Burying the graft union, persimmons?

[Rawnutphobic]

I’ve read if you bury the graft union that if it dies back from the winter, the grafted variety will send up a new shoot and not the rootstock. Is that true? Any downsides to burying the union?

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Some old thread talking about it here…

Good or bad to plant trees with graft below soil?

https://www.starkbros.com/growing-guide/printed-guides/category/14 “For standard-size peach trees, situate the bud union 1 to 2 inches below the soil line.” Here in zone 4, we are encouraged to plant tender things (like peaches) with the graft union buried. With cold and short seasons, there is already a tendency to lower vigor so size can be controlled by summer pruning and heavy bearing. Having the union buried and forming it’s own roots can gain you that extra 0.5-1 zone hardiness in a te…

I do see some people like have the dwarfing / some soil disease resistance / early bearing of some rootstocks. and some people seem to say in northern orchards afraid of tree dying back to its roots on a freeze like kaki, so want to risk planting it deep.

I wonder if planting too deep is 1, hard to do on heavy/stony soils, and 2. might be too wet the lower you go. As a compromise (if determined to get it on its own roots), I wonder if you can plant on a slant (almost planted horizontally/flat) then with the scion just barely sticking out of the soil and then just train it upwards that year (by going the green new growth up a small pole/stick). This is assuming the scion is already grafted last year to the rootstock as I assume getting it dirty/wet during the graft healing process isn’t good.

Whats the reason why people specifically say to plant above the ‘root flare’ specifically if someone knows?

[evilpaul]

Unless there’s an obvious difference between growth from the rootstock versus the grafted variety you wouldn’t know which was sending up new growth unless you partially dug up the tree to look and were able to tell if it was coming from above the graft or not.

Possible downsides are girdling the tree and/or rotting the trunk. Which are sort of bad.

You could do the pile of leaves/straw/hay/whatever in a cage around the base of the tree during the Winter and remove it in the Spring. If your persimmon tree is dying back to the ground on a regular basis I don’t think it’s going to work for you unless you just like twiggy, large-leafed foliage.

[disc4tw]

Recently someone told me they began planting their persimmons a foot below graft union to improve cold hardiness. We’ll see if it works out.

[scottfsmith]

@evilpaul

Unless there’s an obvious difference between growth from the rootstock versus the grafted variety you wouldn’t know which was sending up new growth unless you partially dug up the tree to look and were able to tell if it was coming from above the graft or not.

One advantage of doing a foot is it would be easy to figure out if a sprout was the rootstock or not. Anything less and I agree it would be hard, unless the rootstock was a different species.

[GeorgiaGent]

The cage would have to be rodent proof as they would use that for shelter and girdle the trunk while inside

[GiovanniDoe]

I think that as long as your soil is fluffy, not heavy, so that it has good air flow for some depth, burying the graft is fine. I have found that burying a plant at a deeper depth than originally planted in a pot is not as toxic as nursuries say, so long as the soil is conducive. For Asian persimmons grafted onto American persimmon, I was able to guess where a sprout came from by examining the leaves; the Asian ones are shiny and the American are more dull/flat.

[Rispa]

Worked on a grapefruit I didn’t cover in a timely fashion test before last. From what I understand you should only do it on plants that can root from cutting.