Anyone here who went to the CRFG today in Sacramento?
The feeling going to the exchange today felt similar when I first went to Disneyland when I was a kid. There was so many scions. I ended up grabbing 20+ new variety for plum, peach, apricot, fig, cherry, asian pear, persimmon, and interspecific hybrid. One notable scion there was a mountain of adara scions which is highly sought for. I showed my wife my scions and she told me “I thought you were done grafting this year”
I also met Joereal my inspiration for grafting. Really nice and pleasant guy. He gave me tips on grafting.
Looking forward for 2024. Thank you to all the organizer, volunteer, and those that donated their scions. To those that haven’t attended an exchange I encourage you to attend. It will save you so much money rather than ordering online which I have been doing.
As I recall, last time a friend of mine went. She got a scions list for me. It didn’t have many stone fruits scions varieties for me to be interested to join. They seem very much into apple grow, dwarf G41 rootstock backyard apple grow. Whereas, it is my least fruit that I am interested to grow. My friend bought me the rootstock. Before I actually got chance to graft anything onto it, one branch broke off. It is about 45m~an hour drive depends on the traffic to their meeting place. If I want drive this far , there got be something unique/interesting to motivate me
I attend the Redwood Empire exchange in Santa Rosa. Very cool! I have lots of scion to multigraft some wild plums in the yard, a peach seedling I’ve had growing in an odd corner, top work an old apricot, and some misidentified “pluots”. Plus I have a handful of rootstock for a few more pears and such. Beautiful stuff.
Yes, you should! It is really fun and it is not too hard. I got around 80-90% take from the grafts i did last year which was my first time I just did lots of reading here and youtube. My old peach is now 1 in 20 and my plum is 1 in 29. My problem now is I’m running out of places to graft because I only do whip and tongue. Trying side lateral graft once our weather improves. You wont have that issue because you have hundreds of trees. It will also increase pollination.
Hi spurious I will let you know if I will have extra depending if there is excess because I need 5 inches per graft because I’m using it for interstem to graft cherries and I only have 3 because the limit is 2 per scion. Too bad there was like 100’s of adara scion in a big plastic bag and nobody was grabbing any of it. It was placed on the peach scion area and good thing I saw it and I notified the volunteers. I hope they kept it, it is a waste of scionwood if they toss it.
I grafted a sweet cherry, Nor de Chavannes last year, to a small tree grown from a Candy Heart pluerry pit. It is now five years old. The cherry scion grew very well, about 16 inches. I plan on grafting apricot and peach to it turning it into a fruit cocktail tree, four stone fruit varieties on one tree. Grafting sweet cherry to many plum/pluerry varieties failed, even to a Nadia cherry-plum hybrid.
I also attended a CRFG scion exchange in Soquel near Santa Cruz. they had many varieties but not Adara, I grew my own unknowingly from a pluerry pit. Keep experimenting, you may be surprised with your results.
