Box cutter with very sharp Milwaukee blade also works.
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Those never worked for me. In my experience it’s hard to get enough “pressure” to ensure good cambium contact with those cuts. A good old fashioned cleft graft, bark graft, or whip and tongue, if you are skilled enough to cut it (I’m not), all work better.
The website was a little clunky, but I ordered one you liked. I had really poor results last year doing everything by hand. 10 grafts, two took for a while, but none made it. Maybe the tool will be better. I’m curious how long it will take for the tool to actually arrive.
This tool is complete nonsense, a good knife with an understanding of what cambium is (& know the reasons for success and failure) would enable anyone to graft.
I would expect delivery within 6 - 8 weeks at my place on the east coast. I don’t know how much that would charge up in Alaska.
For a beginner, I’d argue a v-cut tool is a very valuable “tool in the toolbox”. It effectively makes a cleaner cleft graft that heals pretty evenly. If I bugger up something I have a utility knife and my Tina 605 to work with too.
@Moose make sure you are lining up cambium and not outer bark. That was my mistake for the first year when I had terrible take rates. Also make sure your rootstock is starting to wake up and that should help it heal faster based on my experience with pawpaw and persimmons. Apples and pears are more forgiving.
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I might miss the grafting season if it takes that long. It says expected to ship in 11 days.
Depending on what you are grafting you might be cutting it close.
I ordered a couple plum scions to graft to an invasive mayday tree (prunus padus)- experimental mostly. There isn’t a lot out there about people having success.
The rest are apples.
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It’s a knockoff of a highly expensive ($400+) Topgrafter tool.
Mine worked fine at first but then started crushing the wood. We’ll see if the new $12 blades work.
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Alan, when you graft onto an apple water sprout and are looking to pull it down to horizontal or weep, how long do you wait to do that?
A related question, if you already have the sprout going around horizontal, how do you train the scion to not go dead vertical? In my case, I’m trying to get those grafts to eventually weep and I’m concerned about damaging the graft.
It depends mostly on the relative vigor of the graft-I’ve had J. plum grafts turn into 1.5" diameter uprights in a single season that I wished I had pulled them down in the middle of the first season. Other times it may be as long as 3 years before I worry about it. Hinges are often essential to bend them when they get too thick.
It’s a balancing act because the grafts grow at peak speed in vertical position.
You keep the graft growing at about 60 degrees by tying it to that angle. An upright may form near the end of it that you can tie to more horizontal position at the end of the season as is done when developing espaliers. Trees don’t grow much downhill. Once they are trained to a week new growth will mostly be water sprouts. Fruiting shoots growing downwards will tend to be quite short, but are usually adequate for cycling spur wood in and out on a weeping tree.
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Alright, thank you Alan.
Assuming there will be some weeping training, do you do any orientation of the graft, as i could see you can either be parallel to the direction of bend or perpendicular to it. I’m not sure if it matters or not, from a strength perspective.
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I have the original field craft topgrafter tool. Managed to snag this from a nut grafter many years ago. Dax knew this guy and the huge orchard that he put together with this tool.
It is far superior to the cheap Chinese clone. Beautiful castings — all forged steel construction
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Training a graft to a weep is a bit down the road after establishment. It is done by either letting the fruit pull secondary and tertiary branches below horizontal or actually taping and/or tying such branches below horizontal once the graft is well established- maybe an inch or two in diameter.
Established trees can be changed to a weeping form by pruning away sun blocking more upright wood in favor of weeping wood. Old apple trees often allow this in the very first season one works t hem if they’ve been neglected for a time.
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This is a tree I’ve asked you about before… old unknown, undesirable apple that is fireblight prone and trained to open center, but naturally formed a weep. Thing is, given how much it’s had fireblight, I either need to convert all the smaller wood to other varieties or call it quits and use the large space to plant some more manageable trees.
A few of the grafts I put on water sprouts 3 years ago did grow to that 1-2" size, but some were not on waterspouts and remained shaded and only have maybe 4’ of growth. I’ll start pulling down those larger water sprouts. Sounds like the other grafts (that will now have sun) I let grow as they are, no more than 45-60 degrees, then pull them down as time goes on.
I don’t want to thread jack any more, but I saw your earlier comment and appreciate the clarification. Thanks!!
Question @alan can one do a graft like this? Or is that weak and setting one up for failure.?
It was the first picture in my mind when a read about you grafting water spouts. I guess it would be described as off synch or counter synch graft angle. I had a few birds or wind help out grafts that wiggled this way. My brain was like, I bet I could do that on purpose to lower vertical branches…. I also noticed that the cambium on different diameter cleft grafts line up on both sides if angled.
All for not if it fails. What do you think. Bad practice or maybe useful?
A water sprout offers a range of diameters to graft to so I don’t really like your method because cambium to cambium contact is so limited and I don’t even see how your can bind the scion to the wood securely. I also can’t see any reason not to just use a splice graft further up the water sprout to match diameters. It is so quick and easy.
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I used this one to graft a jujube and it worked great. I really focused on cutting the rootstock at a point that was nearly identical to size of the scion. Also, prior to grafting with it, I did have to adjust the alignment of the blade slightly because it wasn’t cutting exactly centered.