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. <(")
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
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!!! 
I like cleft or bark graft if the time is right.
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
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.
For me, this whole thing feels like an adventure into uncharted territory, even though many have tread this path. After finding that article…what can I say…it might be kule! Thanks for the encouragement.
Daemon,
I’ve been grafting a good amount of years and can see scion wood size by sight now, it was not always that way so when I started out I used a crescent wrench to gauge size of rootstock and scion. When you find the perfect size use your pruners to cut it there on both rootstock and scion. Leave a bud or two on your scion. I bring this up because you brought up a good point on size of wood not matching up. When you take scions from trees everyone says grab pencils because that’s the most common size but you also can do more with smaller wood with clefts and bark grafts. Grab a few different sizes from large to small because that’s how actual trees and some rootstock are. You can cleft graft a small rootstock also. The rootstock or scion one or the other will always be harder so get a razor sharp knife or razor knife literally to make those cuts. Cut away from yourself always so you can really slice it because that’s where those clean smooth looking cuts come from. Just one clean cut is best or a couple for that rock hard wood but start from the top and slide the knife away from you each time.
I so appreciate this kind of info. In my case, the old tree, from which I removed some scions, was so overshadowed that each year’s growth was very small…and I didn’t know what to expect with the root-stock…my first time. There was a considerable size difference…1/2 inch compared to 1/8 - 1/4 inch. I did one little cleft graft and the rest were 1/2 sort-of whip grafts, and 1/2 sort-of side/bark grafts…four root-stocks, seven grafts. I did cut away from myself; that was still with me from Boy Scouts. For that reason the right-handed Victorinox is backwards for a right-hander when bench grafting, so I used a #7 Opinel that I have begun to hone to a single bevel. (I need some new blades for the ‘box’ knife.) I have high hope that I can preserve the genome of the old, decrepit apple tree in the woods. The two apples I’ve eaten from it convinced me any effort was justified. I did run across a good idea re: making little cleft cuts, ‘in hand’ so to speak: a ~6 x 6 inch (or 6" diam.) board with a hole in the middle big enough for a root-stock or handheld branch, etc. Use it as a guard on the stick-holding hand. Also, at this stage, I like your adjustable wrench idea. Thanks!
Just performed a bunch of very questionable mulberry grafts. I did a mix of whip & tongue and cleft on a bunch of branches on one tree. Everything just seemed so horribly butchered, and they’re all literally held together by duct tape. I see what people mean when they talk about bark slipping, because this was slipping everywhere.
No idea if anything will take. If so, I’ll never fret about grafting again. If not, well, the scions were all collected within walking distance, and I have no shortage of mulberry seedlings.
Not sure what you meant by bark slipping everywhere? It is sap that ooze out every where? If too much sap flow flooding the grafts then you can make some nick on the barks below the graft unions to let them bleed out so your won’t get flooded.
Tony
No oozing sap, but the bark would literally slip off the rootstock when I tried to cut. And I’m pretty confident that my knife wasn’t dull.
I see. If that was the problem then Cleft graft is work best. You just make the center cut down to an inch or so and push the scion in the cleft that way you don’t have to force the bark apart like in Bark graft.
Tony
Yup, getting those cuts clean is really hard–especially on the scions that you only have ONE of! One tip helped me that I figured out from watching a clip on how to sharpen knives on a stone–the guy said to keep your wrist locked while moving the knife. For sharpening, it makes it easier to keep the knife at the right angle. I extrapolated that to making a nice clean cut on a scion or rootstock–I find that if I keep my wrist stiff, my cuts are much more consistent and I can control the angle better. I make the movement all with my arm. It kinda goes against my training as a violinist, though–there, you want your bowing wrist relaxed and flexible.
So far, 3 of 3 of my veneer grafts are sprouting healthy leaves, and 2 of 4 of my semi-whip side grafts are putting out little leaves; the other two look like they may be starting to make leaves. One of the two is the (accidentally) upside down graft. Soooo…providing this isn’t all just last gasps from fading scions, it looks like my first grafting attempt (7 grafts on 4 root-stocks) is somewhere between 70% and 100% success…even the upside down one…bwaaahahahaa…
(I just remembered that one of my top grafts was a cleft graft…I don’t know which one. I’ll find out once the tape comes off.)
I had a disappointing grafting day. I grafted a lot but I didn’t walk away feeling great about it. I was disappointed to find that a large amount of my scion wood was not is very good shape. Some was pushing buds and had to be disgarded. Mostly pluot and plum wood. I kept it in a dedicated scion/beer fridge crisper but the sheer age of some of it made it marginal. Some of it I’ve had since early January. Each piece that I cut was checked for green. Lots of cleft grafts and omega grafts. All were covered in parafilm with the joints double wrapped in temflex splicing tape.
I grafted plum, pluots, aprium, cots, cherry, and most of my apples. Still need to graft pears.
This was a really tough year to gauge when to graft. I wanted to graft earlier when the scions were fresher but the freezing temps made me push things back. Unfortunately that warm spell earlier caused my plums and pluots to be fully leafed out. For me it’s much more difficult to graft to a tree that’s full of leaves. I prefer squirrel ear sized green.