First Attempt at Grafting Stone Fruit

My first foray into grafting. I put on 42 grafts, plum, pluot, apricot, aprium, cherry, nectarine, peach onto a few of my trees… apricot, pluot.

Now surely many have not taken at all, or seemed to take then seemed to dry out.

Some successful (?) grafts. Question mark because I’ve read grafts can fail even a year or more later. For now though these have all taken, meaning they are getting nutrients from the base tree.

It’s interesting to note that these grafts that have taken have much, much more growth than any part of the parent trees. The grafted growth is from 6 to 18 inches…I don’t think there is a single branch on the parent trees that has grown more than a few inches.

Some photos below.

Shiro Japanese Plum and Shaa-Kar-Pareeh apricot/plum hybrid on my older pluot tree. It’s interesting that I put Shiro into several trees and those grafts seemed to have taken on all of the trees. The Compact Stella Cherry did as well,. But several dried out and failed after 4-5 inches.

It’s been fun. It’s fascinating and I didn’t realize until I got into this that almost all of our fruit is grafted clones from, ultimately, a single parent tree for each variety.

Also a few of the Asian pear grafts taking off. Hosui and Raja on a Shinseiki.




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Congratulations, those all look very good. Those should be good as long as they don’t get knocked off or out-competed by higher limbs on the tree. The latter is a big reason why grafts fail, so if they look to be growing slowly and are lower down either cut out higher stuff or re-graft later to a higher spot. There also can be delayed incompatibility in some grafts which causes a delayed failure, but I have not found much of that at all on plums and pears. Persimmons and kiwis on the other hand it can be a problem for.

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Awesome! Where are you located? Not time to graft stone fruits here yet.

Thanks Scott. I’m hopeful but old enough to not expect everything to work out as I hope.

It’s such a fascinating thing once you are aware of it…grafting that is. I’ve been a gardener for many years and don’t know why I’m just getting into grafting.

The downside of some of these photos is my pluot that I’ve put many grafts on is not in the best spot for sun, so it wants to be leggy and reach for the sun.

I will do summer pruning as I see where the growth pushes… I had kept some parent tree growth to ensure sap was flowing, but except for fruiting spur growth I will prune away most of the other growth. I still have a few branches dedicated to the parent pluot. I got 2 dozen fruit last year from it as it’s just reaching maturity.

This year unfortunately a late freeze did my 4 fruiting age trees in as far as fruit. Froze the ovaries just as the petals were dropping. Only the 4th time in about 130 years it’s been that cold this late in the year.

Yeah I know, March 20th doesn’t sound late for most, but in south Louisiana it is…

Cheers

South Louisiana, Zone 9a on most maps. 5 miles north of Lake Pontchartrain.

Congrats. I consider Shiro an edible ornamental. I bought Shiro on St. Julien because I heard it can live very long on that root stock. I put it in front of the house by the sidewalk because of the attractive flowers.

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Yeah I’ve heard mixed results on thhe taste… Some like it and some don’t.

I am trying it for the color actually.

Thanks for the reply.

An update. I have 14 successful grafts of 9 different varieties on one tree (a pluot of unknown variety - probably Flavor King). Plum, natural apricot/plum hybrid, pluot, cherry, nectarine.

Some for cross-pollination, some for color variety, some for harvest time, some to create a fruit cocktail tree. Several have a foot or more of growth

Beauty Japanese Plum
Compact Stella Cherry 3
Shiro Japanese Plum 2
Howard’s Miracle Japanese Plum
Shaa Kar Pareh Apricot /Plum 2
Excelsior Japanese Plum
GB Goldensweet Japanese Plum
Flavor Grenade Pluot
Arctic Star Nectarine 2

A few photos. I’ve pinched the end growth of many of the longer taken graft growth to push laterals.



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So my most ‘successful’ graft broke in a thunderstorm. I should have supported it. It had three new branches each 12 inches or longer. It was growing like crazy.

Good news is I have another graft on the tree of this variety, Shiro.

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If you brace and tape it back together you may be able to save it. I’ve saved a couple like that.

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It’s a clean break that isn’t along the healing scar… It’s through the center of the wood.

It’s entirely possible this graft would fail later on anyway I think.

