I know this has been covered in bits and pieces on this forum, but in my search I mostly came up with passing mentions in other threads or really old posts.
What is the best way to graft cherries?
I have a red cherry that has really been struggling to set fruit. It came from suckers of my grandad’s tree. Blooms beautifully but only a very few fruit. I believe it is a sweet cherry, but to be honest I’ve only tasted one or two. The birds got all of the 3-5 cherries last year. My thoughts are that it either needs a pollinator or is a rootstock variety.
I was able to snag some scions the other day from the big black sweet cherries at my parents house to work with. No idea on variety, there were 3 on the property 30 years ago when they bought it. My grandfather called them “Blackhearts” I think that’s what they called all black sweet cherries when he was a kid. I’m hoping to get some successful grafts this year because my parents trees have entered a steep decline. Not sure how many more years they’ll live.
I’ve got two in ground red cherries and about 4-5 I’ve potted up from suckers in my yard. What’s the current advice for grafting cherries with a high success rate? I’d like to end up with a branch (or a few) of black cherries grafted to the in-ground trees for pollination and at least one successful graft on a potted tree. My wife and I are moving to a new house eventually and I’d like at least one to take with me.
No cherry expert here… but I planted a lapins sweet cherry in 2018… and it refused to bloom for many years … and then the last couple years finally started blooming… with very heavy bloom last year… but ripened no fruit.
It did set some fruit last year but they all dropped before ripening.
A couple springs ago I got scion wood of montmorency pie cherry… and I added 5 grafts of montmorency cherry onto my lapins tree.
I grafted to limbs that were in good positions on the tree… getting really good sun (high on the sunny south side).
@TNHunter, when did you graft? You’re probably similar to me climate wise (I’m 7b, southern VA piedmont). I’ve read some folks say timing is important, but I also know region impacts what is considered “correct” timing. I’m probably making too big a deal out of it, but I have some cherry trauma in my past lol. Cherry is actually the first thing I tried to graft and after many many tries following any advice I could find, my success rate was 0.0%. Cherry, from this very scion source, convinced me not to try grafting anything else. Fast forward almost a decade later, I find this forum and learn that the wild cherry I was trying to use as a rootstock as a teenager isn’t even graft compatible with sweet cherry lol. All this time I thought grafting was just a magic art that I could never learn. Makes me wish I had tried something else.
I grafted when my lapins started pushing new growth good. Shoots and small leaves… and the forcast had no serious cold spells in it for the next 10 days.
That is what I look for… no matter if it is cherry, apple, plum, goumi, persimmon… etc.
Persimmons come out much later than others. It may be mid April here for persimmon grafting. Everything else is done before that.
Thanks! I’ll package up my scions a little better so my wife won’t complain as much about the sticks in the refrigerator and plan on waiting to see new growth. Appreciate your input!
Side note, would you want me to mail you a Scion? I didn’t realize how rough my parents trees had gotten. They’re clearly at the end of their lifespan. One is dead, the other 2 pushed very little growth. I’d be happy to send a scion to someone who wanted to try it just to add insurance in case my grafting fails. They are sweet black cherries. Whatever variety they are I’d say it’s an old one. I’m estimating these trees to be 40-50 years old and my area, especially then, wasn’t known to be on the cutting edge of anything.
I researched grafting cherries pretty extensively before I attempted to graft my first cherries. Cleft graft seems to be what most people had success with. I cleft grafted 10 cherries scions both sweet and tart onto Mazard root stocks. I had 100% takers which really surpised me. If the scion is smaller diameter than the rootstock push the scion over to one side to align the cambium.
This past summer I used my multiude of cherry rootstock suckers as test subjects for my first time grafting. Got around 50% takes on chip budding and my bark graft also took.
