Well if you use the ones with the poof (that is a flower), rub that flower off after grafting that bud and a leaf will take over. I think that wood will be ok for grafting.
The deer chomped a Canopus graft in the fall two years ago and left a small section just below the bud that took. I thought it was a goner. Amazingly, a dormant bud popped and grew this year, one I couldn’t see on the stick. If you have a couple inches and don’t even see a bud you’ll likely end up with a similar situation if things heal.
@TNHunter I have limited experience, but that said I agree with Blueberry. When people do big cut top grafts it is into much older wood. I could imagine the growth might be less vigorous if you are grafting onto older laterals. And I think that you might get a better growth response if you cut back the branch a bit before grafting. But I bet either way it will work. Timing when there are small leaves is what I understand too.
I’m going to do a bunch of grafts onto an established apple tree this year - and I’ve been curious if grafting will affect this year’s fruiting on that tree, if healing the unions and growing takes some energy out of it’s fruiting potential.
Today I’m going to redo all the grafts I did for my brother. I thought it’s good idea to use big wood. I was wrong, best with the tiny stick. And I also will add more Templex 2155 for all the grafts.
While I see no grafting success yet, but I think I learned quite a bit during this grafting process. I call that a win.
Does anyone have a few extra Citation rootstocks that I could buy off you? I will pay postage and everything, I just want to experiment with a peach someone gifted me. Thank you!
Flavor supreme grafted onto my satsuma plum. I had a three year old tree that died a few years back for unknown reasons. This one was whip and tongue. I also did two other cleft grafts as alternates.
Looks like I’ll be getting a few plums this year. Right on time this tree is about to go bonkers with blooms. Hopefully we do get too many more mornings in the 20’s.
I just grafted 15 more apple benchgrafts this afternoon. And a couple to potted rootstocks I never used last year. Makes about 30 so far…and I plan to graft pears and apples to ‘frankentrees’ on Sunday…until I get tired.
I suppose there’s no harm in putting it off…grafts in April do ok too. But for apples, pears, cherries, March here in southern KY is my preference.
And especially this year…things being 15 to 30 days ahead of ‘normal’.
I have Redfield and Niedz. apples that have bloom buds bigger than BB’s.
Both in ground and in containers. (I don’t do smart phones or I’d take you a picture).
I put the Templex on my Yali Grafts, they still have nice healthy buds, I hope that means the scions didn’t die. But who really knows here. I did do a very clumsy cleft grafting.
The only movement I see on any apples here is on rootstock. I had some extras potted up and growing from last year and several have small green leaves already. Larger trees aren’t even showing any bud movement yet best I can tell.
Because I’m less confident in my budding skills than cleft grafts, for now I’m mostly doing them as redundant/security buds just below cleft grafts of the same variety:
I try to put no more than one layer of parafilm tape over buds that i want to develop. They can easily push thru that.
I would not put that heavy rubber tape over buds i want to develop. I use it to really tighten and reinforce the graft union area… and may do 2 or 3 wraps of that to make it really strong and tight.
If there are buds in the graft union area that i want to develop i wrap them with parafilm… but leave a little gap in the heavy rubber tape for them to get thru.
Temflex should be used only to reinforce the graft union and not the whole scion. For the graft union, I first wrap it with parafilm/buddy tape and then use the temflex on top of it. Don’t use Temflex directly on the graft union as it may peel the bark when you cut it later.
In your area, the grafts should grow fast enough that you need to cut the Temflex manually after 2 months or so, depending on the growth. Otherwise, it will start to constrict the grafts.
