I can see how foliage above the graft as in budding would help. That’s hard to do when you are topping it to do a cleft or bark graft. I have left foliage below my grafts and I think that might help too but when the graft is at “the end of the line” there is much more pressure.
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Strange, I grafted several varieties of mulberry scions last year, I don’t recall bleeding issue. All the graft took, I thought grafting mulberry is as easy as grafting pears. Maybe wait a little bit till leafs are little bigger. I recall the last grafting I did is mulberry in mid to late May in Chicago area, temperature is upper 70 to mid 80 range
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When and how are you grafting. My mulberry grafts typically leaf out and then die.
My mulberry leaf out later than other fruit trees. So it’s always the last one to be grafted. I used cleft for all the mulberry grafting both outside and potted. All took.
This is Austrian Green grafted last year potted
Here is the one I grafted three weeks ago. Indoor Potted.
Outdoor mulberry has no wake up yet
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i totally disagree. And yes, i have many apart from mulberries: sapodilla, caimito, jackfruit, mango, adenium, cacti, and papaya are just a few have grafted that are also sappy and also easy to graft. Have grafted not just temperate species, but also xerophytes, and ultratropicals since i was a kid. Yes, grapes can be grown from cuttings, but if they happen to be ‘difficult’ to graft due to sappy conditions it is more of a mechanical problem than a physiological problem. Yes, too much sap may interfere with cambial contact, and it can be a long-term problem. The best thing for this is to secure the graft with splints, as the leverage against the graft increases as the budwood grows(probably what ‘ejection’ of budwood was pertained to by the belgian nurseryman) . Sooner or later, budwood cambium will connect with the rootstock’s and that is when rigidity of the graft starts forming, since new xylem is produced. But as mentioned earlier, cambial contact is not immediately necessary to keep the budwood alive*(i.e. girdling as mentioned earlier, where cambiums are separated totally but xylem sap flow is still active and may even induce fruiting of the graft), but lack of upward sap will be lethal to any graft(be it tropical, xerophytic, or temperate) in a couple weeks, or maybe just days. Grapes can be grown from cuttings because they have enough food stored in their stems to tide them over, and have the ability to root, but the vast majority of stored food in dicots is most dense at the rootstock. Cacti are supposedly more tricky as it is like grafting two blobs of slithery jello, but success rates are high as well as long as you splint them well.
Moreover, it is difficult, if not impossible to propagate the sappy species i mentioned above, say, from cuttings on a rooting bed. And there is no point in propagating trees by grafting-- if sap wasn’t that important, or if you can actually propagate those species on a rooting bed.
*anyway, to simplify things and sequence the events for each permutation : lack of sap flow will kill budwood grafts pretty quickly, while presence of sap flow will sustain the budwood, but prolonged lack of cambium contact will ultimately deprive the rootstock of food(if graft is the only source of photosynthesis), which results in death of rootstock, which will then kill the budwood.
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How do you explain the success of hot callusing if lack of sap flow kills grafts quickly? For several nut species like walnut, regular grafting is hard, partly due to heavy sap flow. However hot callusing with dormant stock and scion works great
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Well I have several grafts pushing, most with just green enlarged buds without leaves showing. Some are just pushing small leaves out. and then there is the experiment with good strong growth. Some I know have been leaking sap and some have milky white powder dried on the outside of the graft wrap. I did not see any leakage from my root trimmed plants. It will be interesting to see which ones take and which don’t. I’m such a new grafter that I hesitate to put my two cents in but it feels like to me that there are three possibilities. 1. The bud will never push. 2. The bud pushes and develops as long as the energy stored in the scion allows it. 3. The bud pushes, develops, and continues to grow when the callus forms and knits the scion to the branch. Something interrupted the callus formation last year on my grafts. I know that I am one of the less skillful grafters but I got less than 10% success rate. Okay…maybe a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while but I do know that the sap leaked from around the graft site on most of my grafts. When I removed the wrap the positioning of the graft looked perfect (yes…to my unskilled eyes) and the pieces were not connected at all and that whitish dried powder was all over the grafted area. Second year…results pending…
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forgot to qualify— that lack of sap flow kills grafts quickly only in warm weather when branches are supposed to leaf out, or already leafed out.
