I’ve been sealing the ones I’m doing today very good but my concern is strong storms.
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I’ve grafted mulberries in each of the last two years. In 2014, I grafted 4 on May 12th and had one take (which was enough, as it was only 1 variety).
On May 25th, 2015, I made another 10 mulberry grafts and 6-7 of them took. So while maybe my technique improved (hard not to, when I was butchering them before), I think the warmer temps helped. Maybe it doesn’t need June weather, but warmer temps don’t seem to hurt any.
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Thanks Bob. In my head they are similar to persimmons and I learned not to graft too early on them. So later makes sense.
On persimmons I now check for really good bark slip. One year I grafted before really good slip and I got 100% failure.
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@tonyOmahaz5 @Derby42 Grafted Che to native Osage Orange today to determine if they are compatible. They should theoretically work because OO is as your aware the normal rootstock for Che. Could be like wild pears and not every cultivar is compatible. It could also affect fruit size, winter hardiness, and vigor. Hopefully the native rootstock will be an improvement over the typical rootstock. This will help us with the interstem portion of the experiment. I will start grafting Mulberry and Figs in the next week.
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Your Che grafts to native Osage orange should work. The male and female Che that I bought from Hidden Spring were grafted on Osage orange. What I did with those two were Bark grafted seedless Che from Strudeldog on top of them and used them as interstem because I did not care for seeded Che. I got 7 seedless Che scions Bark grafted on large wild mulberry understocks. 3 Bark grafted with Osage orange as an interstem then onto large wild mulberry understocks. 3 Osage orange Bark grafted to large wild mulberry understocks. 5 Celeste fig scions Bark grafted to large wild mulberry understocks. They were all air tight sealed with IV tegaderm that from my opinion were lots better than parafilm but a lot more expensive. I went out and checked on them today and some Che on mulberries showed some buds pushing. Too early to tell. In a month or two should see some results of take when the scions branch out. Very good signs so far.
Tony
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I will say that I am following this tread excitedly. I have all three and have often wondered if they could be cross grafted.
My Che is a great looking specimen, but I haven’t gotten fruit off of it yet. I always imagine being able to speed things up by grafting to mulberry because it fruits so early.
I hate to admit that my Che has my worst pruning mistake and I really should post it and ask for solutions.
Scott
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Scott,
I hope some of these Che scions take on mulberry understocks because We got wild mulberries everywhere from bird droppings.
Tony
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Tony,
I finished the Che on mulberry grafts. As your aware I tried seedless, male, and female Che using cleft grafts.
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Clark,
We got game!!! Let’s hope they take and everyone can have a Che on mulberry in their back yard.
Tony
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Tony,
Next weekend I’m grafting fig and hedge on mulberry and finishing up some mulberry grafts. Then it’s just a waiting game. The weather is perfect for mulberry grafts as you can see in the picture. The sap is flowing on the mulberry with daytime temps in the 70’s and evening temps in the 50’s so it does not get better than that. I grafted them pretty careful. I’m ready to get back to pears and apples I did sweet cherries and Che grafts all day.
Clark
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Clark,
Good news for now.
The Osage orange interstem is pushing green bud.
Che on Mulberries. They all pushing green buds.
I am very excited because every trial grafts either Osage Orange on mulberry, Osage Orange as an interstem then on Mulberry, Che on Mulberry are pushing green buds. More weekly photos to follow.
Hallelujah!!!
Tony
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Looks very promising Tony though we both know it will be a few weeks before it will take off or fail. If che take to mulberry that would be fantastic news for us since mulberry is plentiful here.
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Look at those thorns 
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Nice top work there Clark. All the trial grafts buds still pushing for me. Have my fingers crossed.
Tony
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The last step of the experiment was to try a few figs scions on mulberry.
Hopefully the che take on the wild osage orange or mulberry and are hardy to this zone. Many people discuss problems with che fruit dropping until they get fairly old so that may be another problem all together. I won’t discuss that a lot since it’s already been discussed here Che fruit
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Week 3. Here are the update photos of the Che on Mulberry grafts and Osage orange interstem. They are still growing.
Tony
Che on mulberries.
Osage orange as an interstem for Che and grafted on mulberry.
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Those look really good @tonyOmahaz5 . The che scions I added to mulberry 11 days ago are pushing growth already. The scions on osage orange have not pushed any growth yet. Part of it may be technique so before I forget to document it I used all cleft grafts to put the che on the mulberry. I used whip grafts to attach the che to osage orange. I used rind grafts to attach the osage orange to mulberry.The che on osage orange is seedless and the che on mulberry is both male and female varieties so scion could be influencing growth. Thank you @SMC_zone6, @tonyOmahaz5, @Derby42 for letting me help out with the experiment. It’s a project we needed to work on sooner but sometimes it’s hard to find the time and resources for these experiments. This is what the Che on mulberry looks like now
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Looks really good! My Osage orange rootstock I moved to the yard has been super slow to leaf out. It does look like it has some small green buds forming. It took the transplant kind of hard.
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Jason,
How is the Pakistan mulberry you grafted to native mulberry doing? If that grows in zone 5 or 6 we can take the experiment a lot further next year. I like the fact your using caulking instead of wax or tar on grafts because that may allow me to graft much later than if I used wax and still keep my seal on the grafts. As your aware later grafts are much more successful on mulberry, che, and osage orange but the warmer weather works against us on the wax making the seal. Trees always have some shock when you move them and osage orange are not typically vigorous until they get a little age on them.
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