I’m more concerned about when the next window is going to come so I can graft the rest of them. Now I wish I would’ve done it all last week.
I’m assuming I could graft even into May, but I’m concerned about the viability of scionwood.
I have several looking like this after an anxious wait.
I’ve grafted pecans, walnuts, mulberry, chestnuts, and of course apples and pears, but the peaches has me worried.
Used a modified barn door graft there, but I believe I’ve got good takes on several different types. I threw the grafting gauntlet at them.
I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a “round two” peach and apricot window.
Now it looks like it might get TOO hot next week with no in-between. Would wrapping in foil help”
Have growth on 4 of the 5 seedling grafts and practically every limb graft.
Even have a bloom to pinch off.
2 Likes
I did some peach grafting yesterday, and wrapped with foil from the top of scion down to a few inches below the graft. This window is a bit on the hot side and the previous was a bit on the cool side. And, I didn’t see any windows at all in-between, it has been too cold for several weeks here.
2 Likes
I did the same but did it Monday. I let them sit in the sun on Monday (high 66) but covered in foil yesterday AM.
Still concerned since it hit 89 today.
What kind of graft is that? An enormous chip?
1 Like
Yes on the bottom pic, did those, smaller chips, barn door, cleft, and whip & tongue.
The top is a barn door.
My strategy is the same as Ray’s. I used to watch temps in my prior location (7b/8a in the southeast) and that seemed to work OK but I’m in zone 9A now and often get temps in the 70s well before budbreak on stonefruit. Now, I try to watch for an indication of leaves pushing and graft right as the tree is pushing. This year, I probably got 75% success on peaches/nectarines. One seedling tree in particular I avoided grafting because it wasn’t pushing with the rest. I didn’t see new leaves for at least 3-4 weeks after the others so I’m glad I didn’t graft at that time.
That makes sense in the different climate…
My peach grafts from several weeks ago are generally doing well. I did one stupid thing though, some peach seedlings the deer munched several times last year and then on top of it I moved them this spring. Some of those have grafts taking but most don’t; one of the trees didn’t even wake up. One peach grafting lesson I should have remembered is you need a very healthy stock if you are grafting a peach on it. That means it didn’t move in the last year, and it was very happy all the previous season. This week I grafted only to seedlings that had a very happy year last year and did not move; I am optimistic those will do well.
3 Likes
I am hoping that the foil wrapping helped this round of grafting, because we still got well into the 80s.
Things were not too bad … there were some breaks in the sun and it was not too much in the upper 80s. I think with the foil on it was as good as the previous window or maybe better. The callousing will stall in the heat but on the plus side there is plenty of evenings/mornings times on such days which are perfect peach callous temps.
I have some bud break on apricot (not peach) already after three days. I’m concerned it’s just from latent stored energy/moisture combined with being held dormant too long, and will ultimately result in failure.
That can happen if you have good temps, I have seen it many times on stone fruits. Assume it is a take.
1 Like
Yeah, it’s a good point considering that Tuesday and Wednesday stayed between 65 and 75 for a good 12+ hours each day late evening to early AM. That’s a much longer window of good temps than the first round in early April was. The nights were quite cool early in the month.
Yup! You got me motivated to look at mine from earlier this week, I have several peaches showing signs already.
1 Like
I have waited and waited here in the last 3 years for the kind of warmth Scotts prescribes and gotten worse results every season. However, I think I’ve been rotting my scion wood by tightly wrapping it in plastic before refrigerating it, so I don’t blame waiting too long, beyond it giving the buds more time to rot.
However, when I first started grafting peaches I didn’t worry about temps and just waited until the peaches were growing rapidly and were at least at full bloom. It makes no sense to me that if a tree is rapidly growing it can’t callous off grafts, so I started grafting today in the warm rain (but in the '60’s). Tomorrow will be sunny but in the low '60’s and it will gradually get into the '70’s starting Sun. for 3 days. I’ll graft some again tomorrow and also on Sunday and see if there’s any difference in ratio of takes.
My older ones look like that now.
1 Like