admittedly my explanations were scattered over different posts, but i did mention that heavy sap flow is more of a mechanical issue, and not a nutritional/physiologic issue. With an overflow of sap, the budwood is pretty much sitting on liquid(sap). The sap will sustain the budwood, and the budwood will leaf out, and callus will form, but this may delay cambial contact if budwood is not secured/splinted, especially if the budwood is already growing long stems. This is one of the reasons why bark-grafts tend to get stripped down like a banana peel from the rootstock, because the rich sap encourages rapid growth, but xylem production is relatively delayed … An omega-type same-caliper graft would be the best for this scenario, plus extra splinting to minimize lateral movement.
as have mentioned on one of my posts, budwood will have some stored carbs/proteins/minerals/water within the stem, and will callus and leaf out when placed in a warm location, but this of course is quite limited relative to the bounty stored within the roots, and will ultimately need to be grafted to rootstock if callusing cannot produce roots.
So yes, callusing will occur upon local application of warmth even with minimal or zero sap input from rootstock, just as an entire budwood will callus at the base and bud out from nodes once removed from the fridge, but it is imperative that a steady source of sap be initiated later.
hot callusing is employed to heal open wounds rather quickly before sap starts seeping out(a magnet for infection) and likewise to have de novo xylem/phloem develop as early as possible. But in aseptic conditions with secure splinting of grafts, plenty of sap is a good thing.
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Well Raf…at least you realized what you were up against. Surely the masses are never wrong in their beliefs and theories. Admittedly, I too was a little bewildered when I read your “jujube clone limited lifespan” theory in your book…But the recent scientific study of old stands of Aspen show clones actually do have genetic limitations once thought to only exist in the animal kingdom. So, as a lifetime scientist, I will always treat everything as theory; subject to change…Maybe there are “truths”, but perhaps the real answer lies in the lines of a movie:
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can’t handle the truth!
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even einstein was proven wrong re: his stiff views about certain aspects of quantum physics,
so best for the rest of us to regard theories to be worthy of consideration and analysis, but never really gospel truths
so yes, am sure many people think am wrong --and understandably(just hoping though that people didn;t see my responses to be rude). Funny as it sounds, i eagerly seek or fish for fatal flaws about my wild assertions.
if am right i don’t get enlightened, but if am wrong then i learned something new! 
yeah, it is just a theory, and could be wrong. I actually consider graftage(to recently seed-grown rootstock) as a possible means to ‘eternal’ life of a budwood clone. Young roots seem to have the right brew of hormones/cellular messengers/switches that rejuvenate or infinitely perpetuate old budwood clones. Perhaps it delays their ageing considerably, and also possible(and i hope-- don’t we all?) that it makes them immortal in the absence of diseases.
It is possible that tissue culture will ultimately concoct the exact brew of hormones that would replicate the perpetuating effects of grafting old clones to young rootstock, simply by subjecting a piece of budwood stem/ piece of cambium cells to the brew
And also why have been so excited about growing new cultivars from seed, as that ascertains that any of the root suckers i give away are relative youngsters, in jujube terms.
btw, didn’t know you bought my crap. You shouldn’t have-- as you, or anyone in this forum could just ask me about anything juju-related(just as i ask you and anyone here about jujus). Owe you 40 bucks!
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I agree that you need sap flow or the scion will die. But sap flow (or too much of it) while the graft is callusing does cause an issue ( a mechanical problem as you describe it).
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sap flow is the richest brew any clump of meristem cells can thrive on, but what apparently occurs is that even though the cells are well-sustained, the gushing river of sap prevents them from getting ‘anchored’. At least that is what i think is often referred to.
