Pear is pretty forgiving, so I bet that you will be fine. As SMC said- nothing to lose either and if nothing else, it is a good experiment to see how much leeway you have. I’d make several grafts, maybe a few of them with longer scions (increasing the chances that you’ll have a few dormant buds.
Edit: I overlapped your last post by a couple seconds. I think the big factors in your favor are: pear and that it is an established rootstock which is already leafing out- if you were moving the rootstock too or if it was bare root, I’d be less optimistic.
Yup, definitely possible- as the scion becomes less and less dormant your odds drop, but at this stage you’ll probably be fine. I’ve had scions actually trying to leaf out in the fridge that still took (on pear).
Biggest risk is that the scion leafs out and uses up its reserves before bonding to the stock, so be sure to take steps to prevent drying and such, but really, this can work.
Parafilm is great. Easy to use, can seal entire scion with it, it holds tight at first and breaks down over time so it won’t girdle, and I just happened to have like a 4-lb roll of it I had borrowed from lab in grad school for other household purposes (mostly sealing petri dishes from edible mushroom culture).
I am comfortable grafting w/ most small, sharp knives I’ve used. That said, my own favorite is a folding box-cutter–sharp, easily replaced blades, and the folding handle is heavy, so that thing feels very secure/comfortable in my hand…more than any of my regular pocket knives.
I don’t advocate half-arsery in general, but I have noticed if you wrap tightly and graft at a good time, cuts don’t need to cause the stress they initially did for me chasing perfect, matching cuts and a seamless union–I’ve whittled the cuts down a couple times to better match, messed with a planer, and parafilmed grafts where I could see part of the union had small gaps, and I admit that was by no means ideal, but even those grafts took with 70% or greater efficiency. Not saying to try to cut poorly, but the process is more forgiving (at least under ideal conditions) than might be apparent from some of the material I’ve seen on Youtube or in online writings…
In the cases where things looked at all questionable or new growth was wilty due to lack of moisture as it pushed growth faster than the vascular tissue could keep up with, I have had good luck assisting the materials by taking pots into the garage or close to the north side of the house to reduce sun and wind, stripping 1/2 to 3/4 of the leaves, or putting a bag over the emerging scion for 2-3 days as the cambium caught up. Any of the 3 or a combination can be very helpful if you grafted at all late.
Less awesome: I had some small, new grafts I put in a corner of our new yard, and discovered that even though the plums were very vigorous, the underlying wood was weak enough the deer pulled the scions clean off in browsing them–I had nice, 2-foot trees, now I have 8-inch rootstocks with a sick/dead whip-and-tongue cut at the top of them…
city, as far as your no longer dormant scionwood, see #4 above. The problem, or at least a major one, with the wood you have is it will be pushing growth faster than the knit is healing to send that growth water and other reserves. Anything you can do to slow water loss and/or that growth is to your advantage until things are better-aligned.
So you could bag and/or parafilm the entire scion.
You can bag new growth with a zip-lock or bread bag.
You can possibly move the tree (doesn’t sound like it) or at least focus on grafting on the north side or trees which are not on south-facing slopes to try to reduce sunlight and especially the increased demand for water…
note the bread-bag means you may also have to splint the graft heavily, as the bag is a bunch of extra wind resistance on that graft union…
I’ve had great instant success/gratification with cleft grafts on plums/apricots/apple trees. I’ve found them to be very forgiving. I just use parafilm to wrap the graft area. I haven’t been wrapping the scions as I haven’t found it necessary and I’ve had 90% take. I just did some persimmon cleft grafting for the first time ever and the 5 scions I grafted are all leafing out now so they look to be fairly forgiving as well, as I am by no means a grafting expert. I think the weather out here also is a big aid.
Cleft grafts on peaches/nectarines are a different story. Last year I made 12 cleft grafts and only had 3 take. This past month, I decided to try bark, chip, and t-bud grafts to try and improve my success rate. I’ve had about the same percentage of chip grafts appear to take, 2 or 3 out of 10, although they have not leafed out yet. I just did the t-buds, so the jury is out on them, although the operation seemed to go pretty smoothly.
The bark graft looks to be the big winner for me. I’ve had 3 leaf out already, with only 1 or 2 that didn’t take so far. I for sure wrapped the scions entirely in parafilm and wrapped the graft area with electrical tape to keep it tight and covered up the entire tree (very small) with a Home Depot bucket to protect it from dislodging. 1 week later, 2 leaf buds are breaking through the parafilm.
