If you have bleach, I would use bleach, 1 part bleach, 9 part water.
Buds on lower part of those sticks are still dormant. They should work.
I have two quick questions about the bench grafts I’m doing.
I’ve been grafting this last week and I’ll be grafting more next week. My plan was to move trees out around 2 weeks after when they were grafted or maybe a little later. Can I move them directly to the nursery bed? It is full sun so maybe I should shade them?
Also should I be sanitizing my tools between bench graphs with isopropyl alcohol? I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of anyone doing that while benchgrafting but I also don’t know why you wouldn’t. I’m not that worried because I got all my scionwood from one source who only gave me trees that he said he didn’t think had viruses. When I was cutting them he told me not to worry about sanitation because it was winter. Can someone explain when using isopropyl alcohol is important?
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@aiden
Assuming the new grafts don’t have yellow leafs on them ,
But just dormant or pushing buds they can be put in full sun .
Yellow leafs ,from lack of sun need some shade until they green up.
I usually sanitize tools between varieties, different scion sources .
Doing a batch of one variety / scion batch,
Sanitize with alcohol
Start next variety .
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Yes, I do. Just put a little wax on the tips to keep the scions from drying out (or a little parafilm).
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I agree with @Hillbillyhort best practice is to sanitize between varieties (or between batches of scionwood if you have same variety from multiple sources). More important if you’re going from apples to apples than say apples to pawpaws, but it’s still a good idea. It’s a quick and easy step that will save you a lot of heartache and untangling down the road. Very easy to transmit viruses, bacteria, fungi between batches of scionwood. I also like to sanitize my scionwood in a bleach solution before grafting. That will take care of anything that hangs out on the surface. It won’t defend against pathogens in the wood, though.
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I sterilise both my grafting knives and pruners between different varieties (even if from same source) while grafting. Also sterilise if i see a brown spot or somthing like that in the rootstock grafting cut.
i use a glas spray bottle that used to contain deoderant/parfume. I just sprits my tools with 70% isopropyl alchohol. Label stuff, look for my next scion etc. and when i come back i whipe my tools with a piece of toilet paper. You don’t want the 70% alcohol on the graft cut. but you do want to leave it a min or few on the tools to do it’s work.
Depening on wheater i keep bench grafts inside or even plant em out outside the day of grafting. Especially apples.
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Persimmons. Numerous varieties grafted onto native volunteers
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I’m in zone 5b, but almost on the border to 5a. Most are starting to leaf out.
Can’t find on this forum where to fill all my profile info.
I’ll surely post results here
I’ve soaked the scionwood in the solution for about 10 min. I now placed them on old piece of cloth to dry - is it ok, or should I soak them in normal water before drying?
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you can just let them dry. And once completly dried, id use them to graft and wrap the complete scion on parafilm. Or at least wax the ends.
Hydrogen peroxide is basicaly water with en extra oxygine atom. So it breaks down to water and oxygen, the O2 oxygene gas leaves the water as gas and your basicaly left with just plain water. No need to rinse water off with more water 
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Thanks for all the info. I’ll graft them in a few days.
I’m new to this forum so I’m still not fully ‘furnished’
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Have you done the tutorial yet? If you go to your private messages, there will be one from Discobot welcoming you to the forum. It’s an automated “user” and if you respond to the message and follow the prompts, they’ll put you through a quick tutorial of how it all works. I think a lot of it you’d figure out pretty well on your own, but when I went back and did it, I did discover a thing or two I hadn’t noticed before.
The FAQ page is also pretty helpful.
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Thank you jcguarneri
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I am located in Hudson Valley, NY. The rootstock part of the graft are starting to bloom out, does the scion wood usually take a little to bloom out? I’ve read mixed reviews about rubbing the scion buds off as they bloom. What are peoples suggestions?
Yes, the scion may be delayed, especially if the buds were small dormant buds. I like to rub off lower leaves on the root stock leaving 2-3 toward the top near the graft union. When the scion shows growth rub the remaining rootstock buds off.
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For those using bleach, I’ve noticed over the last many years that it is packaged and marketed differently than decades past.
If you are using for disinfection, make sure the only active ingredient is sodium hypochlorite. Also, I see it now coming in a smaller, more concentrated bottle. So you may want to adjust your proportions accordingly.
Chlorox has dozens of products now called “bleach” and many/most aren’t what people used to think of as bleach.
I ran into this when I first went to shock my well. I got a shock myself trying to find some real, plain chlorine bleach.
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if encountered the same problem. Some stores don’t sell the plain bleach anymore. Everything is a mix
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