Its not just the anchoring but the gushing river of sap will spoil and completely rot the scion. I’ve seen it happen multiple times.
yeah, spring is that time of year when above-ground parts of deciduous trees rely on food from the rootstock/sapwood. The above-ground stems and buds are totally on “parasitic mode” at this time of year since the leaves have yet to unfurl, and developing the leaves and stems at a time when the tree is not yet(or barely) photosynthesizing will require resources. So expectedly, sap in spring is rich in sugars/nutrients.
unfortunately this sugar-rich flood isn’t just a source of nutrients for the parasitic nodes(again mentioning the upwelling of maple sap in spring-- that it too makes humans go opportunistic and parasitic 
), but also a rich culture medium for opportunistic microbial/ fungal spores if sap keeps spilling out in to the wide open. Worse is that the sap yogurt culture from outside can move into the anaerobic conditions within the graft’s innards rapidly, which produces even more hostile conditions which may kill the graft(since the interface is spoiled rotten), and may even damage or kill rootstock if a lethal pathogen infects the gushy wound.
Exactly. I’ve seen this happen too.
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My mulberry graft experiment
The picture is not that good but here’s the breakdown.
Left to right
Silk Hope
Graft date: 3/25/19
Soil: Garden soil
Roots: Untouched
Other: cut beneath graft, lots of rootstock growth left until graft growing well
Wellington
Graft date: 3/25/19
Soil: promix type
Roots: depotted and washed (due to ants in pot) no trimming
Other: cuts below graft rootstock growth left until graft growing well
Illinois Everbearing
Graft date: 3/26/19
Soil: promix type
Roots: depotted and washed (due to ants in pot) no trimming
Other: cuts below graft rootstock growth left until graft growing well
Silk Hope
Graft date: 3/20/19
Soil: promix type
Roots: depotted, washed, trimmed
Other: cuts made below graft after a few days. Some rootstock growth left until graft growing well
Wellington
Graft date: 3/20/19
Soil: promix type
Roots: depotted, washed, trimmed
Other: cuts made below graft after a few days. Some rootstock growth left until graft growing well
Cleft grafts only.
Both Silk Hope plants about the same size as well as both the Wellingtons.
Not a lot of difference seen. The two that had root trimming were grafted earlier but the later grafts have grown a bit larger in less time. I did have much more success this year. I’m thinking doing the cuts under the grafts help more than anything. They do bleed from those cuts.
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I have seedling red mulberry trees coming up all around my yard so i thought it would be fun to graft cuttings from my 2nd leaf silk hope onto them. I didnt have a lot of scion wood so only did 3 grafts. They all leafed out then stopped growing then finally wilted once the weather warmed up this past week. I grafted very early - early march. Wish i would have waited longer to graft and was more careful about sap push, which was heavy. By the way that silk hope plant is making some amazing flavored berries. I highly recommend it.
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I have grafted a few since then and I really think the ones grafted later do better. I do keep them in the shade for much of the time if it is getting warm.
I have been told that Silk Hope is really good. Grafted four of them last year and none of them lived past a few leaves.
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I’ve tried to do a more objective comparison this year of all the mulberry cultivars I have (about 15 fruiting cultivars). To me (in my opinion) it is hardly a contest…Silk Hope wins hands down. It packs a lot of punch, and can be enjoyed from an unripe red color, to fully black. OK, Illinois Everbearing is pretty much just as flavorful, but Silk Hope is a little bigger and juicier. Pakistan is OK, but it doesn’t light up my taste-buds. Kokuso…so, so. Shangri la…sweet, but that’s all. Miss Kim…sweet, with a nice flavor that says “mulberry”. Gerardi…sort of a Illinois that has been toned down just a notch. Issai…grassy (and not the good kind). Worlds Best…firm, not very sweet, but pleasant flavor.
What I am really curious about is how much climate and soil conditions play into mulberry taste…or is the main reason why people seem to have such a difference in opinion is just individual taste preference. The annual tasting event at Wolfskill shows that individual taste is a big factor…But how much?
Sorry for jumping off topic here. BTW, Katy…Because of your successes and failures, and because of your strong determination for resolution…I have learned a lot through you. So, thank you.
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I thought sap flows up in xylem and down in cambium? If so then to bleed off sap one must cut the Xylem and it is in the center.