I’ve found thicker cuttings work better. 1/4 -3/8” is ideal. They easily last several months in the fridge.
100% success except 1 variety where all failed. Maybe scionwood wasn’t the best. Cuttings were on the thin side.
In the PNW, greenhouse I think is a must have. I would be very keen to see any successful grafts that didn’t raise temperatures some way.
I did these grafts in late March/early April here in Seattle, mostly with very thin scions and no added heat. They’ve been slow to grow, but I think it’s probably safe to say they are successful at this point?
I wrapped the scions with parafilm but I didn’t stretch it quite enough so the buds were struggling to break through, and I carefully unwrapped most of them about a month and a half later.
I’m still pretty much a novice grafter, but despite this tiny sample size, it seems like success is possible without added heat if you use fully wrapped dormant scions on dormant stock, using cleft grafts.
The larger scions of another variety that I grafted a few weeks later (when the stock was already waking up) still show green when scratched, but no buds swelling yet, so maybe earlier is better? Or maybe that variety is just harder to graft, who knows!
Very impressed!
I grafted few more feijoas about 14 days ago. First ones are showing some life, hope for some more takes. It seems like that for my cold 7A climate mid June and shade works the best. ! Arhart and kakariki. Arhart is supposedly 14 days earlier than the other early varieties so I have high hopes it can ripen outside in the ground
What kind of success rate are you getting when cutting the rootstock completely back?
Thanks,
Ed
100%. I don’t think I’ve had any Feijoa failures this year. The weather has been much warmer and that’s been helping
Also W/T seems to heal beautifully. Here are a few graft unions from last year.
I went to this method:
Some Feijoa - pineapple guava grafting this morning.
Not sure if anyone noticed but I use to do all my grafts high on the rootstock. This year after the February freeze when I lost all in ground feijoas and loquats I changed my technique. I am grafting all my Feijoas and loquats close to the base of the rootstock so I can eventually get the graft union underground and long term hope the scion will develop roots just in case we ever have another abnormal freeze.
Some updated photos of the March/April grafts, most of them are taking but there are a couple that seem to have stalled a bit:
100% failure on my Feijoa grafts this year 
I had quite good takes last year grafting around the same time. I wonder if I chose the right scions to graft. I tried to cut one year non-lignified twigs from Stan’s bushes. I thought the hardened ones only had blind buds. I’m likely missing something.
You’re correct that the most lignified hardened wood is best for grafting. Even if they don’t look like they have eyes, there are latent buds underneath.
Looks great. Hopefully, I can graft some of my in ground plants next spring. Otherwise, it’ll be a lot of digging to get them out to put named varieties in their place.
I do not share this theory. For me the best wood is still green and buds visible.
I haven’t tried green wood yet, but I’ve had good luck with lignified sticks. I’ll have to give some green wood a chance next time!
I noticed that one of the partially buried branches on my main bush had self-rooted where it had suffered a little rot at the point of contact with the soil, so I removed that and potted it to see if it’ll grow. Strangely, the growth out of that rooting/damaged section shows leaves forming in triplets rather than pairs:
An interesting budsport… wonder if it’ll keep growing that way? Maybe I’ll try grafting this green wood back on the bush soon…
I visited Larry yesterday and collected a few sticks of budwood from his feijoa.
This is my first real try at grafting them. It was a bit warm out for me, and I had other things to attend to, so I quickly performed 1 each of: Bark Graft, Whip and Tongue, Chip Bud and T-Bud.
I used the more hardened end of the stick for all but the T-Bud. I’ll attach pictures later.
These were to my 2nd Mammoth that had died back, and I allowed to regrow multiple trunks. So I grafted to 2 of the 3 and left the 3rd untouched. I’d watered recently and bark was slipping.
T-Bud
Bark Graft:
Chip Bud:
Whip and Tongue:
…and thank you murky, for yet another attempt to propagate the old feijoa bush.
During this hot summer I keep pouring water every couple of weeks into the two air layer assemblies (moss-filled water bottles) and will see if any roots show this fall.
For good measure, I dipped some in rooting hormone and stabbed until some reused quick drain mix of unknown history that was in a pot on the back porch.
Nice. What type of graft did you do, and when?
I’ve added pictures of my new grafts to my post.
