I took everyone’s advice about using my growing peach stock - and grafting it over with apricots. It was an apricot that had the grafted top broken off in a storm. Now it has several different varieties of apricots on it . . . which are taking off. Hope they are not just stored energy ‘scion’ growth. But . . . looks that way. Just gonna have to wait to see.
Should I remove most of the remaining ‘peach growth’? Don’t I need ‘nurse branches’? I left quite a few ‘just in case’ branches. But, quite frankly . . . if most of this year’s grafts bite the dust - I’ll just pull the whole thing out and order a little apricot tree.
Apricot can be grown successfully on rootstocks of other species within the Prunus genus, including peach, plum, and various interspecific Prunus hybrids. Specifically, apricot has been successfully grown on several rootstocks including Nemaguard, Nemared, Lovell, Marianna 2624 (plum), and Citation (hybrid) (Hartmann et al. 2011). Nemaguard (seedling peach rootstock) and Citation are the most common rootstocks used in commercial apricot production in California.
I’d probably remove the Peach leaves,below the Apricot grafts.A nurse branch might be like say,in the first photo,if there was a branch,instead of a stub,near that plastic tag.
The energy now needs to go to the grafts.
When should I clip off the old rootstock once the chip starts sprouting? Does it need to grow out more or do I want to get all the dormant energy into this one sprout?
Reference was personal experience in the 1980’s. Plumcot grew on peach and had fruit then graft failed. I found reference about it but that was 40 years ago.
Plant propagation principles and practices says that some members of the stone fruit family are incompatible with others. It is often variety specific meaning one particular variety of apricot may not be accepted on Plum but will be accepted on Peach or vice versa.
Thanks, Brady. I thought that maybe I’d left too much ‘leaf’ on. I was afraid to take off all the other branches - because I am not expecting many of my grafts to take . . . and was leaving some branches for second tries.
The apple grafts made 3 weeks ago now have reached 21 out of 26 that have opened buds. A few have new growth an inch long. Most are at the bud expanding stage. The grafts can still fail so it is not out of the woods yet. Of the remaining grafts that have not opened buds, only 3 may not be viable. Time will tell!
Pear grafts are rapidly opening buds and expanding. The Ayers graft has nearly 5 inches of growth. I will check the graft in the next few days and may loosen the grafting tape.
Today I used all my remaining Adara scions to convert some of my Sweet cherry to sour cherry since the crows and squirrel steal most of the larger sweet fruits. Since the sun is directly on most grafts and temps are headed up here, I shaded all grafts with aluminum foil and will keep them on for several weeks during callousing.
I hope to find someone willing to provide Montmorency scions next winter to begin grafting onto my Adara spurs.
Dennis
Kent, wa
I have a magic secret that works with most birds that like cherries. You know those red onion bags? Get 3 or 4 of them and hang them in the cherry trees a month or so before the cherries start to ripen. It won’t work if the birds are already familiar with eating cherries.
