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I’ve been top-working an established (probably mislabeled) “Prok” tree. Here’s part of this year’s installment. These are four sticks from H-118, bark-grafted to a branch. Two of the four sticks have broken bud. The other two seem to be swelling.
Last year’s Morris Burton grafts are in the background. This year I also added Nikita’s Gift and expanded JT-02, but those haven’t broken bud as yet.
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I’ve had bad luck with bareroot persimmon rootstock from Burnt Ridge. I think I’m 1 for 3. Probably my own fault, but if I get another I’ll probably go for something potted. Or try some root cuttings from my existing trees.
Looking good. Did you graft it the same youer you bought the rootstock?
I got 5 delivered around the first of April and potted them temporarily. Four started showing signs of life after 6 weeks, so I grafted them. One smaller stock was dead. Roots were massive.
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I do like rubber strips… get a nice even wrap like you saying to match up the scionwood to the rootstock tightly and can modify if needed, be4 wrapping whole thing with parafilm.
But sometimes on the very flexible/soft wood like pawpaw (esp thinner grafts) i felt like wrapping the rubber bands tight might break the rootstock. so I would do parafilm 1st (so the sticky tape doesn’t stick to the wood for eventual removal), then do the sticky tape tightly around it. Can’t line everything up as easily, since the tight wrapping of the tape happens after the parafilm and can’t see underneath it as easily, but didn’t seem to disjoint the connection that badly and having alot of success with the pawpaws it looks like.
Btw can you find 12-16" rubber strips anywhere? Sometimes, you have these thick scionwoods to graft, and you run out of 8" a bit too quick for my taste (pain to get try to that final knot in after 3 or so full wraps). So i’ll use 2 strips, or tie them together.
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I removed tape from about 20 pear grafts a few minutes ago. Most have grown 2 feet or a bit more since grafting in late March and April. I still have about a dozen more to remove tape and will do most later today.
I have one pear that has a very interesting growth habit. I do not know the name of this pear and just call it “Foley” which is the name of the man who lives in the house. It is a very productive pear that gets some fireblight strikes that never go far back on the tree. Fruit is medium size and ripens on the tree. What is interesting? It grows nearly prostrate! Most pears put up vertical shoots. I have to tie Foley to a stake to get it to grow vertical. The parent tree does not show this growth habit having several vertical limbs near the center of the tree.
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I haven’t seen anything longer than 8".
How are you tying them off? I use 5" bands and the only time I have any real trouble getting enough wraps and still having room to tie off is when I’m securing a graft larger than 3/4" diameter. Which would really be best suited to the 8" bands.
Kip Parker
Lawson Dawson
Love how mulberries open buds and “fruit appears” with the leaves and shoots.
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I’ve moved mulberry up to the easiest tree to graft of all time. I had a spare Gerardi scion and nowhere to use it so I pulled up a root from a mulberry seedling and stuck it on the root. It now has 2 inches of growth.
I will have 29 pear trees to move to permanent locations this winter of which 10 will be given away.
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I thought the same thing…at first. The two Gerardi grafts that looked good have both suffered delayed failures. Another on a larger stock also failed. I have two chip buds that I’m now attempting to push that seem to be alive, and I grafted several root cuttings with Gerardi that are in a callusing bin. The rootstock I use are seedlings that pop up in my yard, which seem to be mostly pure M. rubra. I wonder if rubra is not the best rootstock? Things that are hard to root are also often hard to graft, and the combination of hard to root scion on a hard to root stock may be the problem. I’m 1/4 so far with mulberry using cleft or W/T grafts. The only success was with Tehama, an alba cultivar.
Edit: both chip buds also failed, so I’m now 0/5 grafting Gerardi.
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Funny enough, I also have delayed failures on my mulberry grafts. Some fail after budding out, some seems to have the newly emerged buds eat by slugs. most notably is my silk hope which grew about 2 ft last summer, went dormant, leafed out and then died. I was very surprised to see it start declining.
I actually never took the buddy tape off until it started failing. Do you think this could have cause some kind of rot? Or failed callousing?
I am putting white sapote as my easiest grafting tree. 23/24 cleft grafts took, 1 chip bud failed 
. Here they are after a little more than 30 days.
My Gerardi graft has 2 branches about 15 inches long with each still showing active apical growth.
I hope I won’t see an issue later.
I’m always torn as to when to remove grafting tape.
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My grafts pushed several inches of growth, then stopped. A couple of weeks later, leaves wilted suddenly. A couple of weeks later, the other side did the same thing. After unwrapping, there was almost no callus at all. Things that are hard to root often don’t callus well either, so I’m thinking the rootstock is the problem. This was a smaller seedling dug up and potted, so bleeding was not a factor.
The other failed graft was on my not-Gerardi from EL. No callus at all on that graft.
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I have had the same experience, growth for a couple of months and then failure with no callous. But this happened also with some varieties that ended up being reasonably easy to root. I had a Himalayan FSP that grew several inches and then dried up too. I think there was some slug damage but I didn’t witness them attacking it lol. I have had the most success on rootstock from the standard Dwarf Everbearing alba.
I have tried rooting cuttings of a bunch of trees for the heck of it really - I need to put twigs into my garden beds to keep the ducks and cat from stomping my plants. What I’ve noticed is that a bunch of trees like mountain ash look like they’ve taken - they leaf out nicely and fail 3 months into the process and they have no roots. I wanted to transplant some thinking they had rooted and found out they were actually rotten nearly all the way up to ground level. My latest experiment, nigra mulberry, is in the ground since late February. Green buds, some leafing out, no roots. They just seem to keep going without extra nutrition way past other things.
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Thats where the Clonex rooting gel or powdered rooting hormone can help. Often though i find the same. Stick enough in and you’ll have some luck. I’ve gotten 4 green gage, a golden delicious a cherry, and a nectarine, not withstanding dozens of failures on each.
My Gerardi grafts, 4 bark and one clef died. I did have success with one 2 yrs ago.
I’ve used it on the mulberry cuttings. It should be hard to propagate them this way (usually done by suckers) so they are doing well, I guess.
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