Yes you are right. I have sprayed them just to get them bigger but I don’t very often. I hate losing the other insects…the ones that are buzzing around all my trees doing their pollination thing. Yep…my persimmons are right along side my jujubes that are at this moment covered in all kinds of wasps, flies, butterflies, etc. Not to mention the spiders that I NEVER want to kill. So it’s a trade off on how important the spray is really needed and what is involved with using it.
Surprise pear graft: Ayers and Keiffer on ornamental flowering pear. I made this graft on a whim after pruning and forgot about it until I came across it again with the Ayers leafed. I now plan to convert this entire tree to fruiting varieties.
Yes, unless it is obvious that the graft hasn’t taken, I will remove the growth from the rootstock so that it will send more energy for the scion to grow.
Most of my successful bench grafts had growth after about 3 or 4 weeks, but this Northern Spy is finally growing after 7 weeks! The scion was very thick, must have been near the base of the branch it was cut from. Anyone know if typically buds from near the base of a branch take longer to leaf out after grafting, as I notice usually the tips of branches show growth first on the trees. Or could it just be more due to the fact that Northern Spy is a late bloomer?
Pretty big cut and bark graft on a peach tree. Went surprisingly well so far, i will decide later which one to keep. The red leafed one is rubira, the others are Adara, Santa Rosa and Flavor Heart
Get your stakes tied to your in-ground rootstocks everybody. I feel bad that @ggrindle lost those grafts when a stake might have stopped it.
@Tomesen put a stake at least 4’ above those grafts and electrical tape it to the rootstock. That’ll stop birds for now and later you can tie what you choose to it and stop it from whipping around in the wind and breaking the graft above the rootstock and/or breaking the graft at the union.
When you guys cut off your in-ground rootstocks there are branches you strip the side shoots off of and leaves and tie it to the rootstock with electrical tape. It’s free, it’s there, convenient, and you’ll make a tree.
Thanks. Boy I feel it so necessary and I forgot to put them on grafts at my buddy’s lake a few weeks ago. That first round of the year, usually, I forget, too.
Should all growth on the scion be left alone until it is very established, or should preference be given to one piece of growth and the rest pruned off?
Most of my apple grafts are waking up and leading out. At the same time I did cherry grafts some of the buds are still very tiny but I am unsure if they will eventually pop and be successful. Is it common for apples to wake up earlier than cherry? Grafted this year. Thank
You In advance
@candyflipper (and anyone else) A question on when to start pruning back surplus grafts on one large stump. I just put ten bark grafts on a friend’s old 10 inch diameter pear stump. My gut tells me to let all ten grow as much as possible year one for maximum leaf surface (so tree doesn’t go into shock) as we left no nurse branch. That will create a tangle of growth but I don’t see how to avoid it. Or would you start heading back/pinching back the non-keeper grafts right away?
On apples and pears I topwork, I take out all the new stems out (that are not grafts) to give a maximum degree of growth. Once the grafts get about 1,5 - 2,5ft high i prune them halfway, but you can also tie them to a fixed pole or something, so that strong winds don’t brake the graft union.
It would be interesting to see some photos.
I usually pinch out the growing tips of all but one shoot. I’ll usually keep the top most, but might pick another if it looks especially vigorous. I don’t fully remove the other shoots, as they make a good backup if something happens to your first choice. The trick is getting the tree to focus all its energy into one nice shoot to get your trunk going.
Do you think that “one nice shoot” can grow as many leaves in one season as leaving all the grafts unpinched? That was my worry- in this old tree with no nurse limbs.
I dunno, but in theory it should produce about as much biomass, just divided among fewer growing points. Probably not quite as much, but you get one really good branch/stem instead of a bunch of wimpy ones.
