Grafting cherry onto apricot?

General Fruit Growing
#1

A friend of mine has a few nice apricots trees and was asking me about grafting some different varieties onto them. She was extremely excited when I told her other stone fruits may also be possible, and she quickly became fixated on adding some sweet cherries.

I searched around the forum and can’t find a good answer to whether or not a sweet cherry would be compatible on an apricot. Does anyone have any experience with this?

An interstem would also be an option. Does anyone have a recommendation for an interstem? Pluerry? Pluot? Plumcot? Japanese plum?

#2

Cherry is not compatible on apricot. Adara interstem should work. Adara is a variety of Myrobalan that was selected for its compatibility with many stone fruit species, in particular, cherries. Search for “Adara”, it was discussed in several threads on this forum.

6 Likes
#3

Thanks, Adara looks like the best choice.

If I’m unable to procure Adara, does anyone have any experience with Japanese plum as an interstem? Or anything else?

Am I stupid to think that Pluerry may also work?

#4

Japanese plum will graft (usually but not always) on apricot, but cherry will not graft on J. plum.

Pluerry as interstem is uncharted waters — no actual experience was reported. Do the experiment and let us know whether it works.

1 Like
#5

I also read that Nadia might be a candidate.

#6

I also found a post on the DW forum where someone grafted sweet cherry onto pluerry. After a month they said it looked good. Unfortunately they didn’t follow up at all so we’ll never know if it survived.

Are you able to share your reference for the Nadia cherry plum?

1 Like
#7

Few posts in this forum like this one but haven’t seen a scientific article.

#8

I was able to find some Adara to use as an interstem. Thanks everyone for the great information!

1 Like