I imagined this was a years long taking process. But am really curious, if u grafted those interstems in same year as the variety above it.
I have some acces to casifera so i could topwork that first with plum and next year graft those allready combined on my sweet chery?
Or would u graft the casifera to sweet cherry now and next year topwork it with plum?
Or going back to question is it possible to double graft the interstem and plum in one go on the sweet cherry?
Thanks For sharing your knowledge!
I’m going to be honest and state that my first few years were mostly failed attempts until I understood I needed to use interstems. I will assume you have access to both dormant and greenwood scions of both p cerasifera and your plum varieties in the below options:
First Question: But I am really curious, if u grafted those interstems in same year as the variety above it.
In some cases yes, in Spring with both dormant scions, I grafted the dormant plums to the dormant interstems, sealed them with parafilm and placed them with the unsealed but end of interstem in a shallow water pan that was placed in a dark warm room for 2 weeks of callousing. This was two weeks prior to ambient temps being ideal to then graft them onto my cherry trees. (This method works well if your plum buds are not already swelling, but not so great if your plum scions are already waking up, also when you graft outdoors, you cannot disturb the calloused joint of the pre-graft!)
Another option used was to graft interstems in Springtime to the cherry tree. In this case you need a longer interstem with at least one bud towards the end that you allow to grow so that the interstem takes! With the longer than 6” interstem, you now can do summer grafting with green plum scions onto the interstems. With the longer interstem, you can place plum chip buds about 6” from the graft union, you can preserve the the interstem shoot for grafting next year as it develops, Again be very careful to not disturb the calloused interstem graft union. If you wait until next spring the interstem is stronger attached and much easier to graft without disturbing that graft union.
“I have some acces to casifera so i could topwork that first with plum and next year graft those allready combined on my sweet chery?”
Yes this is also an option, you might need to use the z graft method or a side graft if scion sizes don’t match well, but that’s doable.
“Or would u graft the casifera to sweet cherry now and next year topwork it with plum?”
This is the safest way to make sure you have a graftable base if you have only a few scarce plum scions,
“Or going back to question is it possible to double graft the interstem and plum in one go on the sweet cherry?”
Yes, you can pre graft and dark callous as described above, or just do both on the same day once you start outdoors!
Hope this helps
Dennis
Kent, Wa
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Yes we are on weather underground. That’s one reason I went with it. We’ve had ours for about a year and it does not disappoint.
Mmm this is great information! Thanks a lot!