I have been having a read about this forum and there is some excellent info it so i thought i’d join and try and learn a little myself.
I have not grafted any trees before and so this is my first time. I have the rootstocks which i have been keeping in a cold shed in the dark. The roots are wrapped bare root and in a damp/wet plastic bag, then that is all in a cardboard box.
I also have the scions and i have been keeping these damp and in the fridge.
Anyway some sources seem to suggest different ways for the grafting procedure. Im fairly certain i intended to “whip and tongue” graft but whethee i bench graft or plant first is the big decision.
I have 20 roots and hopefully enough scions (around 30, i’m assuming ill ruin a few).
I was going to plant 10 roots in pots and place them outside. Then wait for the buds to swell and then graft on with them in the pots.
With the other 10 i was going to “bench” graft them bareroot and keep them in a box with damp newspaper in the cold shed. I have heard that the grafts will then callus over in a few weeks. What i am confused about is, if i tie the graft with tape and cover it in wax, how will i know if the graft has callused over ?
My shed is faiely cold and dark. We are regularly getting night temperatures down to freezing and day time temperatures outside are probably averaging around 5 degrees celcius so around 40 fahrenheit.
Any advice would really be great. I’ll be sure to continue searching around the site and if i have missed a sticky thread that answers my question then i really do apologise.
Most of my previous grafts until recently have been W/T but I have turned to cleft grafting now. Cleft in my opinion is much easier to learn with high take rates. Wrap with parafilm and your grafts will almost certainly take. Some of the others can help more with the other questions. Bill
Keeping the roots damp, keeping the union of scion and root compressed and sealed from air and water, and you probably will succeed as a beginner with over half either method you describe. Bench grafting on a table indoors sure beats trying to graft to a freshly potted rootstock that’s not rooted in yet.) If you’re shooting for 100% success, be like Placido “practice, practice, practice”.
You won’t really know if they succeeded until they sprout. If you try to look you may ruin them. Your approach sounds good, look up good callous temps for apples to be sure you have a good spot. 55 is my memory of a good temp.
Thank you everyone that is excellent advice and hearing your comments makes me feel a bit more confident. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the options and different ways to skin the cat, as it were.
Thanks a lot for the advice. Could you cleft graft onto a fairly small diameter rootstock. Say 8-10mm? I got the impression cleft grafting was more for larger branches?
I have a couple of these and use them for at least half of the grafts I do… mainly ones where rootstock and scion are similar diameter. I really like them and they’re very easy to use. The match is usually perfect. You can buy extra blades off of ebay for a couple of bucks. They sometimes split after a good number of cuts but they’re double sided so just flip it over if they do. I’ve used it on jujube, persimmon, pawpaw, apple, pear, quince, and medlar with very few failures. One of the blades is a very narrow v so I like it for the smaller diameter stuff.
Although not ideal, I took really skinny scions I bought last year from one of the members here (whom I’ll not identify), not much bigger than stem of a q-tip, and did a “saddle graft” and I think all six I did that way took. Today I grafted a couple skinny scions not much bigger than the Qtip….via whip and tongue to little seedling rootstocks. Won’t know for a few weeks how this works…but I expect some to take, just don’t know the percentage yet. I’ll do some bark grafts, especially to ‘frankentree’ probably with some others of these little scions.
Still waiting on my roots from nurseries this spring. That’s what most of the pencil-sized scions will get evenly matched up to.
My stock suggestion to grafters wanting experience is that they should find a tree with lots of water shoots (those vertical, willowy sprouts that extend some feet straight up into a tree from the tops of branches) and take a few to practice on. Just try doing what you plan to do when you have your real rootstock and scions in hand.
I, too, have switched almost entirely to cleft grafting. I generally cleft to rootstock that is the same size. They are just so easy and fast…really fast. Also, the grafts are really solid once taped up…not easily dislodged by birds and the wind.
I just measured a couple of sticks and then cut them. I think .3 cm would be around the smallest that the narrow blade could do. Just have to make sure it’s well centered. Sometimes I have to make a few cuts to get a perfect match but not much is lost by a second try.
If you do a lot of cleft grafting, a crude grafting vice makes holding the rootstock a lot easier. The spring turns out to be unnecessary, the hinge is quite a bit oversized as well. The leather is from utility gloves padded with cotton balls.
I loathe clefts. I still use them probably 20% of the time.
They work.
My first yr grafting i had zero takes, mostly from cutting indecisively. Subsequent years my take percent went way up, almost any graft has a chance of succeeding, your mission is just to let it knit adequately before the scion dries up. Clean cuts, better grafts and unions, parafilm, bagging or bench grafting in sawdust or a humid greenhouse, grafting at active growth, etc, that is all MITIGATION: tweaks to speed healing and/or delay drying. So there is no magic bullet, but:
Parafilm is your friend. For wrapping scion to keep from drying, and to cover and secure union
I prefer whip and tongue (cant join straight whips as well) but the cleft can be easier…especially with a utility cutter or other cheats. Some grafts are better, all things equal, but they rarely are. The rest of the time, the graft YOU do best is probably the best graft
The better care you take of your babies post-joining, the greater % takes…w ANY graft.
If you have rootstock, if you try and fail, you can usually try the following year. With better roots. You might have to change the graft, but you often get a second chance the following yr.
Good luck, if more questions arise ask them—this is a great group
many beginners would be excited to see signs of the graft taking, and callus is obviously a
thing of promise. Have been grafting for decades, and often still find myself ‘taking a peek’, especially on select cultivars
anyway, you could use parafilm, which is fairly transparent and is quite tacky with a firm grip. Depending on species, UV from sunlight can have inhibitory effects on callus formation, so you could perhaps wrap loosely over the graft with aluminum foil, and just take a peek every now and then, and re-wrapping with foil after inspecting.
