The rule of thumb I learned was that the number of scions should be about the same as the number of inches diameter. However, your logic seems pretty good to me. I suspect the diameter in inches = number of grafts rule is generally successful since it’s been around a long time. Whether something else would be “better” in the long run is something to explore. And also what is “better” for one person might not be the same as for another.
I do think when you’re doing lots and lots of grafts on large trees you’re going to be balancing cost/time with your other considerations. I don’t think it’s much more time or cost to make a few more grafts on a stump you’ve already prepared. I think the real cost/time when you make so many grafts around a tree is in dealing with them after.
As they grow together, they’re going to create occlusions and you’ll have to prune. You will have to find a way to support them. If you’re doing a quad or V you really only want 2 or 4… and so on. Those sorts of tasks are time consuming if you’re dealing with a large number of trees.
I grafted 12 trees this year with larger diameter using bark grafts and I’ll have to report on them later. They generated quite a lot of work for me.
I think if you cut it at an angle 45° or more, the sap flowing around the edges will eventually close it over.
This I grafted onto a shoot off the trunk (it was buck-rubbed and an unknown apple, probably not a planted variety) and after the Winter Banana scion put on some good growth, I cut off the trunk where I’d grafted Enterprise (I think) as a backup. I made the cut at an angle right up to the collar of the shoot and it’s healing up slowly, but without any die-back, and very little suckering, just 2 in the past 3½ seasons, I probably broke off green suckers by hand after grafting, but that’s normal.
This first picture is from almost 4 growing seasons since grafting.
I think the branch is actually the second scion I put in the cleft (cleft grafts with bark flaps) and pruned down to one bud, ironically it might be the same as the original tree, but the main scion which is the new trunk and canopy is Winter Banana.
This shot is from approximately the same angle, and I cut the trunk off angling just barely above that shoot with the grafts, I think I cut into the collar and perhaps that’s why it healed together so we’ll, I’m not sure about that.
I sprayed the stump with some black pruning spray and thought a piece of plastic bag would increase the protection, it seems to have increased the rotting instead, oh well, it’s pretty good.
I’d go with that +1 of course for an 8” diameter 8 or 9 isn’t the issue, but at 1” I think it needs 2, and at 2” I think 3 is much better, because if one dies at 2” you’re not going to close that up, maybe ever.
I do a lot of “backup grafts” with varieties that I collected myself, off of my trees or of someone who let me collect them or prune their trees for them, then when the grafts take off, the purchased variety or the one I really want becomes the trunk if it makes it, sometimes I have a second favorite and then just fillers which might be great apples, but ones that I have a lot of already.
In the future I want to try this scion weaving and then I’d do the same variety for maybe ½ or a ⅓ of them and the rest would be pruned down to single bud branches, or inarched to the braid and pruned off, not going above the braid union.
I’m trying some grafts. I’ve got some Apricot Apple on wild apple seedlings, and Siberian crabapple sucker transplants (Arkansas Black apple pictured), also a Rottkottig Oster Gotland (supposedly this means “good rooted” and if it makes it I’ll bury the graft union and let it try) and Clara Frijs (which is highly compatible with apple grafts) European pears on Toringo Crabapple (I’ve never had apple grafts survived on this, but Asian pears did, even though Bartlett died, I expect Clara Frijs will live).
I had pretty much given up on this Ontario Russet grafted to B9 back in April. Now I see it is finally pushing leaves - just in time for winter. Maybe it will survive… Anyone have experience with such reluctant grafts?
My peach early season grafting had mostly failures (I used mostly cleft grafts) though one of the few that took was a reverse cleft graft, haven’t tried it before this year but I may employ it more in the future.
Curious to see how my budding went, so far looks like I have some takes but won’t know till next spring for sure
Your best option for this scion is the Skillcult sale/auctions each spring. He usually posts notifications on Patreon and Instagram when these are happening, so following him on there will help. Given how slow growing this variety is, it may be on auction again this year rather than in his regular store.
I believe they are new leaves from the bud, I’ll peel back the parafilm tomorrow to confirm.
usually when I put the buds on I cut the leaves back to their petioles, it’s possible those grew back. It’s also possible the few days of heavy rains and overcast skies followed by a really warm and sunny day threw them off
I I’ll cut these back to prevent overly vigorous growth. I anticipate in 3-4 weeks the trees will be dormant.
