I wait.
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Well as I wait for pushing blooms to be followed by vegetative growth, I at least have 5 rootstocks who’s grafted trees never went dormant from late planting and growth.
Tomorrow I’ll remove the old grafts and put on plum and pluot scion.
I’m excitedly anxious.
I’ll save some scion in case they don’t take. Perhaps I’ll get a second chance.
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Grafting 30 or so callery pear roots in the morning. They are all starting to leaf out already
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What nurseries would you recommend for scions? I saw the nursery page and it’s super detailed with a LOT of nursery links. Do folks have a few top ones they would recommend? Maybe I need to start a separate thread on this for 2024 
with a poll. Hmmm…
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This looks lovely! Nice job!
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There’s a thread for scionwood too:
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Thank you! Will read through that. I was trying to think through what the best way would be to get community feedback on the top few places. Maybe we need that by fruit type. For example, it looks like a bunch of folks above have had a sub-par shipping experience with Burnt Ridge based on the thread above.
As an aside - I continue to be amazed and excited by this forum. So many people with so much passion and experience who are very open about sharing their learnings. It’s like a utopia for a gardening/fruit tree nut.
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I start as soon as the ambient temps daily highs reach these optimums and you are not expecting nighttime temps back near freezing because that’s when the callousing is completed the fastest! If you start then, the average daily highs will be climbing during the several weeks of optimum springtime grafting. The faster your grafts heal as your rootstocks are pushing growth, the more likely you get a take!
Apricots/Cherries – 20 deg C. ( 68F)
Plums – 16 deg C. ( 60.8 F)
Dennis
Kent, Wa
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First two grafts done. Dapple Dandy and Luisa onto Rootpac-R.
One has a nurse branch on the rootstock I kept, but I headed that branch to a few leaves.
Not very confident on my grafts as the caliper was rather large and my cuts weren’t easily made even.
We’ll see in 2-3 weeks.
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Who said grafting stone fruit is difficult? This is a cleft graft on top and four chip buds below. All are pushing growth.
Or how about this. New growth and bloom in 15 days.
Maybe I’ll need to thin?
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Good work in your perfectly controlled greenhouse!
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Apparently 90F for a high isn’t too hot to graft stone fruit. About 52F at night. Somewhere on this site it says ~70 is ideal. I guess my GH averages 70 right now.
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based on results posted here there seems to be a wide range of temperatures where graft success is possible in addition to the ideal temperature. I grafted an apple in April and it took 60 days before it showed green. It saw a wide range of temperatures that where higher than ideal before it was successful.
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Exactly the same thing happened to me last year with several early apple grafts. I figured for sure they had failed and almost cut them off. I was completely shocked when I was actually rewarded for my patience when they finally sprung to life. I also had a pear graft that started growing, then we heat a hot spell and it shriveled and died. Again, I was ready to cut the seemingly dead graft off, when a bud down at the base sprung to life. It definitely doesn’t pay to be too impatient when it comes to grafting.
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I have a few citrus grafts in my greenhouse that are more than a year since grafting and still haven’t budded out despite staying green. I keep pinching off rootstock buds, so it’s just a question of whether the roots give up the ghost before the scion decides to grow.
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My apple grafts in the GH are pushing buds at 14 days. I did one outside. That will take a lot longer because even the rootstock won’t break bud for another month.
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Looks awesome!
For new grafts that set flowers/fruit - do you recommend keeping the fruit or cutting it off in the first year? I’d love to keep a few so I can taste the variety - who knows if they will actually survive and ripen but I’d love to try.
Not that I have this problem yet - but I hope to since I have plans for a bunch of grafting in these next few weeks. So fingers crossed I am faced with this “problem”.
Thanks!
I think you have a good observation! On 2/4/24: I took a dead tree down unintentionally damaging several plums trees. The weather was in the 50s and has been cooling since, now highs around 42F. Fortunately my plums had not started bud break. So I tied up, sealed the wounds with grafting tape and splinted some limbs. One limb with a Spring satin graft broke off, so I had no other choice but to graft it onto another plum tree.
This morning I noticed that all my breaks are well along on the mend with buds opening as if the branch had not been broken, and the Spring Satin branch is now looking very healthy and opening buds about a week behind all other Spring satin buds that I grafted last year. Over the past four weeks we have not had many hours near the optimum of 60 F for plums, but there has been significant callousing happening!
Dennis
Kent, wa
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