Thanks for the idea though. It’s not my only graft and I already resolved myself to a lot of failures when I started out.

In fact this particular branch of the host pluot tree had 3 different fruits grafted to it… The Shiro which broke, an Arctic Star Nectarine, and a Compact Stella Cherry… So I already was playing around a lot when I did the grafting. The parent tree branch is 1" caliper at the trunk. All the grafts were whip & tongue.

Here are photos of the other two grafts on that branch.


Very well done.

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The reason it failed most likely due to girdling. It appears you left the tapes on too long and you can see how the growth occurred outside of the tight points. Even if you had supported it, it would eventually fail in a wind storm. When I have to use rubbers to close a graft, I remove them within 2 weeks to prevent girdling
Dennis
Kent
Wa

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It’s possible. I used raffia for strength, then a bit of wax and parafilm. Topped with white electrical tape.

I came back and removed the electrical tape 3 weeks after the graft which was February 22nd. The raffia might have girdled it. I have many more grafts that I will inspect tomorrow and perhaps cut away the raffia to see if there is an issue.

Some of the diameter difference on the left side of the break is just the flap from the grafted wood that didn’t scar. I may take a closer look at it tomorrow

The majority of graft healing occurs within first 3 weeks, if by then you notice the graft union trying to grow outward you need to remove any ties that cut into the wood. I usually remove all rubbers then, and splint the graft for bird protection at about 3 weeks. You can remove the graft union tapes and lightly rewrappd it to prevent girdling
With soft wood such as Pawpaws you have to remove any tight ties sooner
Dennis

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As a reference, here is another graft on the same limb. It was put on the same day as my wind-snapped graft, though with much less growth.

A nectarine not a plum. I removed all of my wrapping.

You can see the raffia created grooves in the wood…assuming this is from the wood growing in diameter overall or perhaps just because the wood is slightly soft and the string compressed it. Or a combination of both.

This one at least doesn’t look to be girdled much though.

There are a few bits on the lower left that stick out but I believe that is the remnant of a bud that was covered up.

FYI

Hi Phil,
I do not use raffia for the reason you pointed out, better to have a more uniformly applied pressure than raffia provides to avoid the grooves being created that eventually weakens the graft union. My plastic strips are minimum 1” wide so I do not create the grooves in grafts. When I apply rubber bands over my plastic strips to tighten up a stiff graft I always go back within 2 weeks to remove the rubber. Otherwise I risk girdling the graft, similar to yours that failed.
Dennis
Kent, wa

@DennisD

Great info… Thanks. Next year I will look into rubber. How is it sold? Obviously not just rubber bands as they are nowhere near that wide. I did see an Australian or New Zealand video of a special made rubber patch that has a pin in it just for grafts. Of course I couldn’t find it when I looked elsewhere.

I’ve certainly learned a lot this first go around.

I think I saw the raffia being used on cleft grafts and I applied it to whip and tongue thinking I needed it for strength and to make better contact with the union.

Also using electrical tape… Upon removing it, it’s a bit hard and I was worried about breaking the scar tissue. Ended up cutting it but still felt a bit uncomfortable.

I found even applying parafilm was a bit hard to get a decent stretch while holding the scion wood in place (for whip and tongue). I need 3 hands apparently.

Though I know people figured out grafting literally thousands of years ago, I still find it amazing.

Happy Growing.

More of my grafts are failing. Not sure why.

I’ve gotten great growth then they start wilting and fail. The only thing I’ve done since the initial grafting was removing the electrical tape and raffia wrap, then rewrapping with parafilm. Some I removed all wrappings.

All the grafts were put on in the last week or so of February. Is this normal?


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Probably lost my most successful graft. This one had about a total of 4 feet of new growth if you add up each branch.

Looks like wind broke the callus. And by wind I mean a breeze. Aside from tropical systems, it’s really unusual to get more than a breeze near the ground level here.

I righted the graft and removed most of the growth…after reading about the water requirement for the new growth I thought if it has any chance of living I’d lessen the burden.

I think it’s lost though. It will be obvious in a few days.

Photos of near the graft and the removed growth.

It was a plum variety grafted onto a pluot.

So my first year grafting’s biggest lesson. Supporting the new growth.



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