I saw this graft line on a paperbark maple the other day and the stark contrast between the two sides stopped me in my tracks. It’s pretty amazing how grafting works and it is amazing how different the phenotypes can be while maintaining enough shared genetics to be graft compatible.
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That graft has nice clean lines for sure.
Above my first graft… bark graft mulberry on March 29… and then what it looked like mid August. It grew 8 shoots over 6 ft in 1 season.
Happy !!!
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i did the exact type grafts on my mulberry with 3 illni. everbearing scions. all died. im still wondering what went wrong. the parent tree had just started leafing out so bark was slipping. ive tried 4 times to graft this tree with no luck. the tree is healthy and vigorous. ive grafted over all my apples with 90% takes so im doing it right.
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@steveb4 … I am sure your grafting skills are not the problem there.
Some here told me that mulberry grafting works well in some areas… and simply does not in others. No doubt our climates are way different… perhaps mulberry grafts just refuse to wake up that far north ??
Perhaps you need to try grafting them later than i did… mine were just budding… perhaps yours need to be a week or two past that… into leafing out good to be more succesful ?
Not sure… but hope you have better luck next time.
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Would start by reading this thread
And this one
Mulberry make a nice graft line. Most of these photos was the control mulberry in my experiement. This first picture im pointing out the side branches i removed streamed sap for weeks. I bring this up because flooding of the graft may have been the cause of failed grafts @steveb4. @TNHunter had perfect grafts in his case because of timing and method and skills. Pointing this out because he made it look easy but it is actually not. It easier for some people than others due to perfect weather but method and skills must still be very good. @steveb4 your grafts likely failed due to our weather rather than anything else it can make things tricky. Flooding the grafts with sap causes failure everytime.
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‘Illinois Everbearing’ mulberry T-budded onto a seedling M.alba, around 1997.
Graft of Q.x humidicola (Q.bicolor X lyrata) on Q.bicolor understock.
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my 2021 and this summers attempt, i used a girdling cut below the graft to bleed out the sap some to hopefully keep the sap from flooding the graft. sadly they still failed.
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That’s beautiful when you get a full 360 of callous in the first growing season. Nicely done.
If its anything like persimmon grafting, the trick was waiting until the daytime temperatures were warm. Advice from other regions about timing relative to spring growth, or size of leaves, was useless for me. Some places it gets to 70 degree daytime in early spring. Here that could be June or July.
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My hardy kiwi grafts failed, I think from sap pressure. I haven’t grafted figs, but mulberries are related. I know people do tricks to manage sap on things like grapes and figs.
One that I recall is grafting dormant scion to green shoots. Apparently they don’t bleed, at least in some species.
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Although you’re a bit colder our climates are similar. I’ve had decent success with mulberry. Mine were W&T and Z-grafts though. I waited until the buds were starting to swell and try and time it for a week in the 70s which is the most challenging.
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This year, but swell and daytime 70s were months apart 
here. It was late June before we reached over 70 daytime high more than 3 days in a row.
I’ve not used it on mulberries, but do this one, extensively, on pecans and walnuts… it’s the ‘Sap-Stopper Modification of the Gray Graft’… it’s really nothing more than a simple side-veneer bark graft, but instead of totally beheading the rootstock, you just cut 3/4 -5/6 of the way through and ‘break over’ the top, leaving it attached, as a ‘sap-drawer’. Then, you make a vertical slit in the bark opposite the ‘hanging’ top, make a long, straight, sloping cut in the base of your scion, shave bark on the lateral edges to expose more cambium, and slide it down into the slit in the bark until the cambium at the top edge of the cut is just above the level of the partially-beheaded rootstock. Then wrap and secure as usual
Once the scion calluses in and is growing well, you can snip off the ‘hanging’ top of the rootstock, and affix a stake on the back side to diminish wind-throw or bird perching tearing your scion out.
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thats when i grafted but the temps were colder . maybe thats the ticket? like all my other trees i graft as they were budding out our have small leaves. if i waited for it to hit 70 here they would likely be fully leafed out. all those sweet cherry scions you sent me last spring, took grafted to my monty.
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Awesome on the cherries! Let me know how they do through the winter. Mine died last spring. I think it was the fluctuating temps in the late winter and early spring. I might just replace with sour cherries.
the -40 last winter damaged the north side of the tree some but none of the grafts died. so far out of the 6 varieties of sour cherry i have monty tastes the best to me.
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