Since summer’s started, I thought this could use its own topic
I’ve used my own wood for budding a couple of times, with limited success, and I suspect the quality of the budwood may have been a problem - I never seem to find many nice, fat buds to use
But trading and buying and mailing fresh budwood seems so problematic in the summer heat
You don’t need fat buds. But I like to see a visible bud by the petiole. On the lower portions of new growth there are nodes with a leaf that have no visible vegetative bud. I suspect there is a small bud in there and even those would work. But usually any 2-3ft growth of new scion wood has many visible buds for use so no need to hope on another option.
I’m thinking I’ll try to do a pictorial on T budding, maybe this afternoon. There seem to be a lot of people who have troubles making T budding work. It’s a very useful technique and not that difficult.
Absolutely do this Steven! As a person that’s failed at budding I’d like to see more proven methods
I’d definitely like to see that as well Steven. I had moderate success budding Satsuma using budwood that I collected from my own tree but have wondered about budding stonefruit and how you acquire and handle the budwood during the summer (assuming you’re budding new varieties from sourced wood).
I’d find that quite useful
I’ve read about upside-down T-budding and it sounds like a good idea - wonder if anyone has opinions
That’s the limitation of T budding, sourcing the budwood. It’s a big risk to ship green budwood esp if one isn’t sure of their techniques.
I got some pretty lanky looking Santa Rosa branches from @SanJoseFool last year which I reverse T-budded (bud still facing up) onto my Flavor Supreme. All four took off this year. In fact, I have a Santa Rosa plum on one of the T-buds!
With budding it’s never been very clear to me when you should push the bud to start growing. Is it better to cut back for force growth a few weeks after budding or isn’t better to wait until the following spring?
Following spring. The bud should stay dormant, but i will say i have seen them push still that fall and grow. Some budwood that i had gotten from Scott actually pushed a few weeks after budding it. It was a plum or plumcot…
Not quite budding time around here, but i should have a lot when i start pruning.
If budding in spring or early summer you can force the bud 2 weeks after budding. With our long season we can get many feet of growth the yr of budding. I won’t try to force without at least 3 months of good growing weather.
I finished my budding project today, thanks to members here with whom I traded budwood, and Fruitnut for his fine tutorial.
Failing any other source of Fuji, I found a few pencil-lead sized budsticks on my own runty tree and gave them a try. Next spring, I’ll find if I have a Frankentree - or not.
I also had occasion to note the sharpness of my knife, which started me to think that a nice sticky substance, kind of like blood, could be useful for sticking the bud into place on the stock before wrapping. For those of us a bit fumble-fingered, anywayhow. Sugar syrup?
I have a Toka plum and a Flavor Supreme pluot (no others in that family). They are both 6+ ft. tall and in 2nd leaf for me (acquired in March 2015). Does it make sense to exchange buds so if one tree fades I still have both genomes? If that is a good idea, I should do it for all my trees of which I have two in a family…they’re all the same age.
It seems generally prudent
I’ve lost several trees that I wish I could have perpetuated
Don’t see anything wrong with that at all if you like both vatieties
Excellent; thanks for the replies. I have two of this and two of that, and cross-budding/-grafting would be a protection of investment; but I also have some one-offs to which I hope to graft pollenizers. I suppose with the size and age they (persimmon, jujube, sweet cherry) are now that this Winter I could do a little scion swapping.
I always fret about losing track of what’s what and where
Although so many of my grafts fail that it hasn’t been a major problem - yet
Here are two photos of a t-bud that I did 07/05/16. I put two on it just in case.
Should I clip it or wait until spring?
it’s not very pretty so maybe I should wait and see if it makes it?
Kind of Off-topic but I am proud of this Whip/tongue that I did…
Done in the spring, can’t remember exactly when. Thanks @TurkeyCreekTrees
It looks like it may not wait for you!
I had a big 4 or 5 year old branch of Superior (my only one) break today…it was grafted on apricot (and that union was fine), it was where the apricot branch went into the main trunk…some rot there and the weight of all the fruit broke it…still hanging (tied it up) but we’ll see if i can get the fruit to ripen still (watch the leaves to see if they stay healthy looking or start to droop). So i took a nice cutting off of that and budded it to 4! different trees…10 buds in total. I’m going to saw that bad branch when the fruit is done and start over. I’ll lose at least a year of fruit…but oh well.
