Ive up potted it from the nursery pot into a 25 gallon fabric pot. I’ll try and do some grafts later this week!
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If you’re worried about messing up the tree, you basically can’t. But maybe skip the bark or cleft grafts where you chop off the tree at the stump until you’ve had more practice if you’re scared of the tree looking funny this year. Do grafts on the branches. Those fill out again quickly if you don’t get takes.
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I know callery seedlings show some genetic diversity, but I bet these will do fine. The first stock I grafted to above was just a dormant callery seedling I dug up and potted right before grafting to it; it didn’t even have much root. But the scion took very quickly and has grown about 8" so far. I think I’m seeing some takes on some OH X F stocks right now, but none of them are happening as quickly as was the case with this rando callery. The great and terrible thing about callery is it really wants to live. I guess that quality is what makes it both a horrible invasive and good pear rootstock!
I had a stick of Tennosui that was already waking up, and a Pai Li from the same source that obviously wasn’t fully dormant because it started pushing buds within less than a week of grafting. My fridge is cold and my source was in a cold winter region, so I figure they must have gotten heated up during shipping (if I remember aright, these took some sort of postal detour and were on the road a few extra days) to the point they were just about to break dormancy, and being in my fridge just slowed the inevitable. It looks like at least one of each may take, though.
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@Barkslip … that is why I cut the top off my mulberry early that morning in that first picture… and confirmed the bark was slipping nicely.
It was also to see if it was bleeding excessively too… it did bleed some immediatly but not excessively… and after work around 5 pm there were no signs of bleeding.
I thought if it was still oozing sap after work… I would wait until the next day and check again… but it was not so I went ahead with the bark grafts.
When I made the final low cut on it it did ooze a bit more but I wiped that off and it did not sap any more while I worked those grafts.
I can see some bud swell happening now…
Still hopeful here in TN.
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I had to use some of my plum scions that were also trying to open buds in the refrigerator first week of March. Varieties were Burgandy, Beauty, Friar and Nadia, it’s still too cool to get much growth but most look good so far. We had two weeks of mid 50F weather that helped
Dennis
Kent, wa
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Is that elmers glue or white mulberry sap?
You say you grafted the same day it was bleeding that morning?
and you say it was bleeding ‘a bit’ while you grafted that evening after 5 pm?
That’s a recipe for disaster.
That scion can grow all it wants and bud all it want from energy alone in itself.
You don’t mention the date you grafted. Is that to be assumed the same date as the post, 3-days ago?
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Hey guys. I have a question. On the day that I did my first rounds of grafts I realized that I had no grafting/wax tape on hand. I thought all winter I had plenty, but I was wrong. There are no stores that sell it around here so I have to order it, which can take a lot of time when I’m too cheap to pay overnight or even 2 day shipping. The weather and the state of my trees was such that i really needed to do my grafts…so I did.
I’ve learned the hard way that leaving scionwood completely uncovered can often lead to too much water loss and death. So I improvised and wrapped my grafts in saran wrap…?.? Anyone ever do this? I’m pretty sure that the new growth won’t be able to puncture the plastic wrap- in many cases is is several layers thick. So my plan is to wait until the graft union has formed a bit of a connection and the new graft is trying to send out leaves, and then I’ll cut the plastic wrap off (but not the tape at the graft union). Is this a workable plan? Anyone ever had success doing this? Am I wrong…ie would I have been better off just leaving the scionwood unprotected. the good news is most of my scionwood was end pieces/tips which I find dont dry out as much as scionwood that has the top end cut off.
Any thoughts/information would be appreciated. I’ve never wrapped my grafts in plastic wrap and not sure i’ve seen it done, so I’m quite worried. I have now ordered some wax tape and will still have time to use it on my later grafts (mulberry, persimmon, apple, etc) but these stone fruit grafts just had to be done.
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As someone recently said, more than one method of skinning cats.
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This mid-January graft of Stewart (avocado) on one of my greenhouse multi-graft trees has started pushing some nice growth:
It appears through the buddy tape that the graft union is filling with callus nicely as well:
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Should be fine lots of cheap grafting tape is just that saran wrap…just cut it with scissors to let out buds as they leaf out then remove when they’re growing good
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In some of his videos @SkillCult uses a lot of common household items. I think if you know what you are doing and follow up to make sure the buds can break through like @Carlin said, you should be fine.
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that’s my opinion of buddy tape
costs 10X more than parafilm and doesn’t allow the buds thru. parafilm does and parafilm naturally falls off the same year.
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5 or six years ago I cut strips from a bag I bought garden soil in. Had some ‘girdling’, but no failures I’d blame on the choice of plastic.
I got my current stuff from A.M. Leonard Co.
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Speaking of which, I secured my unions with a tight wrapping of twisted (for extra strength) plastic grafting tape—just some el-cheapo, generic stuff that I assume is not biodegradable. When should I remove that? I was thinking maybe somewhere around the 7- or 8-week mark?
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I don’t have a ‘formula’ to go by…just instinct or trial and error.
But, I’ve tried to notice the vigor of the successful grafts…and the ones that don’t put out much in the year grafted I can procrastinate…
but vigorous scions probably 10 to 13.
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I use the same general idea … no matter the grafting tape.
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Thanks! Like many beginners, I’m a little overeager. “Patience” and “observation” will be my watchwords. 
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Last month I sorted and culled a half dozen that didn’t come through the cold months for some reason or another…and ‘found’ 3 or 4 that still had the tape on them from last spring.
Not hurt at all, …they hadn’t done much though.
This year, the first ones I’ll be looking to see if my grafting tape is binding…
are grafts of pears onto CALLERY…they can double in size fast!
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Why do you say buddy tape doesn’t let the buds through? That hasn’t been my experience.
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I did notice that when I did some grafts when it was cold and I couldn’t stretch the buddy tape as much as normal without tearing it, the buds took awhile to push through since the tape just kept stretching as they expanded. But they did push through eventually.
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