Has anyone ever tried grafting sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) onto japanese plum (Prunus salicina)? I’m interested in top-working my plum tree with sour cherry if it would work.
Hi Bret
I have been converting a sweet cherry to sour. So far it is working, using chip buds. This spring I will try more using whip grafts.
Dennis
Hi
If you call Fowler Nurseries in Ca, they can provide Adara Trademark “Puente” on Lovell rootstock, then you can grow your own Puente (Adara) scionwood that is useful interstem for most Prunus varieties
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I grafted this year sweet cherries on to plum rootstock 12 of 16 are growing pretty well. I tried last year on one and it grew about 4 feet, and this year is still growing. I’m zone 7 Chihuahua, México
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Dennis
Do you chip bud in fall, with the summer new buds?
Did chips start growing a few weeks after you put them on or did they start growing the following spring?
Hi Fran,
There may be some confusion on this older thread that I was interested in to see if an interstem is required to go either way cherry to plum.
To answer your question, here is what I actually was successful doing:
10-20 Feb 2021:
“I finished my sour cherry budding and cleft grafts on one cherry tree which I am converting from sweet to sour. So that’s done and they are ready for bud break which can come early on cherries.”
I went thru my grafts yesterday and found about 50-60% success.
What failed?
Later this spring I attempted to top work my other sweet cherry trees into plum, by using both Adara and Sweet cherry scions. As of this week that work for the most part was a complete flop! So I can only conclude that any sort of sweet cherry grafting is best done well before any bud swelling in late winter- early spring. If buds are already swelling you may as well forget it until the next year. In retrospect, while I tried to determine what caused such a large percentage of failures on my top working, the main culprit seemed to be a 2 week period of very hot weather with dry winds that literally cooked and desiccated my scions before callousing could be completed. I think the unexpected hot spell did them in.
On my apple trees very similar top working grafts were 100% successful, so go figure?
In 2020 I did a number of summer chip budding with mature green plum and persimmon buds. About 30-50% of them worked. The biggest mistake I made in 2020, was uncovering the entire graft union too early, thinking that the bud must be forced to break out that growing season. Then I later saw that these buds simply were getting too dedicated to survive the summer heat, so I recovers the graft union with tape. Some survived and actually are growing out this year, but the others dedicated and fell off. So the morale of the story is that I have learned to be patient!
Nature is an amusing and powerful influence: About a week ago I was weeding in my lawn when I noticed a Lopez Island plum scion lying in hiding underneath the grass. As I examined it I determined it was indeed one of my scions that must have fallen to the ground during the time when I was grafting the nearby plum tree. My notes reflect the date of 3/13/21 when I grafted that tree. So after two months out of refrigeration and moist protection, this scion looked as good as if it had just been taken from the fridge! I was totally amazed. After taking off the bud closest to the large cut end, I could see the scion was very fresh. So I immediately used it to place 6 grafts on one of my potted wild plums to put it to a test. Yesterday I noticed that these buds are green tips and swelling! A pleasant surprise after seeing some recent failures. Take care.
Dennis
Kent, Wa
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So my black gold had no fruit on it this year, but a tree completly neglected a few houses away has maybe thousands.
I’m hoping to graft that onto my black gold just curious though I guess it’s called a sour cherry any possible ID just from the pictures?
Or at least confirm it probably is a sour cherry?!
Based on above messages, seems spring cleft or whip graft will work
IMG_20210617_095623284|690x920
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Hi Fran,
It looks a lot like sour cherry. Picture and closeup mimic on of mine. A tree between me and my neighbor had Bing and sour branches, so I got my neighbor to agree that I could top work the whole tree with sour. For the prior years only the crows could pick the bings due to the tree being so high, so I topped the tree last year and began grafting. The best time here for cherry grafting is a month before bud break allowing plenty time for callousing.
Dennis
Hi Dennis
Thanks for interesting real life empirical story.
A month before bud break, as in no leaves on tree at all?
I’m so used to apples plums pears etc to wait for the leaves to start!
