Is that a chip bud? It may need to be forced. Not all buds on a tree grow, sometimes they sit and wait to see if they will get a turn.
How do I attempt to force the bud to grow?
I cut it off, let’s hope for the best now!
The branch is rather small, so I would have cut it off too. If it was the main trunk or a big branch, I would cut it off almost all the way but not fully and bend it over. This would give apical dominance to the chip bud while keeping the growth above alive for sustaining the tree. Once the chip bud grows enough, cut off the top growth fully.
At this point, Kabosu is a success. Unfortunately the feijoa grafts at the farm didn’t do well. The workers are pretty much focused on the veggie crops. Think the heat also did them in. Ill let the rootstock get a bit larger then bark graft along with the other citrus. In conditions of neglect, letting the rootstock vigor push growth on a bark graft seems better than trying veneers which need constant attention to prune back the new growth.
I think I mentioned somewhere above that this year I did grafts of the mulberries Silk Hope and Oscar to bare root rootstock. All 5 W&T grafts took. I potted them and they’ve been growing well. All the trees have ~2 1/2 to 3 feet of growth.
I just planted one of each in the ground. Here’s Oscar (not yet fenced) and Silk Hope (fenced), just planted. As you can see, Oscar was grafted much lower than Silk Hope. That’s entirely a function of the width of the scions (Oscar thicker).
I also did some apples and persimmons. More to come on those later.
Anyone foliar feed grafts on multi-graft trees to get them going? I haven’t tried it, but was wondering if worked or it was a thing people do?
Updating for anyone interested. 3 out of 4 attempts are leafing out and happy, the single one looks like the stock might be dead since a few weeks ago.
Greenwood Mirabelle de Nancy on St Julian A-
Dormant Korean Giant from the spring on ornamental pear lower limb
Grafting dormant scion certainly seems viable in the summer. For reference I only used parafilm as I was worried black temflex would get too hot. I Parafilmed most of the buds/whole scions. No protection/sun barrier as I was considering. NY/VT/MA area.
Yesterday I did a dozen or so more. Mostly dormant wood correcting the mistakes from attempting to bench graft in the spring. I forgot the name but most of them are essentially a whip + tongue where the insert comes at an angle and very little if any of the stock above is cut off. I think the sap flow and minimal disturbance of stock might be helpful. I like how easy it is and how nicely they sit just from the friction.
Black Ice on Myrobalan seedling-
Before wrapping-
Paragon Pear grafted to two callery rootstocks I started from seed from a local callery I found growing in a swampy blackberry thicket. The one graft is over 5’ the less sunny spot one is about 3.5’.
Interesting graft, did it take?
That’s a really cool graft! Is it difficult?
Deer ripped my ONLY successful mulberry graft loose and ate the leaves. The stem was still hanging from the tape I had wrapped around the stump. That deer must have stood on its hind legs and jumped to get that graft. It was a Varaha graft to a big old Russian alba mulberry stump.
So upsetting!
I put the graft branch into water and think I will try an experiment to see if I can graft the green branch to some green branches that have come out from the Russian alba rootstock on a different stump. Does grafting green to green work, especially in summer? Our heat wave is about to break tomorrow and it looks like we will have at least a week of highs in the very low eighties. Seems like the best weather I could hope for this time of year.
Sandra
I saw a recent post by Trav of his water-reservoir-modified approach graft. Strap a water bottle to the trunk below the green shoot you will graft to. Cut the green scion long and stick it in the bottle, then do an approach graft. The water will keep the scion from drying out until it can heal.
@kiwinut Thanks for that info. I will try that. Sounds like it could work. I have nothing to lose at this point!
Sandra
Except 2 hours! @Jujumama @hambone
Maybe it’s not that long.
I’ve got a video about how I did it and I’m deciding where I’m going to start posting this stuff.
I’ve done more chip budding, patch grafting and lateral bark grafting in the summer, and with more resilient varieties I’m experimenting with typical bark grafting mid summer with Japanese maple on Box Elder.
So this method I did worked 100% for me, and I have a 2 for 2 success rate, so if you have big green cuttings and want a branch this year, go for it! But if you want to do patch grafts and bud grafts and cut it off in the spring, that will probably work too.
Reading about your situation, look on the branch for any developing buds, if you have developing or dormant buds you can bud graft or patch graft, or honestly almost any type of graft, just remove all the leaves and use the buds, cover everything with Parafilm, and then aluminum foil or many layers of newspaper.
But if all you have is the leaves on the wood, and the only buds are on the tips of green shoots, that’s a wonderful time to use my Water-Reservoir-Modified Approach Graft, remove most of the leaves and do an inlay graft in the middle of the section you’ll use I did a 4 inch section and the top half worked, I cut off the section to the water reservoir, and removed leaves again to make sure it didn’t dry out and eventually cut off the the dead bottom 2 inches of the remaining stem which did not callous into the trunk.
I probably should make a new YouTube channel and do it there, but I don’t like YouTube as a business or the way they censor and delete people.
@Trav Thanks so much for the detailed and super helpful information. I went out this afternoon in the terrible heat and humidity with a water bottle and my grafting supplies to try and get that Varaha mulberry scion grafted to something before it went bad on me. I was going to use your water reservoir modified approach graft, but after staring at the scion and the placement of the buds, I thought it was not long enough to use the water bottle and still have room for the graft and some buds left, so I just improvised and did some weird graft that I am not even sure what it was. I think I was in the beginning stages of heatstroke at this point as I had already been out harvesting and weeding for a couple of hours. I really need to work in the morning when it is this hot.
Anyway, I ended up sawing an inch or so off the stumpy branch where the graft had formerly been before the deer attack (probably should have just left that alone and not sawed more off), and then I just made a T cut in the bark and a wedge on the scion and stuffed it in the T shaped opening and wrapped with Parafilm and white electrical tape. Not really sure what I did there or why. I had a tiny piece left with one bud, so I cleft grafted it to a thick green branch that had grown off another stump on that big old Russian alba. We shall see if anything happens or not.
I am going to try your water reservoir modified approach graft on the two persimmons that the hard rain storm tore the grafts loose. I have lots of long green stems from Dollywood and Rosseyanka grafts done this spring that need pruning anyway as they are too heavy and lush with huge leaves, and at risk for breaking the graft. I will prune them back, and use the thicker prunings to try grafting to the stumps using the water bottle method.
Your success gives me hope, but I am new to grafting this year so my technique leaves much to be desired. We shall see.
Sandra
Sounds great! Glad to hear.
But if it’s really so hot, I’d get out there and wrap them with aluminum foil, shiny side in, at least for 7 days, 14 is good just don’t expose any white shoots to more than an hour of direct sun when you unwrap it, you can shade it with something or wrap it with one layer of newspaper later.