Thanks!
No you don’t need wax for small cleft grafts like that. As long as you wrap with parafilm that will suffice.
Galina,
With small grafts and a few trees, you only need parafilm. The cut you did was fine. When you wrap it with parafilm, you will tighten up the contact. After parafilm, I use either green garden tape or Temflex on top of parafilm.
Green garden tape is cheap but you need to cut it off after a graft take. Say, you graft in April. By june, you can cut the tape off. With Temflex, you don’t need to cut it off.
I did not suggest you buy these items because I assume you will probably graft no more than 10 grafts this year. While bother buy them. You can use mine.
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I think you should cut Temflex off of apples once you are sure they have taken. If you are worried about structural integrity of the graft, you can always shore it up with a stake.
@matrix calls this “cancer”, it looks kind of nasty, but did not affect the tree negatively in my case. We had a discussion about how isolation of the graft site induces undifferentiated (?) tissue proliferation on apples and pears.
Picture:
Thanks, Lever. Just used Temflex last year on a few grafts. None on a rootstock. Good to know.
Thanks, Everybody!
@mamuang, thanks a lot for your offer! I hope to do some of the grafts myself, I tried it yesterday and it seems to be interesting procedure! I will need your help to overlook what I am doing and also do couple grafts yourself, just to make sure my scion wood doesn’t go to waste, if I fail. I am going to order one rootstock as well so I can get whole tree of my favorite apples (this one I want to graft myself - just to be able to say to my future grandchildren - I made this tree!), and for the safe side I also want to graft on my espaliered Goldrush - it has one good candidate branch for it, and also couple grafts on upcoming Yellow transparent (if shape permits). By the way, if you want to graft some of the wood on your tree - you welcome to do so.
No alignment is perfect. A graft like yours should work almost every time assuming it was fitted and wrapped before they have time to dry out. Looks about as good as any I do. Bill
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We have to wait and see if the bare root trees from Cummins are just whips or not. If they are whips ( one straight trunk, no side branches), you don’t want to graft them over this year.
You can graft over the one rootstock that you just ordered and on a coulpe of branches of your espelier tree.
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@Auburn, thanks a lot!
@mamuang, last tree I got for Cummins had more then 4 branches, I created 2 espalier layers right away and also trimmed some branches, so I hope for some branches on arrived trees.What I more worry about is that branches on the trees will be smaller diameter that my scion wood - the one I received is a full pencil size. I tried to figure out how to graft in that case. Can you look at the pictures and tell me if this is the way to do it?(Pretending scion is on the left)
and from other side:
Scionwood bigger than a roostock is a problem especially if they are much difference in size. If they are not much different in size, I just make sure one side of cambium line up well. It will work even with that.
Hopefully, other people with more grafting experience will chime in.
I would do some chip bud or T-bud for a back up.
Tony
I have not been successful with chip bud. Some success with T buds. Both done during growing season. Never try dormant chip or T bud.
I think you may possibly be over thinking it. Apple wood is extremely forgiving if the rootstock does even a little well. I’m not nearly so experienced as many of the growers here, and I have an extremely high success rate with apple trees, including wood that was cut off a dormant tree and spent a week in the trunk of my Dad’s car in 50 to 70 degree weather and put on a rootstock prior to planting. The better you are the smaller the wood you get away with using is, because longer pieces of scion wood are more forgiving due to physics. You just need fresh cuts and at least SOME POINT on the apple rootstock’s cambium to touch the scion’s cambium, and the parafilm is likely to do the heavy lifting of keeping moisture in until it grows. Check out the Ugly Grafting thread to see an example of how poor of a job I did on a tree that still took. My personal advice would be to cut the scion into three equal pieces, and put a couple of the pieces on the crab apple as soon as you’re going to have three or four days with a high around 45 to 50F as backups and practice, and then put a few more where you want them, and keep a couple in the fridge to call for help if you need to. If I can do it, you can! Good luck! Don’t forget to wrap the scion wood in the parafilm FIRST, then cut it and graft it before wrapping the graft. That keeps you from nudging the graft around while you try and wrap up the scion.
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Thanks! Good point about wrapping scion first!
In that case, consider chip buds… or what’s called a “saddle graft” (a reverse cleft graft where the bigger scion straddles the rootstock like a man on a horse).
Search “saddle graft” for pictures.
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Thanks!
For those of you within striking distance of Southeast Pennsylvania… a grafting workshop:
https://www.phillyorchards.org/civicrm/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/info&reset=1&id=38
That would be nice, but it takes me 5 hours to get there… Need to think about it).
I already signed up for this. Very excited 
I am getting my root stock today. When should I graft it, before or after planting? If I graft before planting, should planting be delayed, do I have to store the grafted tree refrigerated? How short should root stock be cut for grafting?