I kind of got a laugh on this on social media. A few folks were pretty apoplectic that is was automatic death of the graft. I thought it just meant someone cut a piece of older growth and used it for scion wood.
My thought is to just let it bloom and get a pretty picture. Then very carefully snip it off without damaging the leaves. Is that right?
Yes. I try to get them before they open if possible. I’ve also missed them and fruit tried to form, but never made it. None of the grafts died.
Good. I figured I would let them bloom because a lot of these old Georgia origin and Southern Heritage apples have no or very few pictures. Then I can catalog them in a master file on each type.
Doesn’t have to be older growth. 1y old wood can also have flower buds. Think of the terminal bud of tip bearers for example.
If grafted with “flower” buds. plenty of times. sometimes i carefully remove the flowers. But most often i don’t have time for that. And i remove the small fruits if they form (quite often they don’t)
Most of the time they still grow a shoot after flowering the year of grafting. But that depends a bit of the vigor of the rootstock or branch the graft is on.
First time I grafted Lord Lambourne the tip bloomed. That’s when I learned about partial tip-bearers. I let them bloom & contribute to the overall pollen supply & snipped any developing fruits after petal fall. Growth took off from there in two directions, which I pruned after the graft had the benefit of more leaf surface.
I pick them off to reduce the chances of fireblight entering. That’s probably less of an issue up north but I see you are in GA where FB is probably pretty bad most places.
The only break we get here is up on the Sand hills; we lack Cedar trees and hence CAR is not so bad. But everything else is around.