It’s been about that long for mine too. Nothing popping yet. It’s been unusually cold here too.
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My apple, pear and plum grafts this year have taken a month to show signs of life. Usually, I can see it in two weeks. I think unusual cold has a lot to do with their slow development.
Tomorrow will be time for persimmon, jujube and pawpaw grafting. It IS odd to graft these fruit trees before I graft peaches. Usually, they are my late grafting trees.
Peach weather won’t arrive until next Thurs when it is a beginning of a 4 day stretch of high 60’s and low 70’s. Such peach weather finally will show up.
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Is that on a “Frankentree”?
bb
I planted it last year but it’s on its way becoming a Frankentree.
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This is what your post reminded me of.bb
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Citrus is bringing my average down quite quickly. It seems the success rate is based on the rootstock+scion combination. Trovita grafted on Meyer lemon is nearly 100% successful (7/7 alive) while with Nordmann seedless kumquat on the same tree, 6/7 dried out so far.
Chip bud - Trovita on Meyer lemon
T-bud same combo
T-bud Kumquat on lemon - dried up 
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I finished planting out my Apple and Pear grafts today. Most everything is showing signs of budding out if it isn’t actually already leafing out. I’m finding A LOT of the scion I got from Geneva has fruit buds that are ready to blossom. I’ve also noticed that the Crab and Crab-cross varieties are often the ones that have blooms on the grafts.
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Am caring for a nascent heritage orchard - 12 for 15 successes. Pumpkin Sweet had blossom buds on all four buds that opened. I’ve pinched all but one of the blossoms as they separated from each other. Am curious to see its flower, having never been close to Pumpkin Sweet before. Since the apple bloom is done for my region, there is no fear it will set a fruit.
Gold Rush & Connell just finished their bloom a couple days ago, the last of the bunch.
IF the mystery graft that took last year proves to be Orleans (came loose from the tag & is growing steadily, if not vigorously), it will be good to have both of them to supply pollen for it - & each other, since Orleans is a triploid & likely to be as late or later in bloom time.
It’s fun to have a bit of mystery, as compared to uncertainty, in grafting & growing apples that I hope can live & flourish here.
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@ZombieFruit was kind enough to gift me this extra Manchurian apricot rootstock. Since it was a twin trunk, I put Tomcot on one side and Ilona on the other - 3 scions each. All the scions took and are growing strong. They are busting out of their wrappings already and the callousing looks very good. So the question is what to do next. I don’t want to prune the “extra” growth all off since it is probably feeding the entire tree and I don’t want to slow it down. So my instinct is to pinch the growing tips of everything except one shoot on each trunk to develop the primary leader for each side and put a stake on each side to support that growth and make sure no wind or bird snaps it. Then I would trim away everything but the main leaders during dormant pruning. Is that a good plan? Most of my grafting has been adding a variety to a branch or bench grafting, so I’m a bit perplexed by all these shoots.
Too many shoots!
Callousing busting through the Temflex and parafilm.
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Congratulations on your success - I’m very jealous! Apricots and I don’t seem to work together very well at all, more’s the pity.
Given the caveat that I don’t know what I’m doing I’d say you have the right idea. Particularly, you want to leave the scions in place to encourage callousing, but you don’t want them to fight with each other too much. So pick your favorite and keep the others under control.
But I think there might be an eventual problem with the “V” crotch at soil level there. I would want to be sure that the trunk going off to the right never has to carry too great a load, and would in fact even consider taking it off completely (not what you wanted to hear, I know!)
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Thanks Mark. Even if you claim not to know what you’re doing, if we add your lack of knowledge to mine, it has to be twice as good, right? Lol. But I do think it seems to make sense at least until someone tells me otherwise.
I was both pleased and a bit stunned to see all scions growing, but I think a few things contributed to my success, including the fact that I picked the scions up pretty late in the season and it was cut and went right into my fridge the same day without a trip through the mail, etc. I haven’t done a lot of grafting with stone fruit, but when I have the quality and freshness of the wood seems to make a big difference in results. I also got lucky with the weather with a few days of solid warmth to get at least initial callousing going and keep the scions alive and then a longish stretch of cooler weather to keep everything from drying out or pushing too early… at least that is my theory of why all took.
I’m sure you are right and the twin trunk is probably not ideal longterm, particularly with the one side angled and a bit weaker, so I plan to keep an eye on that. I’m not too worried about fruit load, given I’ve never even gotten a single peach from my 2 peach trees due to all the squirrels, but I would definitely thin aggressively if I found squirrels were leaving them alone. If I’m lucky enough to get fruit, I’ll probably keep the thicker trunk and graft some of the other variety into it next year or the year after.
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I would say that I stepped out of my comfort zone this year on grafting but the truth is I really haven’t got a comfort zone in grafting!
. However I tried some chip bud grafting this year and decided I really liked doing it. Here are some of the results. All persimmon.
I’m optimistic!!
Thanks to @Barkslip for all the help!
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You did good, they look great!
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Impressive, Kathy.
A few years ago. I tried chip grafting and failed miserably. I did not like scares I created on the trunk of the trees. I have abandoned chip budding since.
I have had more success with T budding.
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I have a 2019 graft of Pound Sweet/Pumpkin Sweet…if yours doesn’t work out, might have scions in future.
I want to try T-budding sometime too but it doesn’t work with persimmons so I’ll have to figure out something else to try it on!
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BlueBerry: Pumpkin Sweet is the most vigorous graftling so far this season, thank you. Looks like all but two of the other WSU project varieties took. I can apply chip-buds from my own maidens this summer to fill one gap. The other? We’ll figure it out.
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I had Katy remove the tape too-early. I had forgotten the process. The chip should grow an inch or whatever and then the rootstock lopped off a 1/4" above the chip but leaving the tape on for a couple months to keep it more secured against wind & birds. Of course a stake is immediate.
I’ve only done a hundred chips or so and had forgotten the procedure. Katy back on track now.
Dax
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