To get a smooth level plane on the scion for the bark graft, I first made a long diagonal cut with a knife and then used a small block plane to smooth and level it out.
I encountered a very similar situation a few years ago. My friend’s old Moonglow pear tree had already leafed out at the time. I was able to find some wood with still fairly dormant buds at the base of some water sprouts.
These water sprouts were in the shade since the tree already leafed out.
I used the sections at the base of these water sprout shoots for grafting onto an Asian pear tree.
I did not do many grafts. At least one graft was successful which is the one I’m having now. Don’t remember what happened to the others.
It took a few years for the one branch to set fruit.
I’m not sure if the slow fruit set is related to use of very dormant buds or it’s the nature of Euro pear.
I have grafted 1 tree (asian pear), and that was with help, but it was successful.
This year, I’m going to do that again, and also try my hand at grafting over some mulberries. I grabbed the scions from the local tree I like a few days ago, have them sitting in my fridge, and will whip & tongue them when the rootstock starts pushing leaves.
@thecityman, it’s timely that you resurrected the thread, it’s grafting season again! I agree with @markalbob 's point #3, at least for apples. Last year was my first grafting year, and I sweated over those grafts, trying to figure out the right type of graft for each scion and stock branch combo, trying to get very smooth cuts (impossible for me) and trying to get perfect contact between scion and stock. Even so, I mangled quite a few grafts. But on the apple and pear grafts, almost everything took—whether cleft, whip and tongue, or bark graft. (Although some of the graft unions are ugly as sin! Bulbous knobs!) This year I’ve got a lot of family stuff going on and my concentration is lower, and I’m just doing cleft grafts for all my apple grafts, and, due to size differences of stock branches and scions, just matching cambiums on one side of the graft. If I get a good percentage of takes, I’ll know that last year’s painstaking efforts were unnecessary.
Lot o’ good ideas and info here. I’m yet to make my first graft but I guess it has to be done very soon because I received some root-stock (very dormant) today, and I have some scions of very questionable quality that have been too wet in the fridge for too long. All this came about because I found an old apple tree in very poor condition and almost completely overgrown (with ultra tasty fruit) so I’ve opened up the canopy hoping to rescue it and I quickly read up on how to cut scions, and graft, etc. The nursery was very slow in sending the root-stock. Trees flowers, etc., have been budding out here for a month (W. Oregon). One other thing…since the tree was so overgrown, last year’s growth averages about two inches long and 3/16" thick so I cut scions which include two year’s growth. I have the tools and supplies needed but, dang…poor circumstances. I’m not only new to grafting I’m new to orcharding and I’m soaking up a lot from the interwebs in general and from this excellent forum in particular. Whew…any ideas? Thanks in advance; it’s been fun to read stuff here.
I forgot to mention that the root-stock is all larger caliper that any of the scions so that makes W/T grafting weird…not sure what to do about that. Also, I realize that I haven’t asked any questions per se because…I don’t know. I am in a ‘where do I go from here’ mode.
Welcome Steve,
Give it a shot it may or may not work, don’t get discouraged if the grafts don’t take. Wait until later in the summer, cut more scions and try summer budding. Then you will have learned two grafting techniques. Plus you might just discover a new variety, or rediscover an old one.
While doing some cleft grafting for the first time, I learned that the clefting tool I just purchased would not split the 2 inch diameter Apple tree trunks!
A one inch chisel split the trunk easily and then I held it open with the pointed lever on the clefting tool while I inserted the scions. Hope I get a good take so I don’t have to plant more trees.
I considered bark grafting, but I thought cleft grafting might be easier for a rookie like myself. I use an omega type grafting tool for the bench grafts and by the last few grafts, the blade on the tool was so dull it would not cut. Used T/W on these, but I do not like cutting toward myself with a very shard knife. I’m going to order some more blades for the grafting tool for next year. Looks like a blade on the grafting tool is good for about 100 cuts
Thanks, Chris. I had envisioned this as a path forward, but having newcomers disease I’ve been hesitant to do anything for fear of not doing it right. One very hopeful outcome so far is that my efforts to preserve the original tree have paid off; there are quite a few healthy buds already, and they are exposed to way more light than they had last year. At the very least I should have much more to work with this Summer and next year.
