The Acers Japonica and such are another love of mine. I am wondering if anyone here also grafts them. I don’t graft them yet but wondering if there is much difference than with fruit. I read up a bit and they discussed veneer grafts. I have started seeds before with luck.
I used to graft them in the summer. You can put any of these onto the others: palmatum/japonicum/shirasawanum/sieboldianum/pseudosieboldianum/circinatum
Grafting Japanese maples in the summer is the greatest. You can start grafting the end of July. Optimum time is mid-August (two weeks) till September 1 for grafting more maples. The maples make up in about 10 days and you put them out in a shade house and they will break the following spring. Works great.
First prepare the understock. Trim a few of the lower branches and some of the leaves. Next prepare the scion. Cut all the leaves from the scions leaving the little stems on (petioles). Don’t graft on understocks that are soaking wet as it will cause the union to bleed and you will have poor luck. I like them a little on the dry side. Next veneer graft them.
After you have grafted them you must put them in a humid environment but not in sun. If you have a greenhouse or a hoophouse, put white poly over your prop house and tent the grafts inside. That will keep the grafts cooler than clear plastic. After 14 days you will see the stems of the leaves that you cut off begin to fall off. Once you see that it means the grafts have taken.
You can make some wire hoops for over the grafts and place light plastic over the grafts to give that humid environment. Try to keep the plastic from touching the maples as this may cause fungus problems. You must put a shade cover on your prop house also. This is important.
After 14 days you can put them outside in light shade and treat them like they were normal plants. Leave the understock on until spring. Keep your maples a little on the dry side after you graft. Only enough to keep them alive for the first 14 days Then you can water the heck out of them.
If you don’t have a prop house, you can use a camping tent. No bottom heat, no wax is needed; the humidity takes the place of that. The petiole will fall off when the graft takes, not fails. It is the new bud growing under the petiole that makes it fall off. If the graft fails the new bud will not grow.
It is so easy. If you use a tent you can put it in a barn or similar (under a large shade tree with all dappled light/a few hours of morning sun and then shade all day); a garage facing north; The tent up against the north wall of a tall structure; I suppose a nearing frame would work very well too if you tent. All you really have to have is light and humidity for those 14 days. In 14 days you will see full callous.
Dax
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Thanks Dax! You have been most helpful, going above and beyond. I owe you one. Circinatum are native here so finding seeds should be easy. I am excited and hopeful.
Carole
What are you using for understock?
DG
You’re welcome. It’s the same for Ginkgo. Both are great summer-grafters.
I used palmatum DG.
Dax
I’m going to rejuvenate here as it’s an existing thread on a sideline question I am exploring. (i.e. not really fruit related but in line with the smarts of many of you.
I bought the house I’m in several years ago and have found that whoever did the landscaping proximate the house did not have a firm grasp of the adult size of things. I love many of their choices, but not their placements. One of these is a Japanese maple that is too close to both the house and the driveway, with the primary access sidewalk really cramped in the process. I’ve only gotten so far with shaping it. So my question…
Can I graft Japanese maple onto root material?
In this case, I would love to take scion from the tree and graft onto it’s own roots in a better location so I preserve the combination I’ve got. It’d be close enough to benefit from it’s own fines and ideally be able to coopt a significant portion of its former root-base when I eventually remove the original tree.
Do Japanese maple work this way? If no, can I induce it to send up it’s own sucker at a distance from the tree that might make suitable rootstock in a year or two?
The current extent of its dripline covers an ideal zone for the tree to have originally been planted, but it is far too large for me to undertake actually moving it en masse.
Honesty… you are way over-thinking a non-complicated procedure of buying a Japanese maple at a Big Box Store for what 35-45$ with a big old root system already and using that to graft another tree. It’ll be a 2-gallon or 3-gallon or 5-gallon tree. Done, hands washed.
Or find a gallon little Japanese maple for 15 or 20 bucks to match caliper of graftwood.
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Thank You, but…
They’re not quite so cheap around here, and I don’t know what the original rootstock is. I like the size and shape of this combination. It’s not so much an overthinking as a desire to coopt at least part of the established root system. I don’t know what to expect from a new tree or combination, but I know what to expect from this one. What you are suggesting is the solid second choice, but it’s not significantly higher than just removing the tree and offers no sense of “saving” the tree.
Thus the question, can what I actually want to do be done? It’s okay if it can’t and it’s okay if we don’t collectively know Although samaras are often edible, it’s not exactly something one grows for that purpose.
Well, I dug up two overgrown holly roots next to the house and found that the maple had sent roots under the sidewalk. I’ve set up two green grafts on the roots to try it out. If it works, I’ll explore n the dirt about the same distance from the trunk in a more desireable direction.
With the hollies gone, it won’t be as crowded and in the way, but it would still be nice if I could bewitch it about 6 - 10 feet further into the yard. Or shrink it back to half its current dimensions.