I usually cut the backside of my tape top to bottom with a razor knife if I think the bud is expanding but not attached securely, yet.
About the only time I move or remove the graft wrap is if it is bending the bud over and then I try to do as little as needed as carefully as I can. Those buds are very strong. I use a stretch rubber stabilizer wrap and I have rootstock buds come through that frequently.
Wow ! If buds can make it trough rubber, stem I’ll just leave them alone. Thanks for the advice.
It’s hard to tell in this photo but the 100-46 bud broke free!
So I decided to graft into another DV rootstock with a “wonderful” scion. We shall see how that goes in a few weeks.
And here is a shot of some bees on persimmon flowers. Btw, I have always thought that persimmon flowers were supposed to smell awful. But when I put my nose close to these, they had an amazing fragrance.
That is wild to see that bud busting through that rubber.
Questions: which cultivar is this lil guy? What method of graft did you use here. And…was the stump left long to provide support for the new growth?
It’s a jujube and I actually think it might be one that is not going to take. I try to keep all the growth below the graft pinched off so I took a photo before I removed it. Jujube’s bud system (the whole tree structure actually) is different from other fruit trees. There is a node underneath the branches that swells and grows. They don’t have a “bud” per se. here is one that is growing.
When grafting persimmons it is very important to keep the growth below the graft pinch off…
Ah! I thought that the bark looked different than a persimmon. And you are right about being different, they form a sort of knuckle looking nodes instead of buds or spurs. They are interesting trees.
I had two jujubes at my old residence, sugarcane and li. They were quite good although sugarcane was much better. I only had them for about 5 years and so really about two years of production. Perhaps the li would have gotten better with a few more seasons, but I had bought some land and thus moved away. I wonder if the new owners of my previous home knew what to make of those trees. I hope they at least tried them, before they ripped them out… if they ripped them out.
Now I have honey jar, shanxi li, and chico at my current place. None have given me fruit as of yet, but their flowers smell wonderful if I am outside at the right time to catch their scent. I’m not sure what is taking them so long to fruit other than perhaps my heavy clay soil slowing down their growth. But if I remember, these are some tough plants, so they will get there and then I will have tons.
We have a huge jujube tree at the Fort Worth Botanic in the DFW metroplex that is a “champion” tree. I have no idea if it is a specific variety or cultivar as the tag did not disclose it, but the fruit were decent size and delicious. Here is a picture of one of the fruits I took from that champion tree and brought home. I wrote down that it was “crunchy, not foamy, slight apple flavor, sweet, some faint floral notes”.
I’ve never been to the arboretum but I’ve heard that tree is massive!
Oh yeah. It is huge for a jujube!
According to Cliff’s notes on nuttrees.net…
Mohler american and Journey Hybrid seem to be his first to ripen in his KY orchard.
Both have mention of special flavor too.
Mohler… complex fruity… Journey includes the taste of vanilla.
I have added a couple grafts of both this spring.
I have several mid to late ripeners too.
Prok is early… not hardly as early as Mohler.
Some say the flavor of prok is rather mild… where Moler is complex fruity… Prok is described as large… Mohler described as medium size.
Just some things to consider on early varieties.
Good luck !
The “journey” sounds quite interesting with the vanilla flavor.
Speaking of interesting flavors, I saw a YT video where someone was at England’s nursery tasting persimmons last fall. One of them was said to have a pumpkin spice note or flavor. Sadly I can’t remember the name of it. Actually, I think the YT link was on a thread on this forum. I’ll have to search for it, but it does sound interesting to me.
@Thazo1979 … i have a wild DV roadside near our Walmart… that last season had a very nice vanilla flavor on the backend. Loved it.
The previous 2 seasons it did not have that. It is a young tree about 8 ft x 8 ft.
If it continues to have that lovely vanilla flavor this fall… i will collect some scion from it and graft here at my place.
Wow! Which means you can name it, since it is wild…The Dallas/FortWorth area of Texas had tons of wild persimmon trees once upon a time. But many ranchers pulled them out apparently, and of course when Dallas began to spread beyond the city limits, the persimmon trees were also pulled out in the process to create new suburbias. My grands used to harvest the wild ones and make jam when my dad was a child. As for my generation, I have yet to see a wild one out here in DFW my whole 40+ years of life. That is not to say there is not any, I just have never stumbled upon one.
Last year I planted four American persimmons rootstocks. This spring I have grafted onto a total of three of those now. The first one I grafted too soon. I was impatient and knew the risk that the graft might not take, since the buds(though swelling) had not fully opened.
Now I remember this particular rootstock looked a little sad when I bought it last fall, but I thought that it might bounce back once it was put in the ground before our mild winter. The long story made short is that the graft I did earlier this spring did not take. Duh, I knew that might be likely.
Anyhow, I took off the buddy tape and found the bark of the rootstock had already rotted and it easily fell off the sapwood. It was also full of these larva.
I wonder, was the tree infected(perhaps when I purchased it) before I grafted and secured with buddy tape, or was this the result of grafting hastily when the tree was not fully awake yet?
So far my experience in grafting:
I have had one failure. The one in this thread. Two have taken(my first last year and one this spring), and one I just grafted not long ago still waiting to see if it takes.
I do not see that happening because of a graft…
???
Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. It had to be seriously ill. But American persimmons are fairly indestructible, so I thought.
I would recommend pulling your mulch away from the base of your trees. Sometimes if the mulch is touching the bark it retains moisture and promotes infection.
That definitely could have added to it, for sure.
I guess I’ll just wait and see if it sends up a sucker later this summer.