Thanks Mamuang. I have serious doubts about tackling that WnT method. I will look at alternatives. Since I have four root-stocks I may practice a few times on the many deciduous trees around here and then try different methods. The ultimate goal is to save the genetics of the original tree. I’ve only eaten two apples from it but that was enough to launch a full-on effort to propagate it.
Seedy Steve
I have enjoyed Stephen Hayes’ vids, no fancy production, good stuff. I just realized that while other types of grafts depend on the bark slipping well, the whip graft does not. I have this very dormant root-stock so I’ll try, as Scott suggested, to bench graft all of them and see what happens. One can only hope that I’ll have enough success with enough techniques over time to save the genome of the tree before it or I keel over. Maybe next year I can find an expert here to determine if this is a $port or a known. We have the Home Orchard Society here who’s big yearly extravaganza meeting with lots of people and free scions, etc. is today. I had planned on going, but I started out today (2:30AM) which is my birthday, in the ER…first time I’ve ever volunteered to go there…ha ha. Come to find out it’s nothing serious but I’m not in Orchardist Paradise today. Thanks all for the responses!
Sounds like you have the resources, the desire, and the determination to keep the genetics of that tree going. Now you’ve also found the right place to ask questions and get experienced guidance, not just on grafting questions, but also in growing out healthy trees. You are going to succeed. It’s just a matter of when.
You must have been pretty worried to volunteer to go to the ER on your birthday, when you could have been doing something much more enjoyable. It’s good to hear that it was nothing serious.
I want to encourage new grafters to try three different approaches.
Learn a cleft, a chip, and a whip. Here’s why.
A cleft is adaptable to a wide range of scion/stock sizes, it is straightforward, and it’s forgiving. I use it in spring grafting.
A chip is easy, it works, you can see what you’re doing- all you need is a clean section of stock and a dormant bud and some wrapping/sealing material.
A whip is fast, easy, works well, heals cleanly- and once you’ve done a few of them you’re able to add a tongue to it and make a whip and tongue, if you want too. A tongue is pretty nifty, if not really essential, because it helps you hold the pieces together while you get them aligned, and it provides more contact area for the parts to knit together.
The mechanical part is fun, and eventually it starts to come pretty easy. I still have trouble sometimes getting cuts right sometimes, but I’m given to clumsy twists of the wrist and such. Mostly things work out pretty well.
What I think I didn’t pay enough attention to early on was the temperature side of it. Pear and apple, my first concerns, will callous over when it’s still pretty chilly, relatively speaking, and plum puts up with a lot, but peaches and 'cot are temperature-fussy. That must be why my success rate with those approaches zero. Sigh … So you have to factor that in, too.
…when you could have been doing something much more enjoyable. Ha, great way to put it MuddyMess. Almost all the trees, bushes, berries, etc., that I planted last year (first year) are budding and flowering. Most of the ones that aren’t are late bloomers anyway. A few are suspicious. Grafting is the New Horizon. I appreciate all the replies and excellent ideas.
Welcome Steve. Like you, I’m pretty new to orcharding in general and last year was the first year I ever did any grafting, thanks to the helpful encouragement of the people on here. I want you to know that even though I knew very little about it, I actually had pretty darn good luck. I also wanted to tell you how fun and rewarding it is to see a graft take and start to grow- knowing it may become a tree that you basically “made”. I did bark grafting with great success, so mamuang is right about that. I did many of my other grafts using an Omega tool as blueberrythrill just mentioned above. You can buy a cheap one like mine for about $15 and I honestly don’t know why they aren’t more popular. I had 0 knife skills and when trying to cut and match grafts by hand I often scooped them or otherwise cut them in a way that they didn’t connect well. The omega tool and the attachments that come with it give you several choices of patterns- some locking- that work GREAT. SO I encourage you to google “omega grafting tool” and search it on amazon and give it a try. A great option for beginnings. But whatever you do- just go ahead and do a bunch of grafts. The more you do the better you get (on any technique) and even if you have a low percentage of success, if you do large numbers you will have some that will make it, and its very exciting when that happens! Good luck.
Great advice. Prior to this year I mostly did W&T grafts but this winter I put on a lot of cleft grafts (Frost pear was one). After loading a few cleft grafts I have about decided it might be the easiest of the two. Both seem to get high take rates. Another bonus is that these are not so time sensitive. I have been grafting since December and most all are starting to grow. Last summer I did a few chip buds which was easy to load with a good take rate. The one additional method that I have started doing with a good take rate is what I call side grafts. Bill
