I think this is essentially Alan’s grafting method. So that is to say yes- definitely. I want to give it a try to better understand it. He says he just cuts them at nice sloping angles with sharp pruners and tapes them together if I understand correctly. Kind of mindblowingly simple but I may not understand what he was describing.
My previous post the first take was greenwood on growing rootstock. It is growing well and definitely a take. I did one last saturday that has swelling buds and is just starting to crack the parafilm currently.
Thats the best part! I am an amateur grafter with probably fewer than 200 attempts so far. I find it easier than most grafts. 1- you do not have to cut/sever the rootstock entirely as you would on a normal whip + tongue/ cleft. cutting a whip and tongue on 1/2" or larger rootstock isnt the easiest thing. 2. Scion/rootstock diameter mismatch is irrelevant. Hardest part is cutting into rootstock the proper depth to get the corresponding width for the scion. You dont have to match diamters on this type of graft.
It was performed last Saturday. There is a small green bit poking out of the bottom bud and the top two are swelling when I checked yesterday 8/2. That one you quoted was the only picture of last saturdays attempts- everything else has broken bud/leafed out or starting to swell, it was also performed out in the field where weed pressure is higher which I’ve noticed adds a few days for the scion to take.
I got a couple photos of what look to be takes. Overall- all look like they may be succesful- 1 week since attempt in photos-all on myrobalan seedlings, the 4-5 others not pictured are all similar. I did another 5 varieties this friday too- fairly confident they will take. Will do more nextweekend but It looks like I will get to add 85-90% of the varieties I received in trade this spring despite my early season disaster.
My first two grafts! Cox Orange Pippin and Cherry Pippin on my (I think) Calville Blanc. Took the tape off a few weeks ago and they seem to be doing okay.
Question.
This is Williams’ Pride on Bud 9 RS. The graft appeared to have taken but growth stalled and then the root sucker appeared. What is the best approach here? Can i grow out the root sucker for the second variety i was planing to graft to this tree? Or should i prune the root sucker to concentrate growth energy into the WP?
Graft appeared to have taken?!? You’ve got 3 dozen leaves and a foot of growth! What more do you want on a fully dwarfing rootstock?
Cut the sucker off or dig in the dirt to cut it off possibly with some roots to plant as a free rootstock or a decorative Red fleshed pink flowering apple somewhere.
In full summer the dryness and heat, or maybe the shortening daylight hours trigger root growth and the leaves and shoots slow down, the roots need to grow and then save energy for the next growth spurt next spring.
nothing took on Chestnut or Whitney. the takes on my apples this year are all real ugly but growing well. black and white gold cherry grafts to plum failed, but to Sam Cherry they both took. all grafts to the sand cherry failed.
The first one looks very good actually, but the contrast in bark colors and diameter are surprising.
Was your scion much thicker than your track or is it just growing that much faster?
I did a graft with a Scion that was almost double the diameter of the rootstock, and it worked! I think it was a side-lap graft, and I gave it a long section of contact because I one had one persimmon rootstock and a whole scion.
Finally unwrapped my grafts. So cool to see how they’ve healed over.
Can’t remember which thread but there was some discussion about toilet wax rings and whether they damaged bark. I used an Ace hardware house brand wax ring for some of mine and found no damage 3 months later. But I also found that with a good wrap, the wax wasn’t necessary, except for maybe the cleft grafts.
I also found I prefer very stretchy tape, like flagging tape or cut grocery bags, which makes it easier to get a good seal than the parafilm I also tried, in my very limited experience. Maybe my parafilm is too thick.
All my peach/apricot grafts failed but I did them too early. On Asian and euro pears I did about 13 and lost just one, one of two in a cleft graft that got loosened by the other, larger scion in the same cleft.
I did some late persimmons grafts this year, last week of July. Wasn’t trying to graft that late, but found scion left in the fridge from spring I had forgotten about. I thought I had used it all. I’m kinda surprised how well the one H118 is doing!
The other graft on a sucker is still sitting tight. I did some various grafts on established persimmons at my pond. Looks like one is pushing a tiny amount of growth. Most haven’t broken yet. Not sure if they’re healed in or not. One thing I am learning (hopefully have learned) is not to play with a graft to see if it calloused right. It’s tempting to do, but soul crushing when you see that it was healing well…until you snapped it off being nosy. Don’t ask how I know this feeling.
An example of my apple grafts from this spring. I wanted to try 10 new dessert varieties. I grafted 10 different scions to new dwarf rootstocks. All grafts were W&T; all took. Separately, I had a half dozen established dwarf trees with cider varieties that hadn’t worked out – too much disease and/or poor productivity. So I top-worked those trees with 6 of the 10 new dessert varieties. All these grafts were bark grafts, 2-4 per tree depending on the amount of available scion wood. All but a few took.
Here’s one example, just to illustrate. This is Priscilla. On the left, see the scion grafted to a new dwarf rootstock tree. On the right, see four bark grafts on an established dwarf rootstock tree. My tentative plan is to grow these two dwarf trees side by side. I’ll likely reduce the 4 shoots on the established tree as they grow to 1-2. Or maybe I’ll try to weave the shoots together hoping that they fuse. The difference in vigor between the graft on the young (originally bare root) tree and the established tree is significant.
Last year I grafted several European plum varieties onto some volunteer American plums. The grafts grew 4-6 feet, I pruned them back to 2’ in the winter, and this year they have put on 5-8 feet of growth. Do these graft unions look like they could be a problem in the future? The grafts are now considerably larger than the rootstock.
Question for those of you with citrus grafting experience. I have a large (8x12ft) established mandarin tree which I want to downsize, and I have fresh budwood to graft. My question is how much of the original rootstock tree can I cut back? Will grafts take on the older wood part of the rootstock? I prefer to bud graft but can try cleft or bark grafting if needed.
very cool!
