Since this is a beginner grafting guide, please allow me to show you a couple heart-breaking examples of what can happen if you fail to properly brace your grafts.
These photos are of two apricot grafts I was very, very proud of and excited about. In both cases, these had originally been well known varieties that I bought as bare root trees. So they originally came with good fruiting tops already grafted onto rootstock. However, a couple years ago BOTH of the trees died, but they had been in the ground 2-3 years and so the rootstock had already sent up some suckers. I took 2 whole years to let these suckers grow into approx 1 inch caliper trees that I then cut off and bark grafted known apricots to. I was excited to get 2 takes this spring. I spent the whole summer watching them, and they grew so incredibly fast that I ever pruned them 3 times over the summer- partly to start shaping them as hollow-centered, well spread trees, and partly just to make sure they didn’t get too top heavy or wind-resistant that could cause them to break.
As you will see in the photos, they had formed VERY thick connections- especially one of them had over 1/2 inch caliper on the graft to the 1 inch tree/stock, so it seemed like a VERY solid tree. The other one seemed strong as well, though it wasn’t as large. I had them braced almost all summer. I had simply attached a wooden dowel that was about 3 foot long, with about 18 inches of it attached alongside the rootstock tree, then it ran up, past the graft connection, and about 18 inches up the scion. I had used tape to attach the brace and it had done it job well.
Just over the last couple weeks the tape holding my brace was started to girdle both the rootstock and the scion since both had grown so much. So, seeing how large and solid both the grafts were and knowing they had both been callousing for more than 3 months, I took them off (like a fool).
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night to an awful storm with high winds. I literally laid there in my bed thinking “oh no, why didn’t I rebrace those grafts…I bet they are doomed…I’ll be so upset.”
I go out at daylight and sure enough, total destruction of all my work! Please folks…brace your grafts and leave them braced all season if not 2 seaons!!! You don’t want to feel like I do or see this…
Wide view of both grafts showing how nice the bottom rootstocks were and how large the tops were (even though I’d pruned them back 3 times!)
This is both heartbreaking and a little educational. Here you can see that the new bark graft had grown as large as the original tree rootstock (that is the DARK area on right). The bright colored wood left on the rootstock as well as the bright colored graft wood on left show how much this thing had grown since i grafted it as a tiny twig that I shaved and slid under the slipping bark of the rootstock.
Here I’m holding up the broken scion to show how large it had become. But again, I had trimmed it back HARD 3 times already. If I had just braced it extremely well with an independant, tall stake and let it grow all summer, it would seriously have been 6-7 feet tall! Instead, its just broken like my heart! ha
Hope someone learns from this. I knew better but got lazy. Don’t do that!
