Hey!
The title basically explains it; I pick peaches from the BEST peach tree. I want to propagate it, or at least preserve it, because it bears fruit every year without hardly any care, as far as I can tell.
Can I graft it? When should I graft it? What can I graft it to? My parents have pear trees that don’t produce, can I just…put a peach graft onto them?
Detailed info is readily available on the internet but the cliff notes is that you trim some current year’s growth after the tree goes dormant. That’s your scionwood. Keep moist and refrigerated until temps above 70 in spring/summer then graft it to the chosen rootstock/tree.
You want to harvest nice wood just as peaches have passed the deepest state of dormancy- March in your zone, probably. Pencil thick straight shoots are generally preferred. I pack them loosely in a ziplock bag and place them in another bag with a moist rag in it. Look up splice grafts because they are the easiest for a beginner and work as well as anything. I have explained my methods here many times. You want to graft peaches after they leaf out but not long after they lose their flowers.
I want to know the name or your peach that needs so little care. That virtue may not last- as trees get older brown rot can become more of a problem. If you love it, you will probalby want to find similar peaches that bear at different times during the season. Usually the fuzzy ones need the least protection. However, it takes several years to accurately evaluate any fruit variety even though we tend to get excited well before that.
I personally prefer chip budding myself. Why put off something till next year that you can do right now. I’ve been doing a lot of budding work this week.
Peaches don’t become very old, 20-30 years is their regular lifespan, but a seedling will start
producing fruit in it‘s 2nd or 3rd year already.
It might not be worth it to graft onto the trees at your parents place if they are older than 10 years.
Usually if you want to regraft old trees you drop the whole crown and then bark graft scions into those larger diameters cuts, but again peach as a short lived tree that has trouble healing large wounds wouldn’t be my first choice for that procedure
My advice would be to grow your own seedlings and graft onto them in 2 or 3 years.
They germinate really easily if you crack open the core like an almond and then directly plant the seed inside without letting it dry out
Yes, you can graft them fairly easily. While peaches and pears are in the same family(Rose family - Rosaceae) they are not graft compatible.
I have been grafting a few peach trees for the past couple of years. I have done chip budding, wedge and bark grafts successfully. I tried summer chip budding but was not successful in waking them up in spring. I have had best results grafting in spring after temps are consistently above 75F or so. The grafts take a while to get going. The heat seems to supercharge them.
When collecting cuttings from your BEST peach tree(scion) make sure to collect it while still dormant and the buds wave not swelled from wood that grew last year. Also pay attention to the buds on the sticks you collect and learn how to identify vegetative buds vs. flower buds. Usually there is a vegetative bud in the middle and two flower buds on either side. Ideally you can find a branch with only vegetative buds. Otherwise remove the flower buds before grafting. Also, there are branches with no buds, identify these and avoid them.
Did you make a typo, or are they actually pear trees?
Peaches cannot be grafted to pears.
But as for grafting your favorite peach tree: That’s a great project and I would recommend doing it late next winter, order some peach rootstocks (cultivar varieties or seedlings that are good in your area) then put the bundle of them in a pot of potting soil in a warmish area indoors until their buds start swelling, then pull the whole bundle out of your potting soil, grafts onto them, wrap the grafts fully in Parafilm, put them individually pots or buckets with potting mix, keep them most and out of direct sun until the graft heals then give slowly them more sun and let them grow in pots until you’re past a chance of hard frosts, then you can plant them outside in their final location and you’ll have a 2 month head start on their growing season at least. Make sure you spray them the Japanese beetles with neem and tent caterpillars too if you have them or BT bacteria spray is good enough in my experience.
One more thing! My worst mistake my first year was collecting terrible grafting material. The best scions are long thin vertical shoots that grow at least one foot in a year, if you have a broken branch or it was pruned and you have suckers or waterspouts coming off that cut, let them grow! That’s the best grafting material, collect that late in the winter in the first days that you hope spring might finally be coming. Pencil sized vertical growth is best, wood without buds is the worst, old twisty leafing branches can work, but fruit spurs are a very bad choice.
Good luck here’s the best guy on YouTube to teach you how to graft!
have you grafted before? So far I have the worst success with peach trees, I tried grafting about 6 different varieties of peach/nectarine, only a couple of the nectarine grafts took. Had much success with apples, pears, plum/pluot/apricot and cherries. It was also the latest graft I did in the year so its possible my scions werent the best by the time I went out to graft them. Ive heard budding is easier than spring grafting for peaches so maybe try that this summer.
sacadura has good videos and is who I learned from. get a good knife, a whetstone to keep it sharp and keep practicing
I haven’t grafted peaches except to wild cherries, prunus Padus, Serotina, and Virginiana, and with obviously very low success rates, one of my peach grafts on Serotina might have survived, I haven’t been able to check it, but it was okay when I left. But the real winner on prunus Padus and Serotina is Mirabelle plum! That grows well, but may have delayed graft failure or some other issues.
This is Red Haven peach lower, and Santa Rosa plum on prunus Serotina, the smaller of my two experimental trees on which I tested 19+ prunus species and varieties on prunus Serotina, with only Mirabelle seeming to have succeeded.
@MamaHawk your best success is going to be harvesting buds from the current year’s growth in June, July, or August (depending on where you are) and t-budding them immediately to your rootstock. You then cut off all growth past the bud next spring and it will take off. Peaches are harder to graft in the spring. I think most of the problem is the scion wood doesn’t like to stay dormant very well and expires quickly, even under good storage conditions. @nana7b I think this may have been your problem; I have a hard time keeping peach scionwood in good condition through May, let alone later in the summer. Cooler springtime temps also cause problems.
As others have stated, you’ll need a peach-appropriate rootstock. Either another peach/nectarine tree, or peach, apricot, and certain plum rootstocks are appropriate choices. Look up some of the stone fruit and peach grafting threads on here. Lots of great advice!
Back on the subject of T-budding, it’s one of the easiest grafts to do, but hard to wrap your mind around if you’re just reading about it. Read up on the process, watch some videos, and then come back with the new questions you’ll be sure to have!
Here is an example of a recent graft I did of plum onto peach that I did a few weeks back. It is already starting to sprout. As I already stated why wait till next year when you can be grafting/budding now.
I’ve had pretty good success grafting onto peach and nectarine. Who cares if you don’t get it to work this time around, it’s good practice for your spring grafting next year. Nothing wagered, nothing gained I figure.
What kind of grafts are those? Whip and tongue? Side lap? Z graft? I’m really starting to think zip ties might be an addition to my future grafting.
Also if you’re willing to pick them up at events and stuff you can get an unlimited amount of free zip ties that are still good for small stuff.
Sorry, my memory is going, I did a bunch of different grafts recently. That might have been a cleft, not positive.
Those are removable zap straps. I’ve been using them for the last year or so. They are super handy because you just press the tab on them and they come undone, and can be reused as many times as you want.
That looks like greenwood on to greenwood, right? Odds are good for that this time of year. The older I get the more I see green .. wood that is. Scions and stocks both.
Yes, you are correct Scott. Green wood to green wood.
I didn’t realize it until I zoomed in on the picture. I think the top graft is starting to break as well. That one is flavor supreme on peach.
If you can find a peach tree still at a big box store locally you could bud graft it now. The ones near me usually have Patio Fire Peaches or whatever that nobody wanted on sale still at the end of the year. Or live dangerously…chop off the top and bark graft it. Just park it in the shade for a week or two to heal. As long as it’s <90F it’ll probably work.
