It is not very easy to root. much easier to graft. It will graft to practically anything – peach, apricot, asian plum, euro plum, cherry. Highly recommend grafting it rather than attempting rooting.
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I have read that… Still I may try if I have a few sticks. It would be nice to return the favor to others for the scion I hope to get early next year.
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You can harvest scion from grafted adara as well.
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I guess it just depends on if you keep your interstem short or allow it to grow.
That’s a great point and workaround. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’ll blame it on the heat. 
Yes I won’t even bother trying to root it as it won’t crop for me anyway and would be a wasted spot in my yard. I can always just keep a few branches in the tree for later use.
I may even develop the tree laterals on adara and graft to the Adara branches instead of just the trunk for whatever I want to grow … Keeping one lateral as adara.
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Right they look exactly like mine but mine were not ripe at that color, not sure if they would turn more to red or some other color is fully ripened.
Dennis
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That’s the ripest they get. Then they fall. Quite sweet at that level.
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Would love to learn about this as well. I remember reading an earlier post on here about the possibility of Capulin Cherry being closely related enough to P serotina that it could be grafted onto it, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone test Adara and P serotina. I have a P serotina in my yard and live far enough south that the only cherries I have enough chill hours for are Lapins, the handful of low chill cherries from Dave Wilson, or “cherries” like Capulin or Cherry of the Rio Grande. I have just enough hours for Sprite and Delight to fruit as well, so being able to graft those for their fruit plus use as an interstem for Lapins would be fantastic.
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I am planning to try adara on prunus virginiana as there are many of these where I live wild and planted as Canada Red chokecherry. Others have reported good compatibility for some plum and prunus virginiana 2022 Season Update - Grafting Pears and Plums to Wild Choke Cherry and – Oak Summit Nursery
. If you do, please report back. https://reallygoodplants.com/ has adara scions for sale right now. I am new to grafting so fingers crossed!
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Interesting. I had been corresponding last year with a nursery man in Canada (edit: I was talking with Doug, who is very helpful and responsive) that was experimenting with chokecherry and serviceberry as cold hardy root stocks. I had several grafts that took and then wilted, as did he. However he trimed growth on several and was able to get second year growth - so long term we will see.
I did have a couple that did seem to be healthy at the end of the season last year so fingers crossed they’ll pull through. I was mostly trying plums on them.
This year I’m trying a few more options in my greenhouse so we will see, apricot, peach, green gage, nectarine, tartarian cherry, sweet cherry, and two varieties of italian plum. Hope something takes.
Does anyone have any success stories of chokecherries as rootstock? With pics?
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So here’s Doug’s (Oak Summit Nursery) updates on his project-sept '23:
"This year I had better luck with choke cherry grafts, most of them made it through to the fall. What I’ve started to do is use american plum as an interstem, it’s 100% compatible with choke cherry so a short section of it to bridge with other prunus might be the most compatible approach. But you can grow different varieties than I can, any of the plum rootstocks would be a good candidate. Cool to hear some prunes could be possible. For apple or pear on saskatoon you might find dormant scion wood in the spring works better. You might have good results with quince or wild pears on the saskatoon as an interstem, or even winter banana apple.
Top working older trees does produce some fast growth. I’ve had Toka plum grafts grow 4 ft in a season onto an established choke cherry, but last winter only about half of them hardened off in time to survive the cold. This year I did some summer pruning and reduced the scion growth by maybe 1/3 or 1/2 in July and that seemed to make a difference, it checks the growth and produces some lateral branching, seems to help the growth transition to hardwood faster, also I didn’t have any wind breakage. There does seem to be a difference between the stock and scion with response to dry hot weather, my theory with your die back in the summer is that the stock responded by reducing water demand and the scion didn’t, but it’s likely a combination of things - the solution I’ve found is interstems and summer pruning. I’m hoping that second year grafts are more resilient. Prunus americana interstems are kind of easy to do so that might be my default going forward. I just got some wood from scion exchanges, or you can get a small potted tree and trim it, it’s also easy to grow from seeds."
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Thanks for sharing that, that’s excellent to know about pruning back overly vigorous growth in summer. I have some prunus americana seedlings coming so good to know they are very compatible with chokecherry. I am definitely going to try Adara on chokecherry to see what happens. I have found some decent size seedlings in a fencerow in nearby public land in addition to a decade old tree in my own yard that I’d love to give a makeover. Buds are getting going early this year.
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This is an example from last August of the chokecherry with i believe a green gage grafted on. Without any pruning it definitely was on its way to failure. The callus looked good too.
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And i look foward to trading for both on here so i can expand my options in grafting. (Mental note - find winter banana apple to expand options there too.)
Is there anywhere to get the Zee Stem material? I would like to try an experiment with it but I’ve found it impossible to find
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The multi tree I got from Restoring Eden I believe uses Adara as a long interstem with two sweet cherries (along with a peach plum, and nectarine). They weren’t sure as they did not create the tree. All bud grafted.
Anyway I have one Adara sprout from the interstem that I am going to let grow. I may try rooting it later, though I have never tried that before.
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There might be a secondary tag showing what the understock is in addition to the tags for each grafted branch. I’m not sure why ‘Adara’ would be used as an interstem for creating new trees since it has fine roots itself. It would only make sense as an interstem when changing over existing trees to new varieties.
I may ask the nursery to find out for me.
The tree is definitely grafted low. It’s obvious the 5 varieties are bud grafts higher up.
I asked them because there are two sweet cherries grafted on the tree and I know there is very limited compatibilities for sweet cherry.
The rootstock is Krymsk 1 which I found no literature for sweet cherry compatibility.
I guess it would make sense if there isn’t a good commercial source for ‘Adara’ rootstocks. That would make growers more likely to use it as an interstem even though there may be no other functional reason not to just have the ‘Adara’ stem on its own roots. It does root readily enough from cuttings, but to make nice straight rootstocks for grafting onto, it would be better to propagate it via stool beds instead of by rooting cuttings. I’m starting a stool of ‘Adara’ this year myself. Nothing large scale. I just want to be able to produce a handful of nice rooted ‘Adara’ shoots each year for whatever needs to be grafted…
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I don’t know what i was thinking when i bought this one really as only a couple of the grafted trees are suitable for my climate.
My current thoughts are to use the nase tree and regraft it over time.
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When my Adara shoots are about a foot long, I cut them off, when buds begin to swell, to root saving only a 3-4” long stub to graft onto. Then I cut the shoots into 6” long pieces to put into my rooting bed. I scar the bark button be buried exposing the green cambium, soak them overnight in willow tea, and place them in the bed leaving only 1 bud above the bedding materials. By end of growing season I have well rooted Adara plants ready to graft, or just grow scions for interstems.
Dennis
Kent, Wa
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