Anyone have a suggestion for good places to get budwood for citrus in NC? I was looking at California’s CCPP and saw some really interesting varieties (like the Excalibur red lime) but it would cost me $80 just to get a couple pieces of budwood. Especially considering I’m a novice and my success rate will likely not be that high, I’d rather not start there unless I’m splitting the shipping and sanitation cost with other people.
Meyer lemon is one variety I’d like to find and I think it will be fairly easy, but if I’m looking for a less common cultivar where should I look? Florida seems to have a program, but I can’t figure out what they have or how to order.
Not sure if it really would end up being cheaper (depending on how many varieties you want), but Madison Citrus Nursery sells budwood and has some interesting stuff as well:
Oh wow that’s much better! More than 3 times the budwood for half the price. Thanks, that’s what I was hoping to find! Now I might need to find more ways to get rootstock quickly to use them, hahaha.
Maybe I can also find some people nearby to buy grafted ones to offset the cost to me.
Cool didn’t know Stan had an Etsy shop haha also he’s been holding out on me with the Avocado trees haha. Thanks for that, I like to buy from Stan, but most of my citrus is from Madison citrus and https://www.georgiagrowncitrus.com/
Due to convenience of their websites.
Meyer lemons do seem much easier to find, so maybe I’ll skip that. The Red Lime looks super fun and the Kishu Mandarin is highly recommended, but I’m not sure what else. Maybe some other kind of everbearing variety.
Meyer lemons are really easy to root cuttings for me, so you could always root a few cuttings and use them as your own little scion factory to practice your grafts with. Late spring through summer they root really easily, rooting them in fall and winter works but it just takes much longer. I don’t see a reason to graft a meyer lemon really, they perform good on their own roots, and I assume you’d be keeping things potted in your zone, though you could potentially keep a satsuma or kumquat in ground in the right spot. But my key lime and calamondin are both somewhat ever bearing, just depends what you want to have plenty of.
sadly they don’t yet have any Satsuma budwood yet although the Mckenzie-Farms guy @Stanthecitrusman that was mentioned above probably could provide you with such budwood, he has ‘Owari 874’ Satsuma, and he has ‘Brown Select’ Satsuma which is about 3 weeks earlier than the ‘Owari 874’. Some people say that ‘Brown Select’ Satsuma has even better fruit than ‘Owari 874’, yet I think that it’s only better in certain climates.
I actually ended up purchasing some from Madison Citrus Nursery in the fall actually! Unfortunately I did a REALLY bad job with the bud grafting process and they all failed, but I plan to buy some more when the weather warms up because my experience with them was so great. I recommend them highly.
They have a greenhouse full of what they call “increase” trees, they are trees especially grown for grafting to root stock to make new trees, and especially grown to sell budwood as well. I’d imagine that at least once a year they’d make sure that they have enough left to sell for budwood, before listing for budwood. Then again maybe I missed that they had budwood for Satsuma up for sale. I have just noticed that some of their budwood shows up without typing budwood in the name, and some you have to type budwood to find the budwood.
I got 4 varieties of kumquat budwood (16 cuttings). I cleft grafted all of them and they all failed. All cuttings were quite thin (about 1/4" diameter( which is why I think the grafts failed. I have successfully cleft grafted citrus (from CCPP), figs and apples.
I’ve had far more failures with grafting citrus than successes, but I’ve learned a lot from it so hopefully I’ll have fewer in the future. Grafts failing is really frustrating, I understand that.
While I personally tend to use veneer and whip and tongue grafts, I believe must professionals Sunday exclusively T bud citrus. One year old seedlings are pretty good for this, since you can t bud low down, wait for it to heal, and then bend the rootstock over to get the bud to grow.
I’ve had very good success with simple cleft grafts for citrus, and thus far only a single T-bud that succeeded in over a dozen attempts in 2 years. I keep trying because everyone says “this is the way” but I must be doing something wrong. I’ve had nearly 100% success T-budding mulberries, though.
I’ve had all my cleft grafts take and most of my chip buds take. Citrus seems to take easily for me, actually everything I’ve had 70% or better with except peach/nectarine those are sub 50% I’d say
