I found the brittle/hard wood works better for cleft grafts than bark grafts. You need to cut the scion very long and thin so it will slip snugly into the split that forms in the rootstock, but that hard wood really tightly pinches the scion when you do push it down into the split. This one I posted up-thread shows what I mean somewhat:
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What I ended up with:
Albert’s Supreme
Albert’s Pride
Coolidge x2
White Goose
Marion
Edenvale Improved Coolidge.
The last one I cleft grafted. I think I only hit the cambium on one side. The leaves look a little sad. I nipped off other growth on this branch so hopefully it can push through
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I ordered 10 more varieties and that might be enough to finish topworking the rest of the tree. If not, I’ll do it again in a year. I’m basically grafting on one of every variety I can get my hands on. Will be fun to do a huge taste test at some point
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If anyone wants to graft Oktoberfest (which is a @Marta selection from seedlings of Mark Albert varieties), I’m going to be pruning this graft a little bit soon to allow the smaller graft of @LarryGene’s variety to catch up on the same bush:
I posted about both of those grafts in this thread when I first did them. Here’s the Oktoberfest graft in June 2021 (it was just called “Marta 10” back then):
And here’s that graft of Larry’s from right when it was done in March 2022:
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Is this a good time of year to graft these?
I haven’t tried at this time, but since this is a mild (El Niño) winter, I’m guessing it could work well this year. I’ve noticed mine have still been growing somewhat, even.
But I’ve had best luck grafting them near the end of winter, more like February or March.
I was just looking on Marta’s website to get more info about the variety, and she’s got a bunch of stuff available right now!
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Continuing my prior years’ success with early spring feijoa grafting, it looks like 100% (2 of 2) for the scions of Abbadabba I added to my multi-graft bush at the start of April:
I know there’s been some discussion in other threads about whether it is better to stump and graft low vs adding to the end of branches. I’ve had good luck doing the latter. Both of these scions were around 4 ft off the ground.
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I top worked my non performing Nikita to Moore, NW5, White Goose, and Arhart last weekend. Fingers crossed.
I also topworked a different seedling a month ago and it appears that most of those have taken. But I won’t celebrate until I see a proper leaf out of each.
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The kaiteri grafts on my seedling bush have taken at this point, but the others seem very slow. All my other fruit trees have shown success or failure by now. The persimmons are mostly growing strongly, and the citrus have either pushed growth or gone black.
So it’s hard to tell whether to try again or just wait. Btw, Marta has summer feijoa scion wood on June 1st for those who want to try…
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I currently have 22 varieties on the old feijoa after 3 rounds of grafting
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@Avofan . Curious how you did the labelling and how you chose the varieties. Did you snatch everything you could find, or did you pick certain varieties?
I just buy whatever they have at fruitwood nursery or reallygoodplants or elsewhere. I use a labelmaker for stickers I wrap around the scion and then if it takes I will make an aluminum tag. I guess the original plan was to figure out the best varieties for my area which doesn’t get very hot or cold. The tree is in semi shade and I’m curious if they need heat to sweeten. Now that I’ll be able to start doing taste tests this fall, do I prune off lesser varieties? We’ll see. I think it might be fun to keep them all so I can have taste test parties
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