Hello, I’m new to grafting. I made some cherry grafts this summer but unfortunately all failed. I would like to ask for some advice.
I tried grafting Ranier onto Bing. I used this year’s growth from the Ranier and made T-bud grafts onto the trunk part of the Bing. The bing cherry’s trunk diameter is about 1", so maybe 3 years old.
I tied the grafting area with raffia & wrapped with parafilm.
Petiole stayed green. After 3 weeks, I touched the petiole and it broke off. I removed the raffia & parafilm. Grafts dried and died. I tried some lateral grafts and they didn’t make it either.
When doing t-budding, I keep the grafting area tied & wrapped until the following year?
I have also heard that it is challenging to graft buds onto trunk/old wood. Is that true? For next year, should I try a different combination instead? For example:
bud from new year’s growth + rootstock that is also from the same year or the year before
Would that make it easier to bud graft? And for cherries, which budding method (chip vs T) would be better?
Welcome Ping, I have found cherry and peach to be near impossible to either chip or T bud. You need to cut back the top enough to get 1 year old wood, then use either a whip & tongue or a cleft graft. You will have less infections or places in your bark for infections to begin if you work with new growth only. If you use either a cherry plum or Adara plum interstem to graft onto your one year old cherry growth, then you can use these to receive either T bud or chip buds with more success. It took me a number of failures before I learned this way as I top worked my sweet cherries over to plum varieties.
Dennis
Kent, wa
You can’t T bud or chip bud into old thick bark. You need to bud into vigorous new growth. This applies to basically all fruit trees. Peach, nectarine, plum, apricot are all easy to T bud onto vigorous new shoots in early summer. Cherry is more challenging but doable. If necessary cut back the rootstock to get the vigorous new growth.
I agree with fruitnut. I tried many buds on wider stocks over the years and got more than 95% failure. So you can be assured that is what did in your grafts. It works well on any fresh shoots. I do lots of fall T-budding on this years growth with stone fruit and have a high success rate.
Thank you everyone for your replies! I think that was my mistake. Next year I’ll try grafting on new growth.
Does anyone by chance know which cherry varieties are resistant to bacterial canker? I just noticed that my 3-in-1 combo cherry got bacterial canker on at the Royal Ann end and spreaded to the trunk. I had to dig up and toss the entire tree.