This spring, I grafted/planted 121 trees on m111 in the orchard. Needing a heat-friendly activity today (read as ‘not splitting wood’) I took a formal inventory of the results.
Overall, things came up a little rough. 32 of 121 grafts failed… call it 75% success.
However, three varieties, Yarlington Mill, Chestnut, and Bulmers Norman accounted for 15/21 of those. Including Major and Duece de Charlevoix, 21/31 of the failures came from 5 of the 27 (?) varieties I planted. So, the others were 90% successful. (Is it bad that I don’t remember exactly how many varieties I grafted this spring?)
Clearly there’s some cherry picking going on in the data, but with the huge failure rate on the first three in particular, I am wondering if I got some bad scionwood or perhaps those varieties are simply more difficult to graft successfully. I’m guessing the wood wasn’t that great. Thoughts on this?
On the upside, all of the rootstocks are pushing decent growth this summer.
Also of note, several of the grafts that took showed virtually no growth until mid-late June. They were put into the orchard in early May. LOTS of snow this year and it took time for the ground to thaw. While they’re behind the rest, I’ve developed patience in growing trees. They’ll catch up!
Up next, I need to inventory the grafts that made it to the garden/nursery to get planted in the orchard next year. Stay tuned…