I am just now starting to see results on all my grafts. Boy did they take forever to get going! I grafted the plums a month ago and the peaches three weeks ago. It looks like they didn’t stall and die (yet), that has happened in the past when long cold stretches hit.
My biggest observation for this year is on scion quality for peaches. A couple peach scions had some brown bits on the inside, none of those appear to have worked so far. But I did a couple backup chip buds on them and the chip buds at least seem to be attached; I am going to force them now to see if they will go.
So, lesson #1 is if peach scions look iffy, do chip buds instead of using a scion stick. I think this may be because there is the same amount of contact area with a chip bud, bud less “weak wood” to be supported by that contact point.
Some of the scions I almost hydrated in water because I knew they were weak; I think that was a mistake not doing so and in general for peaches lesson #2 is it is always a good idea to nip a bit off the bottoms and put the bottoms in water for a day or so. I have some wood left which I am now hydrating for a second try once it warms up a bit.
And of course, lesson #3 is to get as good as possible wood of peaches. All of the unhappy ones had to sit out for a period, e.g. were from a swap meet.
The really fat and really thin wood also didn’t do as well, so lesson #4 seems to be that the perfect thickness for peaches is a standard pencil or maybe 30% bigger or smaller.
In general, this year I paid close attention to the quality of the scions on my peaches (after last year where I noticed a correlation); and, the ones that I thought were really outstanding indeed worked consistently well. Along with the issue of scion quality is stock quality, I think all my stocks were pretty good this year but that has been a problem some years. Peaches are basically unforgiving on everything!
