my plum grafts both took! I only did two this year
South Dakota and Toka on Italian plum.
my apple grafts started to leaf and are stalled out. not sure if they’ll take. will wait longer.
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Parafilm stretches and breaks so the buds push there way through without help…
Looks like all 12 of my apple grafts took this year, except for 2. Both of those were of trees that bucks had rubbed and I was pretty sure had been killed. I cut scions nonetheless hoping to not lose the cultivars (they seemed green). One was an unknown cultivar from a late 1800’s or early 1900’s orchard. I have an uncle with a mature tree of it so I’ll cut scion from his tree this winter.
Semi-related, I appear to have had better luck rooting M111 cuttings this year than ever before. Since all of my apple grafting is interstem I cut the M111 very low, the root flare and down is all I need. Instead of throwing away the “trunk” portion I’ve tried rooting them over the past few years. First time, zero success. I just soaked 'em in some rooting hormone and stuck 'em in pots. Since then I’ve scraped off a bit of the “bark” and soaked them for longer periods of time. In the past 3 or so years I’ve only had 2 to root and live. This year I very aggressively scraped off a lot of the bark and probably through the cambium in spots. Soaked 'em a few hours, potted and put 'em in the shade. I tried 7 of them this year and all 7 have put on a lot of growth, more so than I’d have expected purely from stored energy. We’ll see if they keep going but I’m so far hopeful.
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I’ve had a couple of project trees this year. One was a jujube rootstock tree that produced mostly nonviable seeds. Soooo…. I grafted it over and put about 30 grafts on it of about 12 different cultivars.
Good strong growth on most… about 5 grafts did not take.
The second project involves a Eureka persimmon that was badly damaged by the super cold we had in 2021. About half of it came back true to the Eureka cultivar and the other half sprouted from the rootstock. I cut back the American branches and grafted Eureka scion to them. Some of these were large healthy suckers and if the rest of my Eureka tree trunk fails then I will have a good start on rebuilding the tree again.
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I made a mess of it today. I have an order from Fruitwood Nursery. The plum I most want to get established is Jefferson, which also happens to be my family name. All of the variety labels from Fruitwood have the name of the cultivar and “Jefferson” on them.
Today the weather is in the mid-seventies and I had a free hour in the afternoon, so I grabbed all of my scions, my grafting bag, and set out to catch up on some of them. As it turns out, my daughter also had a friend show up for a play date, and was making a whole bunch of noise having a great time.
So what did I do? I put “Jefferson” in two prime spots. One rootstock that had a duplicate variety from last year after Yakima took in several places, and one on my Frost Peach, as a backup, reservoir and maybe a chance to fruit faster (I’ve never actually eaten Jefferson).
Several grafts in, I realized that neither of the Jefferson scions I grafted were Jefferson. I had to forensically figure out which I had actually used and write over my temporary marker labels:
This one was actually Imperial Epineuse from Fruitwood. I also had (not) Imperial Epineuse from when Raintree sold it mislabeled, but alas I failed to store the scions well enough and they were too dried out to resuscitate Memorial Day weekend.
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Cherry pit sprouts. Grafted over w pluerry and Nadia plum. Sweet treat and candy heart. The 3 lobed one I hit with the mower a month ago. Decided to try all 3 on that one. I am hoping my understanding of the Nadia plum is that the Prunus cerasifera influence in it will allow compatibility. Oh well if I am wrong. It was fun playing with these cherry pit lawnmower specials.
And the one to the right is a baby madrona tree sprout we found on a hike. All at about day 10. Kept in the full shade north side of the house. Until they callous and recover. This has worked great for me cloning cuttings of so many things. I am hoping I can get away without the buddy tape just like cuttings without humidity domes. Works every time in the pnw shade.
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Nadia,Sweet Treat and Candy Heart grafted onto Cherry.That will be very cool,if it works.
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Not sure what the plum it is, but I decided to try grafting Hoyt Montrose apricot to my neighbors plum that is sticking over our fence, and to a seedling that volunteered in my yard. Also grafted some peaches later and they don’t appear to have taken yet.
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I am now a proponent of bark grafting over side grafting on apricots. Much easier for me, seems to work just as well, and easier to not get a wonky branch angle.
