I think one of my Dollywood grafts is going to fail, all the other ones have began to grow. When I examined it closely to day, this is what I found.
Was this something that burrowed in or out of the scion? Is this common?
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thought this smokehouse didnāt take but now Iāve changed my mind.
i left it waaaaaay too long as a scion i should have used half the stick
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I did that with my last scion of Mirabelle plums, and forgot to trim it shorter!
Oh well that was my only successful great on Prunus Serotina, good experiment.
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Itās possible that all the leaves will die, but the backup birds will sprout and it will survive, whatever you do, donāt cut it off because itās dead for a long time, I cut off a good summer graft because all the leaves rooted, and only after cutting it did I find out that the great was perfectly successful.
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If you want to mess with it, if carefully trim those flaps and damage the bark close to the end to let the two callous together, and wrap them with Parafilm and let them heal again, but thatās probably not necessary.
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Some of my Asian pear grafts didnāt take. Itās been 6 weeks or so. Mostly on new rootstock so my guess is them taking too long to wake up in combination with the scions drying out is what led to mixed results. Iāve noticed pear scions dry out in the fridge more than most of the other species.
Going to try to graft them again. Temps are mid 40s to high 70s. Higher than what Iād like, but I have nothing to lose.
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2/5 of my pomegranate grafts havenāt really grown yet. I thought they both had red dots of swelling buds, but they have stayed like that for weeks while the 3/5 (all same variety on same bush) are growing well. I got impatient and scratched the two sta at ones- still green. Does that means they took and are just taking forever to grow?
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Iām getting more interested in how to heal over the trunks of the trees that weāre grafting onto. Bark flaps are one of the healing solutions Iām testing, in this case the rootstock is providing the bark flap and I hope it works without causing suckering.
I also grafted onto the short branch right above the cut, that was my design to heal up this tree, a branch and a bark graft, plus the pretty experimental strap.
Does anyone have trunk healing methods to share?
Iāll update and maybe make a whole strap grafting thread if it goes well.
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Soak your scions in water overnight, cold water or preferably in the refrigerator especially if your scions are already starting to bud out or you might not use all of them in the coming couple days. That might make your scions live twice as long or more.
When you graft wrap the entire scion with Parafilm, I usually use electrical tape on the great union. And Parafilm from there to the end of the Scion, this will make your scions live twice as long again.
@Eme the good news is, your scion is still alive, the bad news is, you donāt know anything else and have to wait; but itās still alive thereās a good chance itāll work.
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4 weeks ago, I field grafted some seedling apple rootstock that I planted last year. While a decent amount has pushed, thereās a decent amount that has looked like this for 2 weeks. It has been rather dry (I do not have access to water here) so I will get some mulch down. Hoping these will push and not just wither away!
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My experimental solution is to make multiple bark grafts around the perimeter. Growth at the base of each graft will cover a section. Eventually, I hope, they meet in the middle. Iāve done between 1 and 16 grafts on a single trunk, depending on the size.
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@jrd51.. back in the spring of 2022 I did this bark graft of gerardi mulberry to a 3 inch diameter mulberry stump.
4 scions, 2 buds eachā¦ had 8 shoots growing up from that.
This is what it looked like end of summer.
Notice at that point.. I had no support to protect from wind.. and sure enough a summer thunderstorm with some swift wind.. broke off 3 of my 4 scions.
You can see in this pic of my gerardi what it looks like this yearā¦ that is with growth from that one scion left in place.
There is a tpost in there supporting that one scion growth that survived the wind storm.
With multiple varieties coming up off of one large stump.. growth from 4 or 8 scions ?
That is going to be a lot of growth to manage and properly wind protect.
Make sure you plan for that and protect it well. One late summer thunderstorm can sure wreck graft growth like that.
It took my 1 remaining scions growth almost 4 years to heal over my 3 inch stump. It did finally do that.
TNHunter
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Yeah, got it. A few years ago, one of those storms broke an established Illinois Everbearing in half, splitting the trunk down the middle. No grafts involved. Mulberry seems brittle.
Also, Iāve lost a few persimmon grafts just as you describe. Lush growth of leaves makes a great sail. And both a European plum (President) and an apple (Golden Russet) have been uprooted. I make it a point now to prune enough wood to facilitate the passage of wind through the canopy.
My biggest risk re current grafts seems to be the pear with 16 scions. Originally I secured the scions with both tape and two circumferences of zip ties. I took off one zip tie the other day and may take off the other, just to give the graft room to grow. But after a time, it may make sense to put back some zip ties, which really do hold the scion in place very well.
The pear is surrounded by 6ā welded wire, primarily to block deer. Itās well secured to the ground, so it isnāt going to blow away. I could wrap the upper 2ā with some fabric or plastic bag to function. as a wind block. Luckily it is in a fairly sheltered location, with buildings and trees blocking wind unless it comes directly from the east.
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Speaking of wind and support, the growth from my persimmon grafts is getting quite tall. Should I top them at some point or just let them get as tall as they want this first season?
@AlxTgr .. in my case I have deer pressure and I let the new central leader growth from a new graft.. get up to around 4.5 ft.. then I do a heading cut on the central leader.
When you do thatā¦ normally the first 3-5 buds below that cut will then send out growthā¦ which can become your first scaffold branches.. and a new central leader.
You can do some bud notching to determine which buds become scaffolds.
I would secure the CL to a 6 or 8 ft stake.
My H63A persimmon looked like this at the end of first growing season. The start of 4 scaffolds and a CL.
If you can get that the first seasonā¦ You are off to a very good start.
TNHunter
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The 3 bark grafts all have two shoots on them. I suppose I will knock that down to 1 each after the growing season then ask again. Iāll work on better support this week some time as right now, I just have bamboo attached to the lower part of each.
It looks pretty funny, but it may just work. Itās a double decker pair of approach grafts. I put a big pile of wood chips around a new Flavor Grenade pluot I planted last fall.Then I hauled over a Canadian plum in a huge like 30 gallon container. I grafted the Cdn plum tree together with the Flavor Grenade. .
After grafting those two together, I then stacked another 7 gallon? pot onto of the top of the great big green container. Then I pounded a metal stake in the ground to secure everything together with large bungy cords.
I then grafted a Krymsk 1 rootstock together with the flavor grenade.
I wanted to make sure that if the FG tree died I had it grafted to some other trees for backup. Pluots are very hard to come by in British Columbia, so I wanted to make sure I didnāt lose the variety.
Looks crazy, but hopefully it all works out.
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Yeah I started wrapping the whole graft in parafilm and that has reduced the drying out of the scions.
I havenāt used electrical tape. Probably because I know Iāll forget to take it off.
Will definitely try soaking before grafting in the future. For some reason my pear scions sometimes dry out even in the fridge.
@HVmike So if you donāt want to have to take it off supposedly the vinyl budding tape is good for that, but I donāt know how much to put, it doesnāt degrade in the sun fast enough to come undone that way, and it can bottle-neck the branches, so Iām not really sure itās so great.
I usually use masking tape if Iām grafting for deer in the forest or something that I might not check, but I donāt know if that really works to come off by itself, but itās a good theory.
Iāve noticed that tips of branches tend to dry out more quickly, I donāt know why, but I assume they have more fast growing tissue with less solid wood in them so that you notice more.
Pruning takes less time, but they might need a stake to support them in the wind anyway, so then you can take strings and tie down branches to shape the tree and not cut off your progress as much as possible, but you can still pinch the tips any of the ones that are outgrowing the others and pinch the tip off your leader if you donāt have enough branching.