My first attempt at bench grafting a Honey Crisp scion to some rootstock about a month ago is showing signs of life. However, the three buds have turned out to be blooms. Do I let this continue to grow and graft another bud to this or will this turn out ok?
I would remove the flowers and let the scion grow out.
Mike
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All of my Korean giant scions are full of blooms. I’m going to pull the blooms and hope they grow out
Thank you for the feedback. I pinched them off last night.
As a related experiment, I have four T bud grafts that grew out this year. On three, I removed all flowers but on one I let it flower and set one fruit. That one graft branch is the sluggish of them all, pretty unsurprisingly.
Sorry I didn’t see this sooner.
The advice you were given is sound. But I just wanted you to know: If you had left the flowers, they might have matured into fruit, AND the sprout might still have had the ability to continue on with its vegetative growth (albeit slower, as BleedingDirt says).
I have two separate apple grafts that did this last year. One of them was a Lodi apple. It produced a single apple the spring after it was chip-budded, and that same branch is growing away nicely (but more slowly than others) this year. I allowed it to do this because I just couldn’t wait to eat my own apples!
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