My persimmon rootstock has been waking up over the last couple weeks. I benchgrafted about 200 persimmons in March against the advice of some very knowledgeable people. It’ to soon to tell, but it looks like the benchgrafts may have around a 50% success rate. I think it would be better if I waited April or May so the scion didn’t have a chance to dry out.
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I grafted 5 in March. A couple of those are just now breaking bud. I grafted 5 more in April. A couple of those are already growing. I’m probably going to have 60%. Maybe 70. Thanks for the rootstocks!
Here are four. Two are from March and two from April
Katy
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Nice! I wish I could grow the Asian varieties here.
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Hey all,
I do have an order of jumbo and regular sized trees with thetreestore.info this year…
just curious , @Stan mentioned the Department of Conservation trees…
Are they a good caliper sized thickness? Looking for at least Pencil thickness so I can whip graft this year (or thicker thickness is fine as well since i can bark graft). I wanted a few more rootstock so thought I’d check them out.
I buy from Missouri’s State Nursery. Sometimes their persimmons are large (1/4" and greater) sometimes they’re not. What you have to do is call them. They’re very friendly people and they’ll tell you the scoop. I did check a few days ago and they still have American persimmon available. They are so inexpensive and the shipping is inexpensive.
Dax
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Mine are not yet pencil thick even after one season of growth.
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I have seedlings I started this past spring that outgrew some of the seedlings I purchased last year. The way many places hack up roots it’s better to grow from seed yourself if you have the time.
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I really want to get into some persimmons for my yard. I’m thinking that Nikita’s gift hybrid sounds amazing. I have access to unlimited numbers of american persimmon seedlings in a nearby woodlot that I could potentially use a rootstocks. I’m guessing these are the southern 60 chromosome race but I have no way of knowing for sure. I could tag them now while they still have leaves then dig up a few of the seedlings once they go dormant this fall. I would then plant multiple per hole in my yard around thanksgiving and graft to them at the correct time next spring. I’d have to buy or trade for some NG scion wood, but assuming that is not a limitation, could this work? I would let the grafts grow out for a couple of months then kill off all but the strongest tree so I end up with one good tree in the spot I want. Has anyone tried something like this?
I bought 10 D. virginiana seedlings from Missouri Dept of Conservation, planted them in early 2018. All five planted in the ground survived, out of five planted in pots three survived. First year they grew very slowly, but second year the growth was much better. This spring, I grafted a number of hybrid and named American varieties onto them, using different grafting techniques, and all grafts took and grew very well on established roots. One very vigorous graft broke off in the wind, need to protect them by tying to a stick.
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I don’t see the reasons for grafting trees that are so small that they probably aren’t going to fruit for a few years anyways and that even if they did try to fruit I would want to remove the flowers/fruit to let them get better established first (although, especially with persimmons, I’d expect them to abort the fruit anyway.) I figure a persimmon isn’t ready to fruit until it’s at least over 1" in diameter. If grafting or aftercare were going to be impractical at the tree’s permanent location, I could see grafting and then keeping the tree in a pot or nursery bed for a year or something like that, but if grafting and aftercare in the permanent location is at all practical, what reasons would there be for doing anything else? I feel like the number of years to fruit is actually reduced by grafting once the tree is well enough established to rapidly rebound from removing all the top growth and grafting, and I think a higher percentage of grafts is likely to take… The only downside I see is that waiting to grafts means very vigorous growth from the graft that is more likely to break out at the graft and therefore probably requires slightly more work staking, but that seems like a very minor thing. I wonder if people graft small trees for themselves so often simply because that’s the standard way that commercial nurseries do it. Obviously if you want to sell a grafted tree, you have to graft it before you ship it/sell it, but if you’re grafting your own trees in your own yard, then it seems like there are better ways to go.
I think one reason for grafting before the rootstock is well established is that one is excited about a particular variety and finds the scion before the rootstock.
There’s no guarantee that I’ll have the scion in hand a year later.
Otherwise, I agree that its best to have the rootstock in its permanent location and well established prior to grafting, even if that means grafting a year later.
I’d much rather have an established in place rootstock and a scion in hand then a bench grafted tree to plant.
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Another approach for me could be to graft to the wild seedlings at their current location, then let them grow for a year, then move them to my yard. I’ll have choice of whatever size seedling I want, but I’m thinking smallish might have better survival when moved. I could even trench around them once the grafts take in hopes that would soften the blow of the move. So to summarize:
Will hybrids graft onto wild southern stock?
If yes, then should I (a) graft year 1 then move to my yard in yr2 or (b) move and graft in yr 1, or © move yr1 then graft yr2, or (d) buy a tree.
Well ,I agree that grafts take , and put on better growth with established root stock.
But for me it’s just not convenient to cover so much ground to remove unwanted shoots on them all in a timely fashion.
Much easier to check on them in a Potted nursery situation in one convenient spot, planting out later
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Grafting and then transplanting doesn’t sound like a good plan. I wouldn’t want to invest the effort in grafting and then have the tree (or graft) fail due to transplant issues. And persimmons can be tricky to transplant, I think especially because what looks like small seedlings are often actually suckers that have regrown after getting cut down or that are coming off the roots of another tree, so when you go to digging you may find that what you have isn’t actually a young seedling. I suppose you’ve got nothing to lose but time, but I might recommend hedging your bets with some seedlings. I don’t know if a well cared for seedling (possibly even direct seeded) couldn’t almost catch up with the average transplanted rootstock.
I’ve had some random apparent graft incompatibility (or maybe virus) issues, but generally I think just about any native or kaki persimmon can be grafted onto any native rootstock.
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If it was apple, I would definitely dig and move them this fall then graft in spring. I did that last year and it’s 7ft tall already even after my kid stepped on it and broke the rootstock in two as the scion was starting to show some green. I regrafted the rootstock back together and it never skipped a beat haha. But persimmons are not apples at least that’s my understanding.
Persimmon get a deep taproot. Easy to have failure transplanting. A started seed can get up to 30" just as fast as a MO or KS ordered seedling, for example.
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Thanks for the input. I was hoping to have a nice little established whip well on its way by the end of next summer by grafting. It sounds like that outcome is pretty unlikely if I go with the grafting route. I guess I’ll buy a tree, if I can find one. Can they be planted in fall or are they more like pawpaw and benefit from spring planting?
I graft mine to potted seedlings in the spring and plant in the fall. Mine have transplanted very easily.
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I buy bareroot seedlings then pot them up in late winter. I then graft them in May or June. They get overwintered indoors and planted in spring in case we have very cold weather that might kill the young graft. It seems to work well so far. The 2nd year trees put on a lot of good growth. The newly potted rootstocks I graft to only put on modest growth in the first year though so it seems that the barerooting process is quite shocking to them. Rootstocks I potted up a year prior to grafting show very vigorous growth immediately following grafting.
We don’t have wild persimmons nearby so I have no seeds to start my own rootstock.
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Do you overwinter then at room temp? Or do you have a cold spot inside?