Doing my first grafts ‘for keeps’ this week. Korean Giant pear; Harrison apple; Redhaven and Indian Free peaches; Tomcot, Orange Red, and Zard apricots. Did apricot on Sunday, apples and pears on Monday, peaches Tuesday. All rootstocks were in various stages of waking up. Too early to tell, but things look OK so far. Working from home has made it easy to obsess over monitor my grafts. I have one apricot bud swelling just enough to break through the Parafilm. Hopefully it’s not jumping the gun, but I have multiple grafts of that variety. Persimmons are next!
12 Likes
my franken mountain ash pear tree…grafted 3 asian pear scions (2 to mountain ash, one to pear up top) and 1 king apple scion (a local said his dad did this with success). Will report results to compatibility thread
5 Likes
Status of my first grafting season so far. All scions were kindly donated by @Girly, @fruitgrower, @Stan and CRFG-SCV. Additional thanks to @Stan for the grafting demo 
The unexpectedly high success rate is largely due to the historically dry and sunny weather in Feb. It was optimal for graft healing.
Lessons so far:
- Splicing tape really helps. It is really easy to wrap tightly and make it auto-stick rather than fiddling with a rubber band to tie a knot. Tight fit masks a lot of errors!
- All cleft grafts - useful in many different occasions
- I should have done the grafts lower than I did. I just didn’t have the confidence
- Should have taken care of the ants and did dormant spray before grafting. Most of my plum grafts are likely ruined by aphids
- Selecting scions from vegetative wood helps. Fruiting wood works as well, but with the former there is enough spacing between the buds to easily make the V cuts
14 Likes
That’s awesome! I have a quince rootstock that I plan to try this with, a franken-pome-fruit tree. I’m planning on doing apple, crabapple, quince, euro pear, asian pear, and medlar. I would imagine shipova, mountain ash, and hawthorn would work as well. Maybe loquat if I lived in a warmer climate.
2 Likes
Love the table.
Can you follow up with a column for what grafts endured to the end of the growing season? Would be interesting to see the long term viability.
I am doing my own trial with multi-grafting plums and so far all 13 or so grafts have leafed out but at various vigor.
I did go against the recommendation to graft when its warmer (I’m in 7a) and just did it as soon as the tree started pushing growth and a warm spell was available - so far it looks like its working out okay but well see. Especially since we got hit with a low of 25°F two days ago.
2 Likes
Yes, definitely and which ones ended up fruiting later. I really like your multi-graft plum tree! From what I read, grafting success rate is high for plums. So, your grafts should survive. @Stan showed me a demo of Dapple Supreme graft in Jan and he mentioned it is leafing out now. While we didn’t have snow here, there were many <28F nights since then.
1 Like
Thanks to our multiple personality disorder weather, I did not see any stretch of good grafting weather until tomorrow.
Getting knives ready.
10 Likes
Yes, I’ve been waiting for it to get back to 60s weather. It was even a little chilly today in my dining room (where my grafts are callusing).
Jay,
Tomorrow is the best day of the coming week. 5 of 7 days, it will rain ( part of the day, not all day). I feel for my fruit trees that are flowering and need pollinators like J. plums.
This could be new normal so you know what you get yourself into 
3 Likes
I’m pretty sure I’m mostly going to be feeding squirrels anyway!
3 Likes
Peach tree grafted apricot and peach scions some at bud swell, good weather window + most flower buds failed due to multiple frosts will see what sticks
shiro base tree with multiple european/some japanese added last year and this
5 Likes
added a few scions to my methley as well, grape trellis, and row of blueberries, haskaps, gooseberries, currants and rhubarb in background, sister inlaws (nextdoor) ancient cherry trees in background…will be blooming soon!
3 Likes
I did a chip bud graft on the trunk of my pear espalier. This wasn’t a planned graft. I used a bud from my Harrow Sweet that was breaking bud. Since the bud wasnt dormant, it dried out. When I noticed that I took the dried up bud off and took the tape off. It looks like the chip calloused to the trunk. But no bud anymore. Will this develop a new bud next year or is it a goner?
2 Likes
At the base of a bud, there are latent buds , un seen , but down in there, with luck , and encouragement they will show.
5 Likes
Did you do your peach grafting today? I still haven’t. It looks like we may not get any warmer weather than 50’s for a while. I’m wondering if I should just do it tomorrow.
@Susu,
No, too cold for peach grafting. I usually do not get good, steady temp until May. If you have temp in the 60 for a stretch i.e. 4 days or more, I’d say gonfor it.
I only grafted plums, pears and apples today. Nectarine, peaches, pawpaws, persimmons and jujubes will be later.
This year I probably will end up with 35-40 graftsl. My crazy grafting years were over.
6 Likes
35-40 grafts are still crazy! I think I’m grafting 7 varieties this year. I grafted peach first week of April last year. This year the weather has been so cool lately.
I have to keep remind myself that quantity is not quality.
I think I have a tendency to hoard
This year I started grafting almost 2 weeks later than previous years due to uncoopertive weather, too.
3 Likes
I grafted about 8 wild crabapples over today and one pear. Somewhere around 20 or 25 grafts. Pears will be next up. I have about 20 of those and then I should have a break before pawpaw and persimmon. This is the last year of my big push to get all the varieties in so I can enjoy them while still relatively young. It’s been about 4 years and about 65 trees.
4 Likes