@Barkslip,
Hello Dax,
Since you have considerable experience, I am asking your opinion on my latest grafting effort. Its been just over 5 weeks since I grafted two FUYU scions onto an American persimmon rootstock. Since my rootstock had grown two nice vertical limbs the same size of scions, I elected to try a whip & tongue graft. Our local temps here have gone thru a series of cold spells since and neither scion is showing a significant bud breakout, although the buds still appear to be hydrated and alive. I have plucked off lower growing sucker buds repeatedly. My question is this, how long should I need to wait at 70-80 F degree highs to see successful growth? I have had the plant under a humidity tent since grafting on May 28th. Should I consider a regraft using a different method?
If they havenāt pushed by now they (most-likely) arenāt going to. The first thing you should do is check the scion for life (preferably above the bud) and nick it with your knife to see if itās still green under the bark.
The next thing you would do do is unwrap the graft and see if it took or if it falls apart.
If the bark is still slipping for you and you can manage a bark graft or a banana graft with your leftover scionwood thatās what you should do. If you have greenwood available or budwood you can greenwood graft it, chip graft, or coming up in the next couple of weeks the usual time frame for T budding will be here.
Anytime you have good scionwood whether dormant or matured green budwood you can chip graft.
Good luck,
Dax
I had another nice surprise today. I grafted my American persimmon tree over to Asian varieties some time in April. I had 5 grafts on 5 branches. 4 of them took and grew. Some put on almost 5 feet of growth! One graft did not take. It has been sitting there for almost 3 months. I left it there, not because I had any hope for it, just because the tree is caged and I didnāt want to take off the cage to remove that graft. But today I noticed itās budding out! I guess it can sit there for few months and still start to grow.
I had this happen to a couple of my grafts too @Susu They just sat there since the end of May and the dormant buds suddenly came to life this week, pushing healthy growth. I really donāt know what Iāll do with all these new persimmon plants. Perhaps this yearās grafting was too successful.
Iāve seen some of your grafts Drew in various places. Well done.
I had to graft bare root and I used a hot callusing pipe. Actually 25 were plugs of about 95 in total so that leaves 70 bare root. I came away with 78%. Thatās 74 of 95.
And way to go @Susu
Dax
About half of mine were bare root and the other were previously potted. I had more takes using cleft and whip/tongue, but the bark grafts show stronger growth on the ones that did take. I guess I just have to work on my technique, since this is only my first year with persimmons. This yearās persimmon grafting will likely yield about 15 new trees, maybe a couple more. Thatās way too many for my suburban yard.
Craigslist them if you prefer it to eBay.
Thanks Dax,
I will follow up this week as you suggested!
Dennis
Persimmons love heat. I successfully field grafted persimmons during a week approaching 100 F this yearāall takes. This was the first year Iāve grafted during these temps. Grafting during cooler months results in more failures for me. Ideally, I like the day temps in the mid 80ās.
@Barkslip
Well your tips were on target. The main trunk of rootstock had died back below the first limb that I had tried to graft so that graft had no chance. The main trunk is however still alive just above the first limb so fortunately I had borrowed two buds several weeks ago from that scion to do a chip bud on the other limb just below my other graft. That bud may have survived as it appears to have calloused.
So today I determined that the lower graft had also failed so I trimmed it back to a point where it was not brown but slightly green cambium and used it to make a bark graft. The only green scionwood I have is from my neighbors kaki of unknown variety, but it began fruiting this year, so I used it to perform two other barkgrafts as a long shot. Wrapped the whole trunk with foil to keep the buds from drying out before they callous.
Now time will judge my efforts.
Hi Dennis,
How many buds were on that scion and how firm was the greenwood? Hopefully you used pretty far along greenwood and one or two buds only. Quite firm greenwood.
Iāll set some of those tomorrow. Iāve never tried flap grafting or bark grafting greenwood on the mature side but it would have to be firm enough so it doesnāt flop over, ever.
Dax
Hi Dax
The one scion that I reused only has two buds left once I trimmed off the portion that had brown cambium. The Two greenwood scions were actually pretty stiff enough to shove them into the side graft slots. I wrapped them pretty tight with fishing cord on top of the grafting tape to hopefully get the pressure needed. Since the main trunk bark is not slipping, and itās diameter is not conducive to a chip bud, I could not try a chip bud where I have a live rootstock. Yes for the greenwood grafts, I only used two bud scions that were about 4 buds from the terminal of this years growth. I have had good luck so far this spring using my neighbors Kaki buds to chip bud my Chocolate tree, so hopefully the luck will continue.
Thanks for your help,
Dennis
Picked today from the Hana Fuyu stick I received from Burnt Ridge nursery 2-3 years ago. Amazing flavor.
Hey Guys, I managed to get some seeds of Meader from US and I succeeded to get these small plants, see picture. I want to let a couple of kaki to bear fruits, to see what looks like and a couple of them to graft. What would be your opinion for this winter, should I keep them in a small terrase with positive temperature over winter, or to let them outside? Please note that in Romania during winter temeprature could drop to -20C. Outside they would be near the house, therefore getting some shelter. Please
advise.
-20C is quite cold. What you want to avoid is keeping them outside in pots because the low temperatures will freeze and kill or significantly damage the trees. Either plant them in the ground and use a tree tube to protect from cold wind, or consider keeping them in a garage that doesnāt reach those cold temperatures.
-20C is only -4F, right? Thatās only a zone 6b winter. Some D. kaki could almost take that. D. virginiana could take a full zone colder than that (if not more) no problem, so winter lows should be no concern at all for you if -20F is as cold as it gets.
Small frozen pots will do damage the young roots system. Just FYI.
Tony
Thank you, guys for the answers. Thatās why I asked for Meader varriety seeds, which is D Virginiana. I managed also to get some seedlings from D Kaki, but I donāt know if I want to use them. I do understand that in small pots the roots can be easier affected, regardless of D Kaki or Virginiana. On the other hand I know that due to its long root, the sooner one plant a Kaki seedling in the final spot the better. I refrase my question- would my D Virginiana seedlings be strong enough to be planted on the final place, i.e. in the ground, to withstand our winter? If I would judge upon what happens in the wild, it should. On the other hand I am very lucky to get the seeds, to get those seedlings and I donāt want to spoil that chance. This is the reason I asked your opinion.
A few winters ago, I tried to overwinter some cold hardy persimmon seedlings in pots in a somewhat protected spot, somewhat slightly sunk into the ground (but not much), and protected by mulch. Most all of the seedlings around the perimeter on all sides died. Most in the very middle survived. It was not a good survival rate. I think the cold drying winds (and maybe extreme cold) got the ones on the outside. I think we might have reached -5F to -10F that winter. I assume if I had completely buried the pots, they would have done betterā¦assuming the tap root didnāt take off.
General question: Iāve got a fairly mature male American persimmon (about 25ā tall with 10"+ diameter)-- whatās the best way to graft onto it?
Iām assuming I could graft multiple varieties onto various branches? Because of the size of the branches, I assume a bark graft would be the method of choice? Would I need to cut back the tree significantly to force growth to the scions?
Thank you in advance! Thisāll be my first grafting project.