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Did some additional english to black walnut grafts over the weekend. My original scions were collected while completely dormant, and sat in the fridge for almost 2 months before being grafted. I checked a couple of my original grafts after 20 days and there was no sign of healing on the grafted material. I collected some fresh and active scions and did several more chip/bud, whip and tongue, and bark grafts. Hopefully I will see some success with these.
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Out of two W&T and three mulberry T-buds I did this spring, this Shelli bud is the only one that has started growing, though a couple others still look alive at least:
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Almost 3 weeks after bud swell. Gerardi Dwarf was slow to start, but has taken off nicely since.
Corral
Illinois Everbearing seems to be slightly ahead of the others
Stearns
Lwson Dawson
Silk Hope - looks like one of two took.
Multi-graft - Silk Hope and Stearns I think.
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First time to graft walnut, but thanks to Darrel, @Fusion_power, I got good quality scions and some logical tips on how to do it. The only thing I missed was the tricky spring weather swings. Darrel had explained that I need to wait until several inches of new growth starts and nighttime temps are above 70F. So on May 12th those conditions had occurred. Little did I know what was to come! After I used all my scions the chill set in about two weeks ago. Even now it appears that nighttime temps are stuck in the 50’s for at least another week. My graft do get good AM sun exposure so hopefully they will continue to show progress.
Dennis
Kent wa
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Hi Winn,
My mulberry grafts are just beginning to grow a bit, several were too shaded but I managed to arrange surrounding foliage so they get more direct sun, and that seemed to help during this cold spell.
Dennis
Kent, wa
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Good looking grafts Dennis! Mine are also showing some signs of life despite the dip in temps. Over the last couple of weeks they seem to have calloused nicely. Thank you @Fusion_power for the scions, they are clearly of great quality.
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I see you both took to heart what I posted about using the large terminal buds. Looks like temperatures are not standing in the way of successful grafts.
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My first ever year of grafting seems to have been a decent success - around 34 out of 43 attempted grafts. appear to have taken! I want to thank profusely all the folks here who spend so much time and effort trying to help newbs like me get things right, by sharing their knowledge. I also wanted to thank the many people with whom I exchanged scion this year - couldn’t have done it without you either!
Personally I find pictures of the actual graft point, and callus, quite interesting, and I’ve compiled a couple close-up graft point compilation pictures of many of my grafts , in case anyone else finds it interesting. It’s a really mixed bag, but all these grafts appear to have been successful, with the scions actually pushing new growth, not just budding a few leaves.
My first several grafts were quince to a Kieffer pear, where I intend to ‘hold’ them till I have a proper quince established to move them to. The kieffer was about the first thing to start pushing buds, and I didn’t have the confidence yet to attempt whip and tongue grafts, so those were simple splice grafts. Still had mostly takes (if ugly). Everything else I did W&T (except one apple cleft attempt which didn’t take). I didn’t have a proper grafting knife, so I’m blaming some of it on that, though I think I also tended to overdo the tongues maybe, but if it works, it works.
Out of the 43 attempts, there were only 20 varieties - I did many duplicates since I wasn’t sure how successful I might be. Apples and pears went great, as folks said. I had my worst luck with the few pawpaws I attempted (only 1 success of 4 attempts), and sweet cherries. (2 successes of 5, though two of the failures the scion was barely green at all, but I tried anyway).
I grafted several ‘spare’ plum scions to wild plums growing on the borders of our acreage, and had very good results there too, so I’m planning on attempting a lot more of that. I also had 3/3 success grafting apricots long after the host tree had leafed out and started pushing new shoots - wasn’t sure if that would be too late.
Anyway, thanks again to all you folks who are so generous with your time and knowledge, it means a lot, and helps SO much!
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I grafted these apple scions on 4/25. All my other grafts around that time have grown significantly, so I’m thinking maybe these started to leaf out and died. But maybe there are a couple buds that could still go. Thoughts?
I did these as cleft grafts but I’m wondering if I should start over and bark graft. I have better luck with bark grafts generally, but this is Geneva 969 rootstock so I did clefts since I’ve red about brittle/weak graft unions on genevas.
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