First time grafter here. I’ve been reading and practicing and have a question on two pieces of advice I’ve seen here.
The first is to dip all your scion wood in a 10% alcohol solution and let them drip dry to kill any mold, etc that might be growing on them.
The second was to pre-wrap all your scion wood in parafilm and store it in the 'fridge until you’re ready to graft. That way, all you have to do is make your cuts and tape up the joint for stability.
My question, is can I do both of these things at the same time? (dip, dry then wrap)?
Also, if I dip the wood for sterilization purposes, should I put it back in the original bag? (will it get recontaminated?)
I think the ideal of pre-treating your scion wood in alcohol (or bleach) is excellent, although I’m not so sure about the strengths of the solutions. I would imagine that 10% alcohol is not strong enough but 10% bleach is too strong. Let’s consider, tentatively, 70% alcohol and some dilution of 5% bleach- not very strong, but strong enough to smell.
A fresh, clean bag is a great idea- one of those “might as well, can’t hurt” things.
That’s all, and a little more, than I know about that!
My scion-to-root-stock size ratio seems to me to favor a side graft or similar. I am still really just guessing but I’m not doing at all well in my practice attempts with anything but what is shown in these photos…if I can figure out how to post them: and not too great with the partial cleft type. I don’t know how much the very dormant dormancy of the root-stock is going to matter but I will carry on with attempting to graft onto these units as the year goes on. Tomorrow I have to go to the big city to see Bruce Springsteen so my new bare root stuff has to wait yet another day.
I’m really curious about the alcohol and bleach trials. Biology says that they both kill living tissue, and yet we know they can kill ‘germs’ without greatly damaging the host. I hope the processes work; they would be really handy tools.
I’m using alcohol and now bleach to sterilize my tools but I dry them before cutting tissue. It might not cause any problems but I just want to make sure. Bill
I bring a can of Lysol spray with me.It was recommended by a popular garden guy in the Seattle area.If any obvious disease comes about,because of it’s inability,then I’ll probably use something else. Brady
I would be afraid to use a full 10% bleach, as it might burn deeply into the buds, but weaker solutions react with, and kill, living tissue…but the outermost bark is dead cells and/or waxy coating.
Put another way you can rinse your hands in 10% bleach or pure Ethanol and they will chap a bit but you’ll be fine–you can’t gargle or douse muscle tissue with either one. They would harm us as biological hosts just fine, without an epidermis.
I smear a dollop of hand sanitizer (alcohol) on my pocketknife to sterilize it before I make grafting cuts. I use a paper towel to rub it along the knife blade until it dries.
I’ve never been concerned with grafting sanitation. It might help but have managed 90% takes on stone fruit T buds.
I don’t throw dirt in the wounds just wipe off the blade on my pants.
I typically have good intentions but usually fail to follow them. I keep a spray bottle with alcohol in my grafting box but often realize I just grafted 5 scions without ever picking up the bottle.
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?
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.
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.
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.
