It seems that flower buds can be useful on graft wood.
My sister (not a grafter) gave me a bag of graft wood she collected while pruning her apple tree in late winter. Unfortunately, it was already near bud break. I made several attempts with different cool places, but grafts would leaf out and die before the graft unions could form. I finally had success with my last piece of graft wood. The two vegetative buds leafed out and died, but there were two flower buds that bloomed. Those buds didn’t leaf out until after the flowers were finished, which was a long enough delay to allow the graft union to form.
Those that I don’t plant in fall, I dig a big trench and plant the whole pot in the ground over winter… In spring pull the pot out of the ground and I either decide to plant some in the orchard or will keep them through spring and summer and plant in fall. I sale some of them as well or give them away. I do separate them out of the big pots either in fall or early spring depending on my needs.
My trench is as deep as the pots or maybe a little deeper. I do get some of the backfill soil in the pots but I try to makes sure I stay below the graft joint, if that makes sense…It is very little I get in there but it happens . My trench is already dug as I will just reuse the one from last year … however, I would dig before the ground freezes. I wait till fall when it starts to really cool down and before it freezes. That way I can get them in the trench while the dirt is not frozen. My goal is not to let the grafts in the pots freeze and having them in the ground protects them this way.
I know some people will put bales of straw or hay around them and over winter in pots and some will bring them in garage or basement where it is cool and won’t freeze.
What types of fruit are they? I don’t bother burying or protecting apples, pear, peaches, or apricot. They do just fine in zone six on their own. I do protect potted persimmons and some pluots.
Sink them and give it a shot you know? You aren’t going to lose 40. Everybody should expect casualties from vermin, weather, and simply weakish plants or roots.
You’ll feel better than sitting them on the ground outside… I’ll tell you that much.
You want to try your garage. I’ve done that, too. Nature always does the best job though.
I checked my Sweet Lavender mulberry graft today and it has almost 4-1/2 feet of growth. I know nothing about this variety, but it would be great if they ripen before SWD or escape it because of the light color. My white alpine strawberries seem to escape SWD but Anne yellow raspberries don’t.
@fruitnut Is it possible for you to post again pictures of the Konrad graft variant ? Photobucket made the pictures unavailable in this thread and in the GW ones ? Thanks
Any of those broken photobucket pictures you can still see if you click on the link (and put up with all the ads that then pop up). I manually fixed the one above by sticking in a copy of the picture.