Sweet cherry grafts

The sweet cherry grafts are starting to take it looks like!

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I did some bench grafts this year and top worked some in ground 1 yr old root stock they have really just started to wake up over the last week or so. Some varieties more so than others. My success rate was pretty good with them.

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I’m glad to here that the success rate for you is good I’ve not historically had good luck with grafting them.

I will decide at the end of the summer if my success rate is good enough to keep grafting them!:slightly_smiling:

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Clark,

Those look good.

My cherry grafts (both sour and sweet) appear to work. Thanks to Antmary via Bob Purvis,who suggested that cherry grafting be done early. I did about 10 of them on April,10 (early for our weather this year) and they all look good, all cleft grafts.

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Mamuang,
I’ve tried them early in previous years here but did not have a lot of luck but this later time seems to be working very well here. It may be that location is the biggest factor. We also have had abnormally high amounts of rainfall due to el nino. That’s why I’m doing so much planting this year. Trying to get new trees established before the next drought. Bob and Antmary both are very knowledgeable like yourself so I suspect our grafting conditions are very different.

I agree, like anything else about gardening, location has a lot to do with it. Success in grafting also depends on many factors, not just timing.

Also, I am extremely impressed that you dug a large pond to help with pawpaw growing. That’s is DEDICATION.

You can dug a pond for my pawpaws anytime :grinning:

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Mamuang,
I brought in a bulldozer to do it. The ponds are about an acre each and I added fish to them as well. It was part of a bigger strategy to be 100% not reliant on the grocery stores. The pond produces fish and has water if I need it and I can grow water loving fruit plants like pawpaw, kiwi, and trifoliata oranges at the shore.

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I have heard that cat fish will eat mulberrys if the tree is close enough to drop the fruit in the water

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Sounds like I should get one planted there. I believe it Jason they eat everything! I may wade out and install another solar light in the pond to attract bugs to fall in the water to feed the fish. I pound a fence post in the ground 7-8 feet from shore and attach the light a foot or two above the water.

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That is a really good idea to help feed your fish. It seems like in ponds of that size keeping the fish full without adding commercial fish food is the limiting factor in the pounds of fish you can produce.

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Jason,
Mine eat so much they can’t eat anymore. They are stuffed all the time with hybrid bluegill. I built a good food web first by adding crawdads, fathead minnows, gold shiners and then after a year I added red ear and hybrid blue gill. Then I added bass and channel cat last. I gave the frog, snake, snail, minnow, crawdad etc population time to establish. The predator fish have never caught up with the feeder fish population.

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Sounds like a really nice pond to fish in, lol.

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The black crappie are a bonus but they don’t do great against the bass. Most years they lose because when the bluegill get away and get to big to eat the bass still eat frogs, crawdads etc but the crappie only eat bugs and minnows so they don’t always get enough to eat in the summer. The bass can eat a fish 3/4 their size and a crappie is limited to minnows. A 5 pound bass can easily eat a 2 pound bass or full grown bullfrog, bird whatever. I keep the crappie as a predator because if the bluegill population ever got to growing to much it would be hard to stop them. I have blue cat in there to but I’m dreading catching them because they are huge by now. They are hard on fishing poles when they get like that. I also want them to breed before I catch them all so there are submerged cream cans in the pond for that. Whatever part of the fish I don’t eat goes towards raising the next crop of tomatoes and corn.

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Some of the best pond fishing I have ever done was up your way. The ponds here are just to small.

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How long since you grafted? I’m about ten days on mine and they have swollen buds. I think mine would still have swelled even if they were not connected to the rootstock. Hard to tell whats from scion energy or from the graft. Hopefully mine start leafing out soon. Good luck, and what sweet cherry are showing?

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Johnny,
I grafted them 11 days ago. I don’t recall what the several varieties are since it’s more just for practice for me. I’ve never successfully done a sweet cherry only sour cherries. Sweet cherries are very hard to grow here. I grew a black tartarian 15 years ago for the first time. I tried for years before that, My temporary success was short lived and the top died back before it fruited. Sweet cherries will grow here if you grow them on a mound, if they have enough water and the list goes on. People do grow them but most lose them to canker within 3 years.

Like Mamuang, I saw AntMary’s post and grafted early (a few days before I started apples and pears), on 4/16. It’s been almost a month now and most look pretty good. This is the first time I’ve grafted cherries- I’ve done the other stonefruit before, so I figured cherries could be a bit tricky, but so far, so good.

Some sweet cherry grafts on a Newroot1 rootstock (left over after the Black Tartarian died):

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Bob, they definitely started to grow, good luck! My early grafted scions grew really big by now. I’ll make pictures tomorrow. I have 100% survival with sweet cherries. Even the cherry grafted on Nadia took, although it seems to grow somewhat slower.

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Bing and Stella on Vandalay, about 5 weeks old grafts.

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