I put buds (taken from budwood) in my mouth while i’m summer budding. I only sharpen my knife.
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I guess the question is, how often do you wash your pants? 
Well, I’ve made two grafts and I have a good feeling about both of them…which generally means nothing. In the real world, I have found that some of the root-stock trees barely qualify as having roots. That makes me wonder if a treatment with rooting hormone would improve matters. I did find one post that mentioned the contentious nature of this topic…all the better. Any thoughts?
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Thanks to the encouragement, and many tips and tricks, from the respondees, I have completed my grafting of the rootstocks (last weekend). Three of the four units have two different kinds of grafts each.
Today as I walked around just checking I realized that I have committed a most grievous error with five or six of the seven trees I planted (3 Hazels and four apple root-stocks). During the whole week that I was trying to plant the trees the weather was stormy and raining heavily, with just little breaks in between. I think I was feeling the pressure, and ended up doing a ‘good enough’ job, I thought. Now I don’t think so. Most of the trees are planted quite deep. I made sure that the dirt immediately surrounding the tree was at the original soil line from the nursery but in order to achieve that the trees are at the bottom of five-inch-wide funnels, several inches below grade. This is Oregon: part of Fall, all of Winter, and part of Spring it rains quite a bit. Here’s my dilemma: should I try to lower the surrounding soil, out several feet all around, attempting to normalize the local environment relative to the tree or should I try to loosen up the soil and lift the tree up essentially replanting it? I received the trees on the 19th and finished planting on the 27th (busy week). Is it too late to mess with them? Would digging out around them be safer? Thanks in advance for any replies.
I would carefully replant them, but be careful not to tear or break roots. They haven’t been in the ground that long and i’m guessing are still dormant. Just make sure to water well after.
I’m going to try first grafts tonight, any pointers? Details here:
Thanks Chris…Indeed, it makes sense to give them every chance for the future. I realize this is not about grafting, so one last comment about this: I dig deep holes because I bury a hardware cloth cage (cylinder, no bottom) around the new trees for vole and gopher protection (a bigger, above-ground chicken wire one, too, for the bigger critters), so it seemed to be a daunting task but this is a long term affair so it pays to start right. Thanks again.
I’ll add one more thing, though it’s tangential to the grafting topic. This is not my photo, but if these root-stock units were apple trees it would exactly depict what I just grafted onto…one with decent roots, one with so-so roots, and two with essentially no roots. Since I know nothing about this topic, and since I’ve dealt with this nursery before re: problem specimens (answer = there is no problem), I just went ahead as though all was well. I welcome any opinions as to what to expect from these items. Thanks!
Something else to report that appears to have worked:
I received several pawpaw scions from Tony Tran here on the forum. I intended to graft them to 2 nice-sized seedling pawpaws, but had a clear excess of scion.
I also have a dozen seedlings from a pawpaw I harvested and seeded in St. Louis two years ago, these were all 8-12 inches tall, and in a bucket in front of my window, fully leafed out for over a month.
Although you aren’t supposed to graft or transplant pawpaw once they’re all leafed out, I tried grafting 3 of them a few weeks ago. They were so tiny I was almost root-grafting, doing whips on sticks maybe a half-pencil thick and even that had me going to where they swell right above ground level…even the cambium was white, instead of the usual green. Plants were dug out of bucket, bench-grafted, stored 1 week in wet sawdust to baby them, and re-planted.
Saturday night, after getting home from a week away, I see that one of the 3 is leafing out. We’ll see how the other 2 do over the next 2-4 weeks, but at least one took.
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Seedy,
If you’re grafting onto dormant stock, it seems pretty resilient–even the 2 in that photo with very little fiberous root have some root “bulb” for lack of a better term (the thick trunk) which should have enough carbohydrate stored to help push additional feeder root at the same time your graft is callusing. More roots are generally better, but bare-root trees can get by on surprisingly little, so long as you make sure they don’t dry excessively the first couple months.
Nice,
keeping the scion from drying out before the graft heals is our primary issue in success. since yours is budding, it stands to lose more water through the leaves. If you can, try to keep it from drying, which can be done by bagging the scion (if indoors, wind could tear the graft apart if the bag acted as a sail outside), wrapping w/ parafilm, covering the entire thing for at least half a day, 9AM-3PM for example, with a bucket, etc…
Thanks
Thanks. I hope the root-stocks work even if the grafts don’t. I’ll at least have the opportunity to try other and more grafts in the future.
Oh, this just keeps getting better. I looked very closely yesterday evening at my latest creations and I found that the root-stocks have come alive. There are tiny red leaves sprouting from the one or two very small branches that I left on each root-stock. Plus, the main sorta-side-whip on one tree is…upside down! I’m going to remove it and turn it around today because why not. It’s on the by-far best rooted root-stock. This will now have to be done very carefully in the field…more excellent practice. <(")
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I don’t know how I missed this excellent method but thanks for sharing. I see two advantages with your method. A small convenient tube that is portable and that it will stay on the blade a little longer if you choose for it to before wiping it off. Bill
This also looks like a great post for “Tip of the day”
And I quote:
“Another method of modifying the growth of apple trees is by upside down budding or grafting. More than 25 years ago I budded one-year apple whips, placing the buds where the permanent branches were wanted, but the buds were inserted upside down. This work has been repeated and a photograph of such a tree is shown in Figure 3. The buds start growing toward the ground, but the branches started gradually growing upward to form a spreading tree with
unbreakable crotches. In pears, such flattened trees bear earlier. In parts of Europe and California the branches of young pear trees are often tied down in a nearly horizontal position in order to flatten the tree and make it bear earlier.”
Alrighty then…I’m going to do it; just leave it upside down.
From “Arnoldia” --1950:
http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1950-10--dwarf-trees.pdf
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I thought that I had it figured out. I practiced the whip and tongue on scions. Well…
the rootstock is a lot harder wood than the scions and I had difficulty in making the pretty cut that I had made in practice. The 1/4 inch rootstock was more like 3/8 or bigger and I did not have (perfectly) matching scion.
My take is that it might be a little harder in practice than it is on paper !! LOL!!! 
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I like cleft or bark graft if the time is right.
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When doing a whip and tongue,I find that the wood on the root stock or tree branch is,most of the time,softer than the scion.So the knife slips through with much less pressure,as the tongue is being cut. Brady
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Seedy, I have read the same liturature, and in the paper I read the author had his tree still producing after 25 years. I was wondering how upside-down grafts would work. Let us know how they turn out.