Do you have pictures of your grafts? Try this method Grafting large Callery and Betulifolia pear rootstocks
At this point it wouldnât be too helpful to show photos.
Regardless of the method I used to try my first grafting this year (cleft, modified cleft, tongue and groove, raffia or not, parafilm, electrical tape or not, wax, etc.), some didnât take which I expected.
Many took. By took I mean seeing at least 3-4 inches of new bud wood growth on the scionwood. I know the energy in the scionwood itself is often enough to get a few leaves to show, but after a few inches of branch growth it has to be connected to the parent wood.
So I got great growth on many grafts⌠10 inches, 1 foot, 2 feet, even multiple laterals of 1+ feet long in single graft bud growth (I headed some new growth to get laterals).
Concerned about girdling I removed the electrical tape and raffia if present then rewrapped with parafilm.
Some grafts dried out after this and some were lost to windy days.
My thoughts:
On some grafts the raffia wrap appeared to be talking the load from new growth movement relative to the parent wood. Once that was removed, the scar tissue was not strong enough to handle the torque from wind loading.
On the dried out ones, I am also making an assumption that the scar tissue must have been interrupted or broken enough from movement to lose sufficient contact with the parent wood to feed the new growth and it dried out.
I didnât find your long grafting writeup until last week so I did not benefit from that info. I will read before I try again next spring.
For this year I will, however, do some but grafting in late August or soâŚ
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It might be hard to believe but this is tbat tbud from the photos above that @fruitnut gave me advice on growing several years ago. It has been a very productive 25-30 foot tall pear tree. The drought is taking a toll on everything here. We have ever increasing droughts and increased diseases and insects in this area.
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