So they were on the new grafts. I cut the leaves back. Hopefully they enter dormancy.
on the node proximal to spring satin plumcot graft (which is a methley mother tree) there was a lot of gummosis so I cut the leaves back and saw what looked like a borer larva. @scottfsmith have you seen borers enter through graft wounds?
These were three approach grafts that I merged together in July-Aug, and separated recently. Flavor grenade on Mustang rootstock, Flavor grenade on American plum rootstock, and a misidentified Japanese plum (that I believe is Burbank) on Krymsk 1 rootstock.
Anyone requesting scions from GRIN this year (and they actually send them to you rather than shooting you down with the boilerplate ‘no’ letter)?
There’s a couple pear Accessions from the 1960s breeding program in NY that they still have that are otherwise unavailable. It’s the same program that released Highland and Chapin.
Cayuga - a Seckel cross that is medium sized. There’s a couple others listed in the old publication below.
Willard - Barlett x Dorset, fruit looks like it can get pretty large. It’s fire blight susceptible, so I wouldn’t grow it but West coast people and collectors might be interested.
Pulteney - Winter Nellis x Russeted Bartlett. Same thoughts with this one as the last one.
Phelps is a sibling of Pulteney and supposed to be similar.
Page 16 of this PDF (page 12 according the numbers on the actual pages) of this old tymey publication has more info on them:
Switching gears from European pears to European plums:
The Luther Burbank pitless plum accession. I assume it’s probably terrible since the two he actually released were lost since, but it’s got a lot of curiosity/novelty going for it, and somebody might come up with a cross that’s amazing. Or have fun tinkering with it at least.
I’m hoping somebody here who gets GRIN germplasm requests filled could get these back out into circulation and into the hands of some of the nurseries that sell scions. I won’t be attempting to grow a Barlett cross FB magnet here, but it might be a great pear for somebody elsewhere, and reduces the risk it gets lost entirely.
Don’t do what I did. I had notes to remove my grafting tape (parafilm and electrical tape) from all my grafts about 6 wks post grafting and kept putting it off until I forgot all summer. I know from last year that I wrap really tight and while that probably helps my success rate, it significantly constructs growth. I saw something odd and inspected a graft tonight. Not good. Don’t ignore your grafts all season. Took a long time tonight to painstakingly remove all the parafilm from all the grafts, some look absolutely mangled from it. Others look fine. The bad ones are those that had more sun and thus more growth. I assume they’ll beef up next year, if they don’t snap this winter. thankfully, not that many of them are really bad, but majority show some sign of constriction from the tape.
Here are some of the citrus grafts I did yesterday. They’re inside at 72-80 degrees with plastic bags over the pots for humidity. I’ll be happy if any take given the circumstances and time of year. First is Meyer lemon seedling I grafted ocer to NZL second is rubidoux rootstock with 10 degree and keraji. My goal for grafting next year is to just graft 2 buds. I don’t know why I was scared to do that this year.
I think your grafts should be fine, but this is why I stopped using anything other than parafilm. I always forget to remove stuff later in the season. It’s mostly a problem with plums as they take off the fastest compared to other scions. The only time I’ve regretted not using something reinforcing is when I do chip budding onto a thin branch on the tree such as peach and the the torque of a long branch, in addition to wind or a bird landing, causes the branch to dip and break.
I used a different type of parafilm this year- I needed a new roll. The old stuff I had broke down and split as plants grew. This new stuff I had to go pick off in a bunch of places. I was really annoyed.
I also used rubber bands instead of electrical tape for anything small and was really happy with the result. They broke down and fell off after a while. Anything big like stumps or cleft grafts I still used electrical tape.
Do you know the brand that breaks down? I have buddy tape and it does not break down. And, I wrap it too tight. The electrical tape is relatively loose. The constriction is entirely from the buddy tape. It was horrible to pick off with a knife, callousing growing around and over it. Just a mess.
Also, I wrapped all the scions. Just one layer (as opposed to dense wrapping around the graft union) and some were black with who knows what stuck to them. Not good. Not breaking down. Impossible to unwrap them all just sticky and was destroying bark, major PIA.
