Did a late graft of a “William’s Pride” onto my Franken-Apple. Had the scionwood in the fridge and it still grew.
However, the ONLY bud pushing is a flower bud. How likely is it to still push vegetative growth beyond a “spur” since it has no competition?”
Pinch off the flowers and it should eventually make a shoot, assuming it has no competition.
Some of the parafilm started breaking off and I don’t know if this looks like a real take. I don’t see much callousing.
Neither do I. Doesn’t look very promising.
I would hazard to guess that the graft wasn’t held together tightly enough. A simple wrap of Parafilm is rarely sufficient. Stretching a grafting rubber (or Temflex, etc.) over it would likely have provided the necessary tension.
I did the same thing (Parafilm only) the first time that I tried grafting, with similar results. I used grafting rubbers over the Parafilm the next time, and it made all the difference.
Actually all but one of my cleft grafts took doing exactly what I did.
I would recommend more layers of parafilm over the union.
Like 5 or so.
Many layers on this bark graft - look!
This is a full legit take. Growth almost six inches long now.
Your luck was better than mine. I probably lost half that first season.
My recommendation that you wrap your grafts more tightly stands, for what it’s worth.
So the William’s Pride in the first pic DID take. It’s not my strongest-growing scion, but it’s taking off now. Callousing still looks weird.
From my limited experience, parafilm alone cannot get the graft union to be tight enough for callousing. This is especially true for cleft grafts, where there is tendency for the rootstock to split open. Of course, on apples and pears, this may not manifest as much as they are easy to graft. A layer of rubber tape (I use splicing tape) will improve the success rate here.
What you said. My technique is simply not good enough to get a perfect match, and I need to be able to pull hard to help bring pieces into better contact.
You gotta wrap those cleft grafts in a rubber band or something. Even if they make it thru this year, long term viability is not guaranteed.
Not saying you might not get lucky, but if you want maximum odds of success, do it.
Believe me, I learned the hard way.
