Bud grafts from August starting to break open, which are the coolest grafts in my opinion. Other stuff waking up too. M111 stock mostly, just got the rest of the grafting done yesterday. I used a homemade grafting wax which worked well made of beef tallow, beeswax, paraffin, and pine sap. Very soft and spreadable when warm but gets firm as it cools off..seems to have sealed everything up good.
This year cultivars that were added were black limbertwig, Clark’s crab, dutch master, winesap, golden russet, cherub, hard candy cider. Most of the grafting was of varieties already on hand but propagated to the m111: King David, wickson, Arkansas black, wolf river, williams pride, pilot. Over all about 30 seedling stock, and 30 m111. One root graft.
the buds are swelling here so i grafted my red mulberry today. I got this tree as supposedly native Morus rubra, and quickly realized its mostly Morus alba, so i have been debating pulling it out.
first time grafting and it is with some trees that i dont know if im keeping long term, so if it fails it fails! my 4th graft was a lot cleaner than my first. slapped a ziplock bag over it after this.
Here is a medlar grafts i did past couple days.
Thanks @JohnS for Nottingham + Kha Kheti ! (i mislabeled those as ‘Khal’).
Onto asian pears, apples, maybe a couple quinces next.
How about Mulberry and Che (on Osage Orange)?
They are starting to wake up so i assume i can do them soon as well?
My very first graft, BlueByrd on Myrobalan. Whip and tongue. I have many more left to go. Kinda nerve wracking when you’re doing it for the first time, even with lots of preparation in advance.
I’ve been using my leather caliper to make sure my scions are equal diameter, especially since the plum stems tend to be oval shape. It goes down to a tenth of a millimeter. When you can get that precise, aligning the stems becomes very easy.
Been trying a lot of grafts of all sorts of stuff over here, and if feels like I’m hardly making a dent in all my scionwood yet
Pears, prunus, pawpaw, apples, avocado, feels never ending.
Kiwis…. Been doing goldens onto greenwood fuzzy rootstock. 3 of 5 suspected takes thus far on my first rounds of grafts on March 5th. All that are pushing so far are side grafts. This has been the most vigorous so far:
That is Soreli onto 6 month old, lignified Saanichton greenwood (done using greenhouse). Have another side z-graft looking abomination of HORT16A on Bruno that appears to have taken. Recent side-grafts onto new and old greenwood appear good so far, but it’s too early to tell much. Also just preformed one yesterday onto a 6 week old Zesperi Sungold seedling (scion appox. half the diameter of a pencil). Fingers crossed it held its place while wrapping… at least the top has stayed turgid today.
This years grafting went better than any other grafting I have done in the past, I think that is a combination of experience from past years, and the new rubber bands that I used this year, they worked way better than any other rubber bands that I have tried so far. I am also wondering if maybe soaking the butt end of the scion wood for 2 days may have made the cuttings healthier as well, this is the first time that I have tried doing a long term soak before grafting, the following rubber bands are what I used. What worked best is cutting each rubber band in to 3 peaces of about 16 inches each. There was not much of each rubber band piece left after tying them, which I trimmed off with scissors. These rubber bands did not tear no matter how hard they were pulled Large Rubber Bands for Moving | 25" - 50" Length | Pack of 12
I then wrapped each graft union in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil. I used foil to keep the graft union cooler when it’s mid to upper 80s, and the sun is hitting the grafts. The plastic wrap is to keep the scion from drying out, and to keep them warmer on the cool nights that we have.
I didn’t notice that until this year, I think that as ‘OHxF 87’ root stocks age they look more and more like that.The pattern was there before, yet I don’t remember there being that greenish color to it.
our ten day forecast. I think Wednesday’s going to be my ‘go’ day for grafting stone fruit. If I get antsy over the weekend, do you think the mild cold spell in the Sunday - Tuesday will be detrimental since temps are coming right back up?
I have a grafting newbie question (not answered by @marknmt’s excellent series as far as I could find). I already cut and stored my own scion back in February while the wood was still dormant. My neighbor, though, also has girdled pear trees, and asked me for some help saving his. However, his buds have started budding, as in, I can see little green bits where they will leaf out. At this point, is it too late to take and store scion? Would it be safer to just cut and graft immediately? How does this work?
Go ahead and collect your neighbor’s scions and get them into the fridge quickly. Pears are pretty forgiving and you have a good chance of success even though the scions are trying to leaf out.
It’s also worth experimenting with grafting a couple directly, but I think your odds will be better with the first method.
I hope to keep the goldens on the fuzzy rootstock if I can (has stronger roots), but we’ll see what the future holds… I’ve heard rumor of some delayed compatibility issues that I’m worried about. Know a guy that apparently did a bunch of good, successful golden kiwi grafts that grew pretty good that year, but never woke up next spring, but who knows how that translates.
Either way, I’ll eventually cut off the still growing tops on the fuzzy rootstock and pivot towards pure golden kiwi, but that’s still a little ways out. Using a side graft onto a vigorously growing branch was just a theory to ensure the scion had active sap flow moving past it and the plant would want to try to heal my cut to keep the vigorous vine alive. When I head it off, it feels like everything just stops, but this seems to keep the plant active and growing. Now, once I think it’s made a strong enough connection I’ll lop the top and fully push the graft.
Side note, at least with the grafts on Bruno rootstock, we’re actually rooting the cut off tops in an EZ-Cloner to keep the cycle going. (Got it off some bankrupt pot farmer.) The cuttings I got from my first set of grafts are/were already showing roots 28 days in… looking like 50-60% takes. First time trying this, but seems to be pretty easy. Gotta do a touch of chemistry to get it setup (water pH, etc) but A.I. can hold your hand for that. After the initial setup it seems pretty straightforward to just leave them there and root.
They should be fine for grafting if you refrigerate the scion for a few days first, that should make the scion go dormant again. Since they have not grown much.
Is this a flower bud? This is flavor king grafted last year to a methley plum roughly 3/4 years old. Don’t see any such round buds on the mother tree, unless they come later (which I doubt)
