood Is very easy to graft. The bigger trees get the harder they are to graft.
7 Likes
Great grafting tips. Thanks
1 Like
Clark,
Have done 1-4. Still not sure if persimmon will take this year 
. So far, it is my most challenging one to graft.
2 Likes
I agree on all 4.
I also do deep tongue cut for the whip and tongue grafts, because it increase the grafted area and improve graft integrity.
1 Like
I’ve been using cut #64 rubber bands from Walmart. They last about month or longer in sun at my location.
2 Likes
Matt,
Will this be the first time trying Geraldi,if those ripen?If so,I’d like your opinion of their flavor. Thanks,Brady
Mulberry grafts are coming along well. These are local selections I’m propagating. Grafted them when leaves were starting to emerge on the stocks.
2 Likes
Medlar blossom. I hope these are very thoroughly self-fertile, because it sure isn’t going to get pollinated by anything else.
1 Like
Yep
Just treat them like apples, except graft them 1+ months later. I had 7/8 take two years ago and about half last year. Of course, I lost several of those when attempting to transplant the host stock.
Persimmons seem one of the most picky to transplant. I lost more when trying to transplant them in October. Evidently, they need to be completely dormant to transplant. I grafted to more suckers this year and will wait longer to transplant them. I’m not sure if December or April would be better…I’m leaning toward early April, so that I don’t add to any temperature sensitivity…
I did most (~15 grafts) of my persimmons yesterday. I saved a bit of wood for a 2nd round, but hopefully I waited long enough. Soon, the wood starts to dry out. I noticed that when grafting grapes today (another 15-16 grafts). I tossed away half the wood, as it looked either dark or dry. And it wasn’t even sent to me- I had collected it from my own vines. Two of the ones which looked to still be OK were ones I covered in parafilm last month, but never got around to grafting. Of course, since I had separated them from their bundles, I won’t know what they are, until (if) they bear fruit. But, maybe next year I should cut up and parafilm everything when I first harvest the wood.
1 Like
I counted my late grafts.
Apricots 3 out 6 took which will be 50%.
Peaches 1 out of 2 took which will be also 50%.
They were grafted in the middle of April when we had a window with nice temperatures of 70s and reaching 80s. But they were hit by the two waves of 90s in May though.
Zero persimmon grafts took. I grafted them on the newly transplanted trees and I had to cut off long taproots. The trees are visibly struggling to survive, I hope they do.
3 out of 5 mulberry grafts took. I grafted them too early on the dormant rootstock. They started to grow just recently. One of them is a double graft of Kokuso mulberry grafted on top of Gerardi grafted on top of a rootstock, which is cool 
1 Like
Matt, judging by the bulges seen on the lower part of the tape-wrapping in the photo, Are they buds on the root stock?
No. I meticulously scraped off all of the understock’s buds and bud tissue with my pocketknife just prior to grafting.
I’ve noticed a couple of things with our pear and apple grafts and wondered what more experienced grafters might have to say.
- In a number of instances, we ended up trying to graft two stocks with cuttings from one stick of scion wood. In almost all of these cases, I’ve noticed that one of the two grafts has been noticeably slower to take. In fact, with our apples, I believe that almost all of our “not yets” are in this category. (We had other self-inflicted difficulties with pears, as I discussed in an earlier post.)
For the most part, I believe that the slower grafts in this group were made with lower, thicker wood, and that the quicker grafts were made with higher, thinner wood. Would that make sense? We were doing clefts grafts. (If this does make sense, then I suspect we may have disadvantaged ourselves in some other cases by using lower wood for single grafts.)
-
I’ve seen discussions of angling the scion to ensure cambium contact. We experimented with this on a couple of grafts, but from what I’ve seen, I think we did much better on the grafts that emphasized best possible alignment without angling. In fact, the two grafts where I can see a distinct angle have been among the strugglers and stragglers. (And in both cases, both the scion and the rootstock appear to have been viable.) Based on our admittedly very limited experience, I wonder if this technique is something that will be likely to work better for people who have enough experience to have developed a good “touch”, and less well in the hands of novices like us, who may be likely to overdo the angling.
-
I think we got our first scion wood toward the end of January and our last in March. I stored it all in our household refrigerator in triple-ziplocks with dampened paper towel. While I did manage to keep the fridge clear of apples and pears during this time, the scion wood was cohabiting with other fruits (berries) and vegetables during this time, which was potentially not a good thing. Fortunately, however, the triple-seal seems to have held up, because almost all of our scion wood seems to have been viable when grafted. (Which is not to say that we haven’t come up with other creative ways of preventing or delaying good takes…) So, while our storage situation was certainly not optimal, it doesn’t seem to have been much of a problem in practice.
Finally, just wanted to share a little about my experience with different scion and rootstock sources. As I mentioned in my earlier post, we ended up ordering scions from a bunch of different places, including Hocking Hills, Maple Valley, Singing Tree, Fedco, and Northwest Cider Supply, together with rootstock from Grandpa’s. I had a really good experience with pretty much everyone I dealt with, but there were a couple I wanted to mention in particular. Grandpa’s made a prompt change in our rootstock order, no questions asked, even though it resulted in them sending us more rootstocks for less money, and their stocks seem to have defiantly resisted my attempts to sabotage them (so far). Derek at Hocking Hills has just an amazing treasury of apple trees, he was extremely friendly and helpful in our correspondence, and he even went to the trouble of picking out a bonus scion that was a really great complement to the rest of our order. As @clarkinks will no doubt tell you, Richard Fahey at Singing Tree has a particularly nice collection of pear scions, and from my correspondence with him, he seems to be someone who really has his heart in his work. Finally, as a former Wisconsinite, I was happy to be able to obtain some scion wood from Maple Valley. It seems like they were going through a transition this year, but their scion wood operation seems to be running smoothly, and the scions we got from them have been some of our most successful.
4 Likes
Bob,
Last year, I grafted persimmon about this time. This year, it’s about two weeks ago. From what you suggested, I’d have grafted next week. That’s so different from other fruit trees when the suggestions seem to be when sap flow and buds start to emerge.
I’m done with grafting persimmon for this year. I’ll try your method next year.
Obvious successful grafts: Keepsake, Redfield (looks like there will be a spot where it can live in this yard, after all,) and Goldrush.
Two fat scions remain in the 'fridge of Connell Red which I could graft yet. Anyone with experience growing it? Upright in habit or not?