Yes Fran,
Cherries can callous at the same or slightly lower temperature as plums. I also do plums right after cherries. This following chart gives you an idea of when each variety callouses best. You need 2-3 weeks of callousing before the sap rises to heal the graft union.
Callusing temperatures of Fruit and Nut trees
Posted on May 21, 2013 by qwertyqweryt61
Many people ask me what are optimum callusing temperatures to ensure a good percentage of viable grafts.
Nectarines/Peaches – 18-26 deg C. ( 64.4 to 78.8F)
Apricots/Cherries – 20 deg C. ( 68F)
Plums – 16 deg C. ( 60.8 F)
Apples/Pears – 13-18 deg C. ( 55.4 to 64.4F)
Walnuts – 27 deg C. (80.6 F)
Grapes – 21-24 deg C. ( 69.8 to 75.2 F).
Do not forget tissue damage for most temperate fruit will occur at temperatures over 30 deg C. (86 F)
Temperatures either side of the optimum will also work, but the percentage take will be reduced. See graph below for walnuts.
Callus graph
Callus formation is required at the graft, therefore temperatures are only needed at the graft. The rootstock and scion can be held at lower temperatures to avoid breaking the dormancy.
You may find this book in the local library:
Hartmann & Kester’s Plant Propagation, Principles and Practices
I very nice read during cold winter nights.
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Do you think Nadia or Sweet Treat would take onto sweet cherry seedling volunteers?
That’s funny, here it doesn’t reach daytime highs in the 70’s until probably 4-10 weeks AFTER cherry bud break.
This post was a while ago so maybe you have already tried grafting Cherry on your Sweet Treat. I had successful Lapins and Stella grafts on my Sweet Treat Pluerry. They made it through our hot Tempe, AZ summer … they looked ragged but survived. The grafts I tried on my Candy Heart didn’t take.
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Interesting. No I haven’t tried that. I was thinking the other direction, pluerry onto cherry, since there are cherry seedlings on the property.
Rather than just yank my Japanese Plums out of the ground due to their persistent habit here of blooming in the winter and subsequently freezing, i would like to top work them.
Back to the original poster’s question, has anyone successfully grafted sweet or sour cherries to a Japanese Plum?
I have an AU Rosa and. Methley that i would like to top work over to Montmorency Sour Cherry. Has anyone specifically had success doing this?
If anyone has, I think only very few have succeeded! Before I became familiar with the interstem concept, I tried to topwork my sweet cherry trees with plum scions of many different varieties. I had 100% failures! Then after reading Kesterson and Hartman, I became familiar with the concept of incompatibility. To overcome incompatibility you will eventually need an interstem that can bridge the gap! There may be others that will work, but the only three that I have succesfully used are Adara plum, Green leaf cherry plum, and Red leaf cherry plum. Perhaps other hybrid varieties that have both plum and p ceresifera heritage will work? But these are the only three I have used.
Dennis
Kent, Wa
Thanks for sharing your experience. Compatibility issues seem to be present even if they are both stone fruit. If i was faced with having to graft an interstem segment that additional possble point of failure would lead me to just uprooting these plums and replacing with Cherries.
I would love to have J plums, but my southern inland climate doesn’t seem suited.
How many years of age do your plum trees have? If you yank them out and buy new cherry trees it will be at least 5 years before you will see them fruit! If you use the mature trees root stock you will cut off at least 2 years until fruiting, assuming you can graft and get the interstems. So that’s the trade off! I’ve been thru that! You can topwork most of the scaffolds now with interstems and then chip bud the interstems with cherry, all in this year. Let one or two of the interstem buds grow new shoots and next spring graft those shoots with cherry. By 2026 you will have fruit! That’s a plan you could apply! Just contact someone like @Marta for a few Adara s ions.
Dennis
And keep in mind that you need to have a least a foot of the intersteam to be on the safe side.
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The plum trees were decent sized trees when i planted them 3 years ago and now both have calipers around 2 1/2" or so.
I suppose the two-step interstem process initially put me off due to the complexity. On the other hand waiting for cherry trees to mature is not a good trade off.
The well established trees would be worth the grafting process…
Here is the AU Rosa prior to getting blasted in last